Can Savile Row Be Saved by Women Who Want Power Suits?
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. Ms. Knatchbull — a great-granddaughter of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and a third cousin of Prince William then employed in the press department of the Savile Row tailor Huntsman — had ruffled society feathers, becoming the first woman to wear the event's signature outfit.
'It also made me realize,' Ms. Knatchbull, now 32, said this month. 'that there was a serious appetite among women for bespoke tailoring and a suit-shaped gap for them on Savile Row.'
Ms. 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.
Changing tastes in men's wear 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.
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