GEORGE V MAGAZINE
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No pause, a right turn was made and the threshold of the shirt makers’ bespoke shop on Bury Street was crossed. Amongst the bold-striped and checked Jermyn Street shirts, there is small section of my wardrobe dedicated to some of the more outré shirts produced by Turnbull & Asser in the Swinging Sixties.
Designed by Michael Fish, the company gained a reputation for these flamboyant shirts and ties, before the infamous designer left to open a new shop in 1966 on Clifford Street. Patrons of his shop, Mr Fish, ranged from Mick Jagger to Mohamed Ali, and his billowing blouse-like shirts became the dernier cri for Londoners in the mid-sixties.
I have always had a tendency towards the sartorially unconventional, this likely derives from my grandparents. Part of the sixties Chelsea set, my grandfather Tom was a film producer and Mummy Susan (she refused to be called granny) was a model. Tom’s tailor was Dougie Hayward, who deliberately avoided the stuffy formality of Savile Row, whilst Mummy Susan’s favourite shop was the psychedelic boutique, Granny Takes a Trip on the King’s Road.
Three and half thousand miles from the King’s Road, in 1967, Lord Snowdon was refused entry to the Running Footman when he was in New York; his crime was wearing a white silk turtle-neck shirt from Turnbull & Asser. As Ken Williams, the managing director later recalled in a New York Times article, ‘Within ten days, we had 2,000 orders, within a year, we sold 10,000. It put Turnbull’s into orbit.’
Now firmly over the threshold of 23 Bury Street, the idea for the yellow graph-check conveyed, I was told politely ‘We don’t really do “fashion” shirts here, sir.’ Luckily my persistence prevailed, and Mr Webb kindly agreed to put through an order (the first in several decades) for a turtleneck in the wonderful yellow checked cloth that I had seen in the window. My normal pattern, formed from eighteen body measurements, required amendments and a new paper pattern was created, sent to the workshop in Gloucester and digitally replicated. Five weeks later I was able to inspect the work of Turnbull & Asser’s extremely talented seamstresses.
I removed myself and the new shirt from 23 Bury Street very happy with the result. Deliberately nuanced, I promised Mr Webb that my next order would embody the quintessence of Turnbull & Asser.
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