COVID_19 has afeected all, and Savile Row maybe moreso than most has encountered the brunt of the pnademic face-on.
“Things were already starting to unravel before Brexit,” said Ozwald Boateng, one of a handful of “new bespoke movement” tailors who opened shops in the 1990s and early 2000s. “All of that international traffic that was coming through London, well, it’s going somewhere else now.”
This system, up and running since September, wouldn’t work without a pair of living, trained hands on the client. As robots go, Huntsman’s is primitive — essentially a camera and intercom on wheels. It doesn’t have arms, let alone the fingertips to find an inseam. The point of the gizmo isn’t to eliminate the need for the human touch. It’s to eliminate the need for Mr. Carnera to travel, which, because of the pandemic, he can’t.
This grounding is a fiasco for Savile Row tailors. They typically spend nearly as much time flying around the world, fitting clients, as they do cutting and sewing. For many houses, 70 percent of revenue comes from these overseas trunk shows. With tailors stuck in their shops, and London tourism in free-fall, the most famous men’s clothing street in the world is gasping for life.
“Our company lived through the Boer War, World War I, the Depression, World War II, recessions,” said Simon Cundey, the managing director of Henry Poole & Co., which traces its roots to 1819. “But through all of these crises, we could visit our customers and they could visit us. This is a tragedy on a different scale.”