British Add the Royal Touch to Tailoring
The “royal warrant” being what it is, Paul Cuss offered little more than a tolerant smile when questioned about Prince Charles’ wardrobe.
Cuss, a shirt cutter for the English menswear firm Turnbull & Asser, has fitted the Prince of Wales’ shirts for a decade. “He’s got very good taste, obviously,” said Cuss, charged with the usual silence of those who dress English royalty.
Other Clients
But this longtime employee of the 101-year-old London tailor doesn’t mind spilling news of other celebrity clients. Robert Wagner, Walter Matthau, Bob Newhart and Frank Sinatra wear Turnbull & Asser clothes, he said, and: “We used to make bits and pieces for Katharine Hepburn.”
Not that name-dropping is necessary in Cuss’ view of his customers. They know their own.
“It’s a very exclusive private club,” he said. “We don’t print our name all over the merchandise. We just have our own handwriting.”
Cuss and his associate, Nigel Butler, brought their rarefied views to Neiman-Marcus, Beverly Hills, last week, taking orders for fall merchandise, including silk ties (starting at $40), cotton shirts (starting at $85), and a shirting-cotton boxer short ($50) that wins some “very devoted customers,” one Neiman-Marcus executive said. (Although known for custom merchandise, 70% of Turnbull & Asser business is ready-made goods, Cuss said.)
Attorney Abram Zucker, dressed in a three-piece suit by Polo, wandered over from his Beverly Hills office around noon to peruse some of the 400 cotton swatches and 600 silk squares from which the firm designs. Zucker said he fell upon the Turnbull & Asser store in London 20 years ago. “Now I make a pilgrimage . . . . When I go back, it’s a smorgasbord over there.”
Zucker said the ties “have more heft” and the custom-made shirts “fit like a glove.”
Changes Outlook
Though Turnbull & Asser’s designer Kenneth Williams doesn’t stray far from the menswear staples of stripes, dots, diamonds and paisleys, the firm does change its outlook on combining its pieces. Lately the view is far from understated.
“It’s a conservative company but flamboyant in the way it puts color together,” said Butler, who wore at least three patterns and four colors between shirt, tie and chalk-stripe suit.
In the 14 years since Butler started with Turnbull & Asser “dusting banisters,” as he said, the slight, pale man has gained an authoritative manner.
“You must always have your shirt sleeves shortened. No question about it,” Butler firmly told one tanned customer, who kept disagreeing with that assessment.
“Some people get into their heads something that isn’t possible,” he added. “Some people expect a shirt to be magic. In the end, it’s only a shirt.”
