Angus Cundey MBE, who led the Savile Row tailor Henry Poole & Co as the sixth generation of his family, died on 12 August 2024. He was 87. The Savile Row Bespoke Association (SRBA), which he helped to found, announced his death on 22 August and described him in its tribute as the godfather of Savile Row.
Henry Poole opened in 1806 and was the first tailoring house on Savile Row, according to the SRBA. It remains family-run and is now headed by his son, Simon Cundey, the managing director.
Cutter, coat-maker and airman
Cundey was born on 7 July 1937. As a schoolboy he wanted to fly for the Royal Air Force, but his headmaster persuaded him to join the family business instead. He still served two years in the RAF. His training covered both sides of the trade: he took a cutting course at the Tailor and Cutter Academy and served an apprenticeship as a coat-maker in the bespoke department of Maison Lanvin in Paris.
That grounding in making, as well as cutting, shaped a long career in the trade's institutions. He was president of the Federation of Merchant Tailors, the World Federation of Master Tailors, the Tailors Benevolent Institute and the Master Tailors Benevolent Association, and a founding member of the SRBA. In 2018 Queen Elizabeth II appointed him MBE for services to bespoke tailoring and to the trade's charities.
“He lived and breathed Henry Poole”
Simon Cundey, managing director of Henry Poole & Co
Tributes from the street
Mark Henderson, co-founder and chairman of the SRBA, called Cundey a truly rare individual and a true friend to the street's tailors. Simon Cundey described his father as one of the finest tailors in the world.
A service was held on 12 September 2024 at South West Middlesex Crematorium in Feltham, with a livestream for those unable to attend. The family asked for donations to Race Against Dementia in place of flowers.
The house he leaves
Henry Poole has stayed in family hands. The house says it has held the British royal warrant continuously since Queen Victoria's reign, and in December 2024 it was among the businesses granted a warrant by King Charles III. In 2026 it marked 220 years since its founding with an anniversary fabric recreated from its own archive.
Cundey's death came in the same year that the SRBA and its training partner, the London Academy of Bespoke, prepared a new pre-apprenticeship course for the street. For readers who want to know what a house like Henry Poole actually does in the workroom, our guide to how a bespoke suit is made walks through the cutter's and coat-maker's work, and Savile Row house styles compares the main houses.
