David Chambers

Interview By Bruno Bayley

Photo By David Canning

You have almost certainly never heard of David Chambers, but he makes suits for some of the best-dressed people in the world, from David Bowie to Terence Conran, with a long semi-secret list of other clients in between. Chambers is an old-school designer who rejects the obsession with fashion and favours dedication to quality and craftsmanship over being trendy and advertising to the masses. We had a word with him at the Chelsea Arts Club, over some beer that cost 80p a pint. We talked about poor stitching, making suits for the world’s most famous designers and why fashion isn’t style, even if it is on Savile Row.

Vice: So, you got into making suits the old-fashioned way?

David Chambers:

Well, yes, in the sense that I went to Savile Row and did my apprenticeship. But it’s a limited training at Savile Row, you do either trousers or jackets or cutting, so I went to night school and learnt the rest of the trade. I would go to the London College of Fashion every evening for my night course and did about three and a half or four years apprenticeship at Savile Row. Then I went to college. There I met David Hockney’s printer, and I made him a suit. David saw it, then Manolo Blahnik saw it, then Ossie Clark saw it, it all went on from there. That’s all it was, it’s all just recommendations. I never advertised.

Yeah, I noticed you are quite hard to find out about.

Yes, very hard to find. But it works well for me. I produce the stuff myself. I trained my wife, I trained my son, and I have one apprentice at a time—if I advertised I would be scared of getting too much work. I wouldn’t be able to offer the same service. I don’t have a shop, I always travel to the client, wherever they are. I used to go to New York every six weeks to make suits for Harvey Keitel or whoever. It was good fun. But after four years it was time to calm down a bit.

You keep to a relatively small variety of suits, unlike designers who seem to feel the need to tinker and do elaborate stuff all the time.

If I made you a suit 15 years ago, I will have the patterns for it, and I will be able to make it again. It will be the same blazer, the same cloth, but I will just bring it up to spec a bit, alter the lapel or whatever.

I dress everyone individually. Say Terence Conran, he has had the same style of suit for the last 35 years, and always in blue. People come to me wanting something different and I will fit their criteria. I love a character look, not dressing up, but suiting the style to the character. I am more the professional’s professional; I make suits for people like Valentino. I get to pick and choose my clients. Sometimes I do exchanges with them. I have swapped Hockney prints for suits before.

So you aren’t interested in the obsession with new styles?

As they say, “There is nothing new.” If you are a student in fashion, you try and over do it, you try and do things no one else has done. Look at the Porsche 911: they develop it gradually. My suits are a bit like that. The new Porsche 911 is still basically a 911, little bit of work here and there, technology has caught up, but it is still essentially the same car. That’s like my suits.

People talk about Savile Row like it’s a holy land for men’s fashion. Is it the Mecca for suits that people claim it is?

Well, you need to be careful with Savile Row. It’s a bit like your hairdresser. It’s not the shop you go to, it’s the person you get to know in the shop, the person who makes the suit, who cuts it. If they move shop, you move with them. So just because it’s Savile Row, it doesn’t mean they will make you a great suit.

Was it a very formal place when you were there?

Oh god, yeah. The place I used to work in, you needed two introductions just to get a suit from. We were the tailors upstairs, we had to go downstairs to pick our work up. To do that we would have to change, we had to put proper shoes on and a suit. We weren’t allowed in the front of the shop. Back then no one would put displays in the windows. Now they all have them.

What do you make of that?

You shouldn’t need a window display. Customers should know where to go. It should all be based on recommendation. My clients are almost like agents—they will only tell people they are happy to share their suits with where they got them. Manolo Blahnik won’t tell anyone who makes his suits. He used to say, “Oh, Tommy Nutter makes them,” and I would be like, “No, he didn’t, I did.” But that’s fine with me, really.

Is Savile Row still the heart of men’s fashion in Britain?

Well, you see these programmes on TV about Savile Row, and they make me cringe. You have your Ozwald Boateng and your Richard James, but they are just stylists, they can’t make anything. I mean, in my day, when I was on Savile Row there were 50 tailors in a shop, now there are five. It’s hard to find a really good tailor on Savile Row today. But they are still there, if you know where to look. There are loads of great tailors who aren’t on Savile Row, or within 100 yards of it. Just because you aren’t on Fleet Street, it doesn’t mean you can’t write.

So how did you make the transition from Savile Row tailoring to making your own suits?

I knew the trade. I always say there are four ingredients to making a good suit: it has to be cut well, it has to fit well, it’s got to be good quality cloth, and it’s got to be finished well. If you haven’t got those ingredients, or one falls down, you are done for. I have seen some beautiful suits, the fit’s gorgeous, but they are badly made—the buttonholes or the hand-stitching, it’s atrocious.

Take Peter Langham, the chef, I made all his suits. He used to say, “Never charge for your materials,” or at least never charge on top for them, don’t mark it up. I’m not charging customers for the materials. If you go to a curtain manufacturer they will make their money by doubling up on the price of materials, I make my money from the manufacturing.

So, what do you think about fashion in relation to Savile Row?

The problem is, people shouldn’t try and make it fashionable. That’s missing the point. Most clients who go to Savile Row want something different. They don’t want to be told how to wear clothes. They know quality. That’s why my clients come to me. But as soon as it’s fashionable they won’t want it. To me, fashionable clothes are throwaway clothes. My clients will have suits for ten, maybe 15 years, longer even. They last. By the time you have a Savile Row suit made, it should be out of fashion. I am embarrassed if I refer to myself as a fashion designer.

What’s your trick then?

You can only do what you like. I meet a lot of people, and if you start to do what other people like, or what you think they like, then it all falls apart. I used to make a lot of clothes for a big session guitarist, but he used to say he never listened to the radio; it confused him. It’s the same with clothes. If someone says, “Design a fashionable collection,” you start researching, then you get really confused and lose your way.

I suppose suits aren’t ever going to go out of fashion, are they?

This is the difference: if you are doing fashion clothes, an Armani suit is an Armani suit. You are cloned. Take Ozwald Boateng. If you are six foot tall and slim, great, his suits will look good on you. But if you aren’t, it’s not going to. Again, it’s trying to make Savile Row fashionable, but you can’t. It’s one or the other. Fashion isn’t necessarily a well-made suit.