By Manish Puri.
Sat by the window of The Pink Lion simply off Jermyn Avenue, Nina Penlington tells me what first led her to Savile Row: “My plan was to study some tailoring abilities and transfer into designing menswear. After about six weeks I realised that ain’t occurring. Not everybody might be Lee McQueen.”
That was 18 years in the past, and since then Nina has gone on to chop for 3 very completely different, long-established homes of the Row: Dege & Skinner, Gieves & Hawkes and, most just lately, Edward Sexton – working beneath Edward himself till he handed in 2023.
In 2024, Nina took some go away for well being causes. “It gave me some head house, and I began to sketch a number of the designs that I’ve been fascinated about for years. My drawings are a bit shit, however they obtained the concepts out of my head and helped me refine my voice aesthetically.” This yr she began her personal model: Nina Penlington Bespoke.
Whereas Nina says she doesn’t have a hard and fast house-style, I feel it’s honest to say there’s a robust house-culture.
It’s one the place British rock ‘n’ roll glamour mixes with the hazy psychedelia of Laurel Canyon Americana. The place a velvet go well with is de rigueur for popping into the outlets and getting a pint of milk and a scratch card in your means dwelling from an evening out. (Nina has beforehand made tailoring for Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, so there’s most likely extra fact to that description than I realise.)
Underpinning all of it is a way of enjoyable blended with considerate intention. “Garments are usually not one thing to take too significantly. However making garments is one thing I actually take significantly,” she says. Each sides are maybe evident within the picture above of one among her offshore bespoke commissions – a single breasted dinner go well with in a wool/mohair fabric by Smith Woollens, topped with a xeroxed picture of Bryan Ferry.
The fashion is pretty typical of what one can count on from Nina: padded shoulder, reasonably broad lapel, excessive armhole and a better, suppressed waistline. Nina provides a full bespoke service requiring a minimal of three fittings alongside a less expensive offshore programme the place a go well with is reduce by her, however basted and completed offshore after one becoming. 
Certainly one of her signature items is the ‘Get Again’ go well with impressed by a three-piece worn by Paul McCartney throughout The Beatles valedictory public efficiency on the rooftop of three Savile Row in 1969.
“I’ve spoken to so many purchasers about this go well with through the years,” says Nina. “It seems to be like a sensible, basic 60s West Finish go well with, however what’s attention-grabbing is how Macca makes it really feel so informal when he wears it with beaten-up footwear or a grubby grandad shirt.” That is the go well with I’ve commissioned (or, as Nina calls it, “the Manish model of the Get Again go well with”), and I’ll evaluate it within the autumn.
That gig (and the 2021 movie that paperwork it) has proved an inspiration to Nina in additional methods than one. “I like how the stage-managed picture of ‘The Fab 4’ advanced into 4 guys with very particular person kinds; they’re untethered from what had come earlier than. I’m fascinated by that artistic freedom, and I really feel like I’m now in a spot the place I get to make the garments I take pleasure in.”
She catches herself, buries her face in her arms and unexpectedly provides: “Not that I’m evaluating myself to The Beatles!”
Nina expands on what that freedom means for her purchasers: “At an enormous tailoring home, you’re working to another person’s time – which is true. However now I get to decide on how I spend that point. I really feel unencumbered, and have the house to consider every particular person and their fashion and the garment I am making for them.”
A few of that point is spent studying and responding to the material as soon as it’s laid out on the board. “What may really feel proper on paper, won’t work when it’s chalked out. What’s the material telling you? I would wish to change the lapel barely or add a lapped seam.”
In fact, every part is completed in session with the client. “There’s no level in the event you gained’t put on it. And I actually need individuals to put on their good things – life’s too quick. However I do have extra confidence telling you what I like, which is a part of what I feel individuals are paying a cutter for.”
And taking cues from the material is how Nina likes to work. It’s the explanation she’s curating a bunch of her favorite materials together with recommendations on the kinds she thinks they complement finest; this will then be offered to a brand new buyer, which I feel is an effective way of introducing them to the model’s world.
“Usually a fabric dictates to me what it ought to develop into as a go well with”, she says. A chief instance of that is the event of her Western go well with, one thing Nina toyed with unsuccessfully for years, till a buyer got here in with a twill overcoat fabric that had the precise weight and robustness for what she envisioned.
And now the Western go well with she provides is stuffed with technical and hand-finished components that decision upon her previous reducing experiences. Consequently, this fashion is just obtainable by means of the total bespoke programme.
The pockets are curved ‘smile pockets’, completed at every nook with arrowheads which might be hand sewn by Nina utilizing a heavy thread specifically sourced from a notions store in New York.
The jacket has no centre-back seam – a mode Nina is acquainted with from reducing mess kits at Dege & Skinner – and so the rear yoke isn’t merely an ornamental Western signifier, however instrumental to including form to the again and serving to the jacket hug the neck. The yoke on the trouser performs the same operate rather than darts. All of the yokes are felled and prime stitched by hand.
These particulars and methods have been refined over time. “My fashion is wildly completely different to Davide [Taub, head cutter at Gieves & Hawkes], however I realized loads from him in the way in which he would take a look at one aspect of a garment, get obsessive about it, and evolve it slowly till it was perfected.”
The home mannequin which may initially strike you as counterintuitive is the On a regular basis Velvet go well with. In spite of everything, isn’t velvet nocturnal? A vampire fabric solely seen after darkish in candlelit eating rooms and smoke-filled cigar lounges? “One of many issues that makes a go well with rock n’ roll to me is taking a fabric that’s largely related to night put on and carrying it everytime you need,” says Nina.
And so, the On a regular basis Velvet reframes the material into one thing that may be worn for any event. The fashion relies on a classic velvet go well with Nina had as an adolescent. “Rising up in north Wales within the 90s, I wore plenty of classic stuff and obtained the piss taken out of me loads as a result of classic wasn’t cool the way in which it’s now. However I adored that go well with, it will definitely fell aside and I’ve by no means been capable of substitute it till now.”
Nina describes the jacket as “informal nation” with huge patch pockets, swelled edges and most strikingly a notch lapel. “Plenty of clients count on it to have a peak lapel, however I’m slowly pulling them over to the darkish aspect.” One other refined subversion of the standard velvet dinner jacket.
Given her love of classic, it’s no shock that Nina (like many tailors and designers) embraces the concept of her fits changing into ‘future classic’. However her motives are much less about proving sturdiness or stylistic longevity, and extra involved with the story it tells others in regards to the authentic proprietor.
“I feel you purchase classic for the lifetime of a garment. And while you put on it you get imbued with its historical past which influences how you are feeling in it. I just lately purchased a ridiculous shearling coat in San Francisco, and each time I put it on I feel: who was the groupie that wore this?”
So how does she need the wearers of her tailoring to really feel? “I need an odd man to really feel like a rock star,” she says. It’s a declaration that resonates, in a summer time the place the triumphant return of Oasis and the passing of Ozzy Osbourne have gotten me fascinated about why so many individuals appear to be craving for old style rock stars.
I feel it’s as a result of the essence of a rock star is somebody who presents a very genuine and particular person expression of themselves, however in at this time’s cultural atmosphere that authenticity is tougher to search out – or perhaps it’s simply tougher to imagine. So feeling like a rock star may merely imply creating a person fashion and carrying the garments that really feel most such as you. “It’s not about leather-based trousers and a thin tie. It’s about having the liberty to decorate as you would like,” says Nina.
To readers preferring that costume to be extra backstage than entrance man, extra George Martin than George Harrison, I ought to say that the eclectic playlist of Nina’s home specialties (the ‘Get Again’ go well with, the Western, the On a regular basis Velvet) are merely leaping off factors – a shorthand for speaking her visible identification.
Inside purpose, there aren’t many restraints on what you may make – that is bespoke, in spite of everything. “I’m more than pleased to make a morning go well with or a basic enterprise go well with,” she says. Though, curiously, Nina estimates that as many as 95% of her purchasers don’t put on her fits to work. Presumably the 5% contains artist and musician Emma Richardson, who’s planning on carrying her full bespoke go well with on the job – it simply occurs to be on tour with the band Pixies.
However flexibility of bespoke apart, there’s little doubt that Nina’s is a mode with a transparent and robust viewpoint, which inevitably means it gained’t be for everybody. She’s sanguine about such issues: “Discovering a cutter is about discovering somebody you align with. It’s like occurring a date, they could tick all of the containers, however it’s essential have chemistry.”
No matter your take, and for the file I’m an enormous fan, I hope we will agree that the state of bespoke tailoring has at all times been invigorated by the impetus of a contemporary perspective – albeit right here one which’s been honed over practically twenty years within the commerce.
Not that Nina believes she is pioneering one thing new. “I’m unsure whether it is potential to do something totally new now, except you’re a very avant-garde designer. However I’m not a designer, I simply love the craft.”
And it is true, Nina Penlington Bespoke does evoke a number of the uproarious spirit of 70s trailblazers Nutters of Savile Row. She’s simply turned the quantity down barely, to raised go well with at this time’s viewers.
Manish is @the_daily_mirror on Instagram
Nina Penlington is on Instagram @ninapenlingtonbespoke, and might be contacted at ninapenlington@gmail.com. Her upcoming US trunk present dates embrace New York (September 18-19), Washington DC (20), Nashville (22-23), Los Angeles (25-26) and San Francisco (29-30).
Costs (ex. VAT) from:
- £4500 for full bespoke
- £5500 for Western go well with
- £1995 for offshore bespoke (Offshore is proscribed to basic kinds. Extra particulars to come back in my evaluate article)
Photographs of Nina courtesy of Peter Zottolo. Photograph of Emma courtesy of James Burns.
