Links
Clothing and Accessories
Purveyors of Chappist attire. While we make a half-hearted attempt to keep this page up to date, we can’t guarantee these links are 100% current and take no responsibility for content. For specifically 1920s-themed clothing, see also the “Get the Look” page of the Candlelight Club’s website.
Fogey Unlimited
Online supplier of vintage and traditional apparel, run by a former habitué of the old Sheridan Club, known as Sir Royston. The focus is on accessories such as braces, socks, stiff collars, sleeve garters and a lot of old-fashioned underwear—both new and pre-owned vintage items. NSC Members can get a 20% discount by using the code NSC21 (officially only one discount per customer but he says it’s worth asking in case he’s in a good mood).
Stewart Christie
The oldest tailor in Scotland (their records include invoices for Sir Walter Scott and various Royals), this firm offer made-to-measure and fully bespoke services, as well as ready-to-wear items, with an extensive range of tweeds and tartans, including family and estate designs. Their accessories include caps, scarves, luggage and tweed-covered hipflasks.
Cad and the Dandy
One of a number of services that sprang up offering bespoke tailoring for those on a tight budget. The general idea was that you measure yourself, enter your details online, then the tailoring is done somewhere like India or Nepal where labour is cheap. Most of those, such as A Suit That Fits and Blackstone Lewis, have gone belly-up; Cad and the Dandy are still going but now you must visit their premises in London, New York or Stockholm and prices start around £1,000 for a suit (previous £299). I can't personally vouch for the quality but a suit from them was the star prize at the Chap Olympics one year—and was won by our own Artemis Scarheart, and he declared himself pleased. They also do shirts and overcoats.
Chester Cordite
Modern menswear inspired by the 1930s and 1940s, offering a range of singe- and double-breated suits and jackets, high-waisted trousers and shirts with spearpoint and club collars.
Simon James Cathcart
Purveyor of vintage-inspired menswear, offering 1920s- and 1930s-influenced suits but also more casual looks and workwear items, such as shirts, trousers, knitwear, caps, shoes, etc. Simon’s attention to details includes having the fabrics woven special for him to achieve the pattern, weight and feel of the vintage originals.
Empire Tailoring
If you are an Antipodean type you may like to know that Empire Tailoring, run by Lily Hensius, wife of Club Member Dirk Hensius. Despairing of being able to find a decent Norfolk suit in their native New Zealand, Lily started making them, along with hacking jackets, tweed and wool sports coats, hight-waisted trousers, waistcoats and breeks, as well as military tunics and vests for re-enactors, speciality mess dress, patrol jackets and bustled and boned gowns for ladies.
James Lock & Co.
James Lock & Co. established this business in 1676 to serve the court of St James (St James's Street was just a muddy track then) and have been serving the royal and the famous ever since. Their speciality is the fitting of hard felts to your exact head shape though they also sell a wide range of soft felts, tweed hats, panamas, flying helmets, pith helmets, smoking caps, etc, including a range of ladies' titfers. They are not cheap, but I suppose one pays a premium for shopping at a place that once safely received a postcard addressed simply, "The Best Hatters in the World, London".
Bates Hats
This family-run traditional hatter had been peddling titfers from its crumbling Jermyn Street premises for over a hundred years. Sadly the landlords threw them out, wanting to redevelop the site (doubtless into flats they can't sell or yet another vital Starbucks), so Bates are now installed within Hilditch & Key along the street. Cheaper than Lock's, they don't do made-to-measure hard hats as the latter do, but they do offer a range of head shapes as well as sizes.
Atelier Millinery
Previously located just off London's Carnaby Street, Atelier now seem to operate mostly online, though you can see a selection of their wares at Favourbrook Womenswear, 16-18 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5LU. They used to offer a swather of headgear for men and women, but now they only have a small range of ready-to-wear berets and cloches, focusing mainly on bespoke ladies’ bridal and occasion hats and fascinators supply fine hats. They also run hat making courses. Owner Georgina Abbott is a main force behind London Hat Week.
Pachacuti
Website and online shop for Pachacuti, suppliers of good quality, reasonably priced Panama hats—an essential item in any gentleman's summer wardrobe. Not only that, but Pachacuti hats are all Fairtrade, so you are actively making the world a better place by buying them.
Spencers Trousers
Purveyors of nothing but quality, hand-made, made-to-measure trousers, in a range of moleskins, corduroys, wools, tweeds and washable wools. They also make breeks, plus twos and plus fours. Somehow both refreshing and comforting at the same time. They will even copy an existing pair of trousers if you have, say, an original pair of Oxford bags you want duplicated, and will hang on to the pattern for future orders. You can also visit them in person if you are in the Sowerby Bridge area in West Yorkshire.
Darcy Clothing
Catherine Darcy's Lewes-based emporium is mainly aimed at supplying thesps with costumes, but she is also very willing to supply Chaps with hard-to-find items such as stiff collars in a variety of styles, shirts with spear-point soft collars and collar clips. Formerly The Vintage Shirt Company, she has now expanded to include hats, trousers, jackets, waistcoats, evening wear, accessories, etc.
Old Town
The wonderful people at Old Town make new clothes to old designs, usually based on specific vintage garments found stuffed behind a radiator somewhere and forgotten for a hundred years. They do not make to measure but they make to order so you can choose your fabric. Items and fabrics come and go from their range, and has shifted more towards vintage workwear and simpler patch-pocket garments, but the whole site radiates their very precise aesthetic. Both stylish and strangely calming.
Revival Retro
A source of reproduction clothes and shoes from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, with a store on London’s Windmill Street selling their own lines and some others they like. Also caters for the swing dance mob, so sells suede-soled dancing shoes too. Mostly for ladies but a few items for men too, including co-respondent shoes.
360 Degrees Vintage
Vintage clothing, accessories and soft furnishings, originally based in Greenwich Market and rated by Homes and Antiques among the top 50 vintage shops in the country. As with so many, they were forced to abandon the physical shop by rising rents and they now operate online.
Blackout II
Blackout II has a big selection of ladies' garments from the 1920s to the 1980s, crammed into a compact shop in Covent Garden, as well as a fair few suits and coats for chaps too. You really have to visit—the website is really just an identity.
Alfies Antiques
Website of this splendid bazaar near Paddington, filled with tiny units selling all kinds of antique and vintage goodies, from lighting and furniture to clothing, hats, jewellery and more. Earmark at least half a day or you'll be disappointed. It's very easy to get lost in there, but there's a nice café at the top.
Beyond Retro
Beyond Retro have two outlets in London, one in Brighton and four in Sweden. The ones I've seen are huge but quite a mixed bag aimed more at the hipster than the hardcore vintage nut, and with a good proportion of their stuff no older than the 1990s or 1980s (i.e. vintage as in vintage jeans and plaid shirts). But worth a poke around.
Fine and Dandy
Online shop for gentleman's accessories—ties, handkerchiefs, hats, socks, collar bars, hipflasks, etc.—based in America. For a while if you lived in the Manhattan area they would even bicycle over with emergency dandification supplies, then in 2012 they opened a bricks-and-mortar shop there too. Owners Matt Fox and Enrique Crame III even appeared in Rose Callahan’s and Nathaniel Adams’s book I Am Dandy.
After Number Nine
Formerly Tasty Vintage, a shop at 9 Steep Hill in Lincoln, selling fine vintage clothing and homewares (they also have a special vintage bridalwear department), the actual shop hours have been reduced and Harriet is mostly selling online. Check the site for the latest plans.
Ginger Meg’s Vintage
Vintage emporium specialising in the 1920s to 1950s, based in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter but also offering an online service. Named after the owner Virginia Ewart, who started shopping for vintage clothing at 12 and wore a 1940s suit to school.
Bown’s Bespoke
Opinions on bespoke tailoring and reviews of suppliers from aesthete Frederick Bown. Be warned that he only has time for the best (the sole wristwatch manufacturer mentioned is Patek Phillipe, for example). Not sure where his money comes from (he apparently used to be a clergyman) but he also reviews high-end hotels and restaurants.