Savile Row isn't just for men anymore: How bespoke is getting a feminine fit

The Star

6 days ago

Daisy Knatchbull first hit headlines in 2016 after waltzing into Royal Ascot – the week of horse races that is a cornerstone of the English summer social season – wearing a top hat, blue waistcoat, full morning coat with tails and six-inch Louboutin heels.
Never mind that morning suits were traditionally the sartorial reserve of English gentlemen.
Knatchbull – a great-granddaughter of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and a third cousin of Prince William then employed in the press department of Savile Row tailor Huntsman – had ruffled society feathers, becoming the first woman to wear the event's signature outfit.
'It also made me realise that there was a serious appetite among women for bespoke tailoring and a suit-shaped gap for them on Savile Row,' Knatchbull, now 32, said this month.
Knatchbull started selling made-to-measure suits in 2019 with just four styles.
Initially known as the Deck, then rebranded in 2024 as Knatchbull, it was the first women's tailoring label to take up shop on the world's most famous street for men's clothing.
'On a street so full of history, and given how fast we had been growing, Knatchbull felt like a better way of saying to people we are building a new legacy with what we do,' she said.
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Daisy Knatchbull is shaking up Savile Row with the first women's tailoring house on the male-dominated street. Photo: The New York Times Changing tastes in menswear and a decades-long drift from formal wear, especially in the workplace, had left Savile Row in a state of perilous decline.
The pandemic, with its elasticated waists and travel bans, hurt the street's legendary tailors further still, with some eventually going into liquidation.
But Knatchbull believed that while the men's business may be struggling, more women than ever were willing to pay handsomely for a made-from-scratch suit designed for their bodies by experienced pattern cutters – just like their fathers, brothers and husbands may have done once upon a time.
The difference? The Knatchbull staff of more than 40 are all women.
'Our clients are served by women who have Savile Row training but really understand the changes a woman's body can go through, which most men don't,' Knatchbull said.
'If a client is undergoing fertility treatments, menopause, mastectomies, miscarriages, heavy periods or even sweating too much, we can listen to her and accommodate that with our garments.'
Blond and statuesque, she sat on a plush sofa in the bright and airy store she moved into in 2022. One floor below, dozens of staff members were hard at work on orders.
'We're not the first women's tailor, but we're the first shopfront on Savile Row to exist for women,' she said.
'We accommodate women of all sizes and proportions, and that's the whole point.'
Prices start at £3,300 (approximately RM19,100) for a made-to-measure suit, with at least three fittings over 12 to 14 weeks.
After initial measurements are taken, a client will choose her own fabric – the 7,000 options include velvets, corduroys, tartans and cashmeres – as well as the lining, buttons and monogramming for her suit.
Today, the company has a Rolodex of 2,500 clients whose orders can range from traditional power suiting and three-piece looks to slouchy wide-legged pantsuits, old-school tuxedos, safari sets and jumpsuits.
The first colour of choice is often navy, Knatchbull said, and most of those buying are professional women between 45 and 65, though the youngest client thus far was 13 and the oldest was 96.
The company's repeat order rate is 62%. Some clients have gone further still by investing in the business (Knatchbull declined to name her private investors, but said she has closed three rounds of funding).
The most lucrative market is the US, which now accounts for 45% of orders and is where Daisy Knatchbull travels four or five times a year to do trunk shows and fittings in New York, Washington, DC, and Dallas, as well as Palm Beach, Florida, and Greenwich, Connecticut.
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Anna Scott Carter, who runs a digital stationery startup, Electragram, said that after reading about Knatchbull in Air Mail , the newest publication of her husband, Graydon Carter, she resolved to visit the shop the next time she was in London.
'I imagined the tuts of disapproval all up and down Savile Row at the idea of a woman invading their territory and thought, 'Good for her,'' Anna Scott Carter wrote in an email.
She had found the experience of being fitted for a custom suit to be one of life's great pleasures.
'Putting on a custom Knatchbull suit is like wrapping a force field around you,' she said.
The company's next visit to the US is slated for mid-September, with stints in Los Angeles and Washington, and next year they will venture out to Chicago, Alabama and Aspen, Colorado. Knatchbull and her team will go wherever there is demand, see as many as 150 clients at any one go, then come back again three months later, she said.
'I think people all over the world love the idea of English heritage and the bespoke craftsmanship of the Row,' she said.
'Clients often say, 'I wish I had you as an option when I got my big promotion or had to sit next to my ex-husband at my daughter's graduation and needed to look hot.' They could go to many luxury brands, but they like how a Knatchbull suit makes them feel.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.