A visit with John Hitchcock of Anderson & Sheppard
London Landmarks: The future of Fedoras at Bates hats (Part 1)
An elegant mainstay on Jermyn Street will be closing its doors at the end of February. Bates, who has supplied elegant Fedoras and caps since 1920 at 21 Jermyn Street will try to relocate to shared space elsewhere on the famous street that is being vacuumed of all its intrinsic charms.
We receive the bad news direct from the proprietor in this sequence. Stay tuned for video shot as a historical record of the shop coming up in part 2 of this series.
Bespoke clothing: A Neapolitan trouser maker
In Naples, independent trouser makers, working often in the hidden corners of the Spanish quarter, work to fulfill orders for bespoke tailors’ customers. These pantalonaio are generally considered “outworkers” and few have their own customers but simply complete the orders of others.
A decade or so ago, I went on a search through the Spanish quarter to find the atelier of one, Antonio Ambrosi. I went to find a craftsman, but wound up finding a family working together to make beautiful custom clothing, trousers for the best tailors in Naples. At the time, they had no direct customers and that seemed a shame given the quality of the work, so I suggested they develop their own client base.
A few posts on the London Lounge did the trick and the word spread quickly on the net. Today, the Ambrosi family is making bespoke trousers for men throughout the United States via trunk shows in New York but, as we shall hear in the following video, young Salvatore Ambrosi is planning a trip to London and San Francisco in 2010.