Edward Sexton

Edward Sexton changed what a Savile Row suit could look like. Trained at Kilgour, French & Stanbury and the military tailor Welsh & Jefferies, he opened Nutters of Savile Row with Tommy Nutter on 14 February 1969, the first tailor on the street to swap frosted glass for an open shop window. Nutter handled the clients and Sexton cut. Three of the Beatles wore their suits on the cover of Abbey Road that year, and clients came to include Mick and Bianca Jagger, Elton John, Twiggy and Yoko Ono.

Sexton took over the business when Nutter left in 1976, traded under his own name from 1982 and moved to Knightsbridge in 1990. As a student, Stella McCartney apprenticed with him, and in 1997 he helped her launch her first collection for Chloé. He returned to Savile Row in 2022 with a shop at No. 35, a few doors from the original Nutters, and died on 23 July 2023, aged 80. The business continues under Dominic Sebag-Montefiore, its creative director for about a decade, and remains a member house of the Savile Row Bespoke Association.

The cut has not softened. Expect roped shoulders, a defined chest, a nipped waist, high armholes and long, low, curved peak lapels, over high-rise trousers with deep forward pleats. Savile Row bespoke starts at $8,700 including VAT for a two-piece suit, with baste, forward and final fittings and about 80 hours of hand work. Offshore bespoke from $3,900, made-to-measure from $2,600 and ready-to-wear from $2,000 are made overseas.

Next to Huntsman's single-button jacket, a Sexton suit is broader in the lapel and more theatrical; next to Anderson & Sheppard's drape, it is the opposite approach. Choose it for a double-breasted suit, evening wear or tailoring with presence, and ask at the first appointment who will cut your pattern.