West End Street Style: What Six Well-Dressed Men Taught Us About Savile Row
Savile Row on a warm afternoon is the closest London comes to a menswear runway nobody organised. Chris Modoo spent a day walking the West End, stopping six of the best dressed men he could find to ask one simple question: what are you wearing, and why. Vintage suits, three-piece commissions and a masterclass in mixing John Lewis with Carmina followed.
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What West End Street Style Actually Looks Like
Street style photography usually happens at trade shows, where everyone dresses for the cameras before they have had their coffee. What happened along Crown Passage, Savile Row and Jermyn Street on this particular afternoon was different. Chris Modoo was not hunting for outfits assembled for the occasion. He was catching people mid-shift: a hatter's manager stepping out for a break, a tailoring house employee heading to a fitting, a cloth merchant between deliveries. Nobody had planned to be interviewed, which is exactly why the results are worth paying attention to.
This is the difference between street style as spectacle and street style as evidence. A man who dresses well for a single event tells you about his ambition. A man who dresses well on an ordinary Tuesday, without an audience in mind, tells you about his habits. Every outfit in this piece falls into the second category, which is rarer and more useful. Six men, six completely different approaches, and not one of them dressed the same way by coincidence.
What emerges across the conversations is less a single formula for dressing well than a set of working principles that keep resurfacing: trust the specialist you have chosen, understand why a fabric behaves the way it does, and never let a limited budget stop you building a considered wardrobe. Reading this is not quite the same experience as watching Chris walk up to strangers on camera. It is closer to reading the notes afterwards, with the reasoning behind each choice laid out properly rather than caught in passing between a hello and a thank you.
Old cloth, new confidence
Why Max Mixes a Made to Measure Suit with Vintage Everything Else
Max manages Lock & Co, which makes him arguably the best possible advertisement the hat trade could ask for, and he does not waste the opportunity. His suit is made to measure from New & Lingwood, a proper commission rather than something pulled off a rail, and it does the job any made to measure suit should: it fits the shoulders exactly, sits without dragging at the collar, and moves with him rather than around him. New & Lingwood fitted the belt in house too, a small detail that only a keen eye would notice and only a specialist tailor would think to offer.
Everything layered on top of that suit tells a different story. The hat is an old Lock & Co, worn with the easy confidence of someone who has tried on several thousand hats for other people and finally found the one that suits his own head. Pressed on whether a particular piece looked vintage, Max laughed and admitted one item had in fact come from an eBay search rather than a family attic, proof that resourcefulness matters more than provenance when you are building a look with real character. He finishes with a bow tie, worn as a genuine daily preference rather than fancy dress, a pair of Belgian loafers from a maker whose name he cheerfully admits he can never quite pronounce, and thick-rimmed Moscot glasses that anchor the whole outfit somewhere between Savile Row and Soho.
The lesson is less about hunting down vintage clothing specifically and more about combining one properly commissioned anchor garment with pieces chosen for character rather than provenance. The suit does the structural work. Everything else is where the personality lives.
Trust the specialist
What Commissioning a Three-Piece from Chittleborough and Morgan Teaches You
Rico works at Gaziano and Girling, which puts him in the fortunate position of never having to think too hard about footwear. His shoes, unsurprisingly, are Gaziano and Girling. What is more interesting is what he chose to wear above the ankle.
The three-piece suit was commissioned from Chittleborough and Morgan, a tailoring house at number 12 Savile Row, and the instructions Rico gave them were about as brief as instructions get. He chose the cloth and told the tailors to do their worst, trusting the house style completely rather than trying to art-direct the result himself. That approach only works if the specialist in question deserves the trust, and the finished jacket, with its heavily structured shoulder and unmistakable rope sleeve head, suggests they did. The cloth is a 13 ounce weave from Lesser, an old school mid-weight fabric with a light lining built for a season rather than an occasion, which tells you this was never meant to be a museum piece kept for best. It was made to be worn.
The shirt came from the same fitting, ordered at the same time as the suit so the proportions would match exactly. For the tie, Rico chose Marinella in a tone on tone pattern rather than reaching for contrast, a small departure from his usual choices that reads as considered rather than accidental. Asked whether Savile Row has anything resembling a dress down Friday, he hesitated before landing on an honest answer: not officially, though he does occasionally swap his laced shoes for the loafers, and calls that his version of casual.
The takeaway has less to do with the specific tailoring house and more to do with the relationship. Rico's outfit works because he handed real authority to people who had earned it, then let them do their job.
Spend where it counts
How to Mix High Street and Premium Menswear Without It Looking Like an Accident
Sebastian's outfit does more heavy lifting than any other in this piece, mostly because he built it from a properly mixed set of sources and made it look inevitable rather than improvised. The jacket comes from John Lewis, cut from Abraham Moon cloth, a proper British mill fabric with a faint brown fleck running through a mostly grey ground. It reads as considerably more expensive than it is, largely because the fabric quality is doing work that price alone usually signals.
Underneath, his trousers are Massimo Dutti, 100% linen, taken in slightly at the waist so they sit properly rather than simply hanging off the rack. They are wide enough to stay comfortable and airy on a hot day, which matters more than most style advice ever admits. His shoes are Carmina, the Mallorca-based maker with a shop on Clifford Street, an investment purchase he justifies with real logic rather than simple desire: Goodyear welted construction means they can be resoled indefinitely, so a considered spend now effectively buys a pair of shoes that never really wear out.
What ties the whole thing together is a plain white T-shirt, a black belt, and, notably, a pocket square, worn even though the rest of the outfit sits closer to smart-casual than tailoring. Conventional wisdom says a black belt should not be worn with brown shoes. Sebastian's outfit proves that rule wrong simply by looking right, largely because the grey and charcoal tones already running through the jacket give the black belt somewhere to land.
By his own admission, Sebastian is recently out of being a student and correspondingly careful with money. His approach, buying a handful of well-chosen pieces and mixing them deliberately with the pieces worth investing in, is the most transferable lesson in this entire piece. You do not need six figures of wardrobe spend to dress with intention. You need to know which three or four pieces are worth paying more for.
Understand the cloth
Why Fresco Is Still the Best Fabric for a British Summer
Jeff has spent more than three decades supplying cloth to the tailoring houses around Savile Row, which makes him one of the few people in this piece whose outfit is effectively a walking advertisement for his own trade. His jacket is cut from a Super 150s plain weave, made in England, with a light lining that keeps it wearable through the warmer months without sacrificing structure. The jacket itself was made in Naples by Sartoria Cuomo, which explains the soft, almost shirt-like shoulder that Italian tailoring houses do so well. In keeping with an Italian custom that has mostly disappeared from London, his trousers were commissioned separately from a different specialist, a trouser maker rather than the jacket's own tailor. Jeff finds the whole arrangement slightly unusual but has clearly made peace with it: different craftsmen, working independently, each focused entirely on their own part of the garment.
Asked for his single best tip for dressing well through a British heatwave, Jeff did not hesitate. Fresco, he said, remains the best fabric in the world for hot weather, a high twist wool weave with enough natural texture to hold its shape and resist creasing even after a long day on your feet. He admits, with a certain dry honesty, that he does not wear it often himself, treating it as something closer to an indulgence than an everyday staple, which is either an admirable form of restraint or a cloth merchant's own version of the cobbler's children going barefoot.
He also mentioned a new crease-resistant fabric currently in development at Huddersfield Fine Worsteds, intended for a casual blazer you can throw on without worrying about how it survives the day. If fresco is the connoisseur's choice for a formal summer suit, this sounds like its more relaxed cousin, built for exactly the kind of wear fresco was never quite designed for.
One palette, worn well
Why a Monochrome Wardrobe Is Easier to Dress Well In
Tommy Raban has spent almost fifteen years working on Savile Row, the last ten of them at Scabal, and is now stepping away to launch his own label, Raban London. His street style outfit doubles as a fairly convincing pitch for what that label might look like: Irish linen trousers made with Scabal, a denim shirt from a friend's label called Mark Oliver, and a considered use of colour that most men are, in his words, still a little afraid of.
His guiding principle is tonal consistency rather than contrast. He prefers to pair similar palettes together, navy with navy, brown with brown, rather than reaching for the high contrast combinations that dominate a lot of conventional styling advice. It is a quietly disciplined approach, and on him it reads as considered rather than cautious. His shoes, a pair of Gaziano loafers worn in until they have taken on real character, complete an outfit built for comfort on a hot day without ever tipping into scruffiness. He is aware they look a little rugged, and entirely unbothered by it, which is its own kind of confidence.
There is a broader lesson buried in his monochrome instinct. Building an outfit from a single tonal family is, in practical terms, considerably easier to get right than orchestrating a room full of contrasting colours. It removes a whole category of decisions, colour matching against colour, in favour of decisions about texture, weight and cut, which are ultimately more interesting to get right anyway. For a man about to run his own label, spending a working day dressed in a considered, wearable pitch for that same philosophy feels entirely intentional.
A detail with a history
What the Gap in a Blazer Cuff Actually Means
James Couzens works at Deakin & Francis in Piccadilly Arcade, close enough to Savile Row that he describes himself as someone who has barely changed his commute in a decade. His trousers come from New & Lingwood, an off the peg pair adjusted with a half cocktail closure to add a little personality. His tie is from Gieves & Hawkes, his shirt from Proper Cloth in New York, and his socks and shoes both come from smaller, newer makers he named between introductions, including one shoemaker that has only been trading on the Row for a year or so.
The most interesting detail, though, sits at the cuff. James's blazer has a visible gap between two of the sleeve buttons, a detail that traces back to the household division. Officers' tunics traditionally left a gap at the centre for a belt to pass through, and when those same officers had their blazers made, they asked for the detail to be repeated there too, on the cuff as well as the body. Because New & Lingwood sits close to Wellington Barracks, a significant number of household division officers used the tailor as their regular outfitter and requested the detail as a matter of course. Over time it migrated from a specific request into a standard feature across New & Lingwood's ready collection.
James had heard a different story attributing the same detail to a buyer who had moved across from Hackett, and was fairly confident, on reflection, that this was simply the wrong story attached to the right detail. It is a useful reminder that a lot of the small flourishes in traditional English tailoring carry real institutional history, even when that history gets slightly scrambled on the way to becoming folklore. His watch, a late 1940s Jaeger-LeCoultre, and a signet ring from his own employer round out a look built almost entirely from pieces with a story attached to them.
What ties it together
What Six Different Approaches to Dressing Well Actually Have in Common
Put these six outfits side by side and the differences are the first thing you notice: vintage against made to measure, monochrome against colour, high street against Neapolitan tailoring. Look past the differences, though, and a smaller set of shared habits starts to emerge.
Every one of these men has committed properly to at least one relationship with a specialist, whether that is a tailor, a shoemaker or, in Jeff's case, a cloth merchant's own decades of trade knowledge, and let that specialist's expertise actually shape the outcome rather than simply following a brief to the letter. Every one of them also understood exactly why each garment worked, down to the weight of the cloth or the welt on a shoe, rather than simply liking the way something looked in a mirror. And every single one of them, whatever their budget, treated the small finishing details, a pocket square, a signet ring, the particular knot on a tie, as a real part of the outfit rather than an afterthought tacked on at the door.
None of that requires a Savile Row address or a made to measure budget. It requires paying proper attention to what you already own, understanding why it works, and being willing to trust the people who know more than you do about the parts you have not yet learned.
What Chris wore to ask the questions
The Tie and Pocket Square Behind the Camera
Chris was on the other side of the questions all day, but his own outfit was doing some quiet work too. He wore our Bronze Spot Shantung Silk Tie, a warm, textured Italian silk with a white spot pattern that reads equally well against a jacket or an open-necked shirt in strong sunlight. In his breast pocket sat our Bonfire Celebrating Midsummer Night pocket square, a hand rolled silk square printed from a Nikolai Astrup painting, chosen for exactly the kind of warm, informal energy the day called for.
Between them, the two pieces make a reasonable case for their own argument: that a good tie and a well-chosen pocket square do not need a formal suit to earn their place. They work just as well on a warm afternoon spent walking between Savile Row and St James's, asking strangers to explain themselves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Street Style and Savile Row Style Questions Answered
What is street style in menswear?
Street style refers to real outfits documented as people actually wear them, rather than looks assembled specifically for a runway or a photoshoot. In menswear, the most useful street style comes from watching how people dress for an ordinary working day, since it reveals genuine habits instead of a single styling choice made for the camera.
How do I mix high street and made to measure clothing without it looking mismatched?
Anchor the outfit with one properly fitted piece, whether that is a commissioned jacket or a well-tailored pair of trousers, and let it set the tone for everything else. Pay attention to tonal consistency and fabric quality in the high street pieces you add, and treat finishing details like a pocket square or belt as part of the outfit rather than an afterthought.
What is the gap in a blazer cuff button detail?
The gap between two buttons on a blazer cuff traces back to military tailoring for the household division. Officers' tunics traditionally left a centre gap for a belt to pass through, and the same detail was later copied onto the cuff of tailored blazers, eventually becoming a standard feature at some Savile Row and Jermyn Street tailors.
What is fresco cloth and why is it good for summer suits?
Fresco is a high twist, open weave wool cloth prized for resisting creases and staying cool in hot weather, making it a longstanding favourite among cloth merchants and tailors for summer commissions. It carries more texture than a standard plain weave and tends to hold its shape through a long, warm day.
How can you build a personal style on a limited budget?
Focus your spending on a small number of pieces that earn their price, such as resoleable shoes or a well-cut jacket, and mix them confidently with high street basics chosen for fit and colour rather than logo or price point. Consistency in your palette and attention to finishing details will do more for your overall look than spending evenly across every item in your wardrobe.
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