Why Anderson & Sheppard Is the Favorite Tailor of Celebrities and Royals

One of the most exclusive clubs in London doesn’t have a joining fee, a vetting process or a membership that’s limited to aristocrats, powerful politicians or members of the establishment.

It doesn’t even have a bar or a dining room, but when members — who range from King Charles and Bryan Ferry to Grace Wales Bonner, Giles Deacon and the stylist George Cortina — visit, they can always have a cup of tea, a snifter of whisky, and get high on color, texture and the beauty of watching their bespoke coats, suits, blazers and trousers come to life.

What unites the society of Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard is style, an obsession with cut and cloth, and the chance to work closely with the in-house tailors on looks for day, evening — and even bedtime.

Clients love the attention and the regular exchanges they have with Audie Charles, the creative director who’s based at Anderson & Sheppard’s Haberdashery on Clifford Street, which stocks men’s ready-to-wear and accessories.

They also treasure their time with Danny Hall, head cutter and master tailor at the bespoke shop on nearby Old Burlington Street, a few steps from Savile Row. Hall and his team of cutters typically take 27 measurements, and add notations about posture, and physical asymmetries. Everything is done by hand.

Ahead of his official visit to Australia and Samoa in October, King Charles worked with Anderson & Sheppard to design a white bush jacket with a belt and trim made from cloth created by the Samoan School of Arts.

Clients also live for the follow-up service, and repairs.

The famously parsimonious king, a sustainability advocate, regularly sends his roomy double- and single-breasted styles back for repairs.

Other clients (including many who wore Anderson & Sheppard to the coronation) might go for the “sponge and press service,” a sustainable clean that removes light stains and restores the original shape of the clothing.

Cortina, a client for 30 years who dressed Daniel Craig in a bougainvillea pink Anderson & Sheppard dinner jacket for the “No Time to Die” premiere in 2021, wears his repair scars with pride.

“One of my favorite things about having something made here is that you can see the repairs,” says Cortina, who recalls the time when Hall performed micro-surgery on his beloved dinner jacket.

“The jacket is 20 years old, and made from silk velvet, which you can’t find anymore [for menswear]. The pocket had a tear in it, and Danny just mended it so it was like a small scar” on the seam, says Cortina.

He also treasures the discreetly mismatched gold buttons on his Anderson & Sheppard blazers and peacoats. “They’re all different shades of brass because they’re 200 years old, and the reason they’re slightly different colors is because people used to polish their buttons differently,” he says.

Given Anderson & Sheppard’s level of care — and detail — it’s no wonder that many fashion designers love working with them personally, and professionally.

Wales Bonner describes them as “the best tailors on Savile Row. The work they produce is beautiful and timeless — qualities I also aspire to with design.”

For years, the designer has worked with Anderson & Sheppard on tailored pieces for men and women ranging from slim, fluid dinner jackets to oversize coats and blazers with turn-back cuffs.

She collaborated with them for her fall 2021 collection, the final part of a triptych exploring Black Caribbean culture, and for her debut at the menswear trade show Pitti Uomo in 2022. She’s working with Anderson & Sheppard on her winter 2025 collection, which she’ll show in Paris during men’s fashion week in January.

Wales Bonner says she loves interacting with the young tailors and cutters, and learning about their codes and traditions. “I am always inspired by their formality and precision, but I also love that they’re flexible. They allow me to be disruptive and break the rules in the way I approach fabric, detailing and silhouette,” she says.

London-based couture and rtw designer Giles Deacon, who had a chocolate brown double-breasted corduroy suit made by the tailor a few years ago, says the magic of Anderson & Sheppard is that they are “English in their roots, but international in their appeal. The tailors are thoughtful and able to bring a client’s ideas to life.”

Deacon has even begun working with Anderson & Sheppard professionally, using his Aperigon zigzag stripe bag as inspiration for the tailor’s Gallery tote bag. The collaboration came about after Anda Rowland, Anderson & Sheppard’s longtime director, spotted a mutual friend carrying Deacon’s Aperigon bag in Greece.  

Rowland is the soul of Anderson & Sheppard, which her father, the buccaneer tycoon Roland “Tiny” Rowland, purchased in the late 1970s.

She paid her first visit there when she was 6 years old. At the time, it was still a traditional Savile Row tailor with arty clients that included Fred Astaire, Rudolf Valentino, Cole Porter, Cecil Beaton, Duke Ellington, Irving Penn and Raymond Chandler.

Founded in 1906, it had also dressed women including Marlene Dietrich and Elsa Schiaparelli, while in later years, it would attract creatives such as Ferry, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.

Perhaps the most famous client of Anderson & Sheppard was men’s style icon Edward, Prince of Wales, later the Duke of Windsor. It was Edward who popularized the Anderson & Sheppard house cut: high-waisted, pleated trousers with a softer shoulder and less stiffness in the jacket compared to others on the Row.

Generations of designers have taken their cues from the tailor. Alexander McQueen trained there when he was 16, helping sew pieces for Prince Charles, learning the house cut and how to sculpt suits, coats and trousers around different bodies. 

Rowland took over the day-to-day operations in 2004 after quitting her job at Parfums Christian Dior in Paris. She turned Anderson & Sheppard into a profitable, 21st-century luxury goods operation.

With help from the Paris-based design agency Love, Rowland refurbished the Old Burlington Street tailor shop, giving it an old-world, clubby feel, with dark parquet floors, molded ceilings, sketches of hounds hanging on the walls, and a marble fireplace.

In 2012 she opened the Haberdashery, which was also designed by Love and has a homier feel. It offers rtw, outerwear, accessories and 12 styles of rtw and made-to-measure trousers developed by the Anderson & Sheppard Bespoke cutting team.

In an interview over a cup of tea on the Haberdashery sofa, Rowland says she believes Anderson & Sheppard is successful not only because of its tailors and its service, but also because it practices “old-school” retail.

“We have a really strong relationship with a customer,” says Rowland, adding that she and the team are constantly tuning in to what clients want — and learning from them.

“It really helps to be on the ground with some of the world’s most stylish men, to see what they’re wearing. I think that’s our strength,” says Rowland, an industry stalwart who for years was the only female principal on Savile Row.

“Now we’re seeing the children and grandchildren of customers reinventing ways of wearing these clothes, and we take inspiration from them,” she adds.

Rowland also argues that Anderson & Sheppard isn’t “stuck with any age group. In the Haberdashery we see people who are younger, and who we hope will be our customers in the future” coming in to buy a neckerchief, a cashmere sweater, or a pair of socks.

Anderson & Sheppard also makes fantasy, and fun, a priority, making outfits for royal tours, seaside weddings in Sicily, ringside seats at pro boxing matches, and nights at the Hemingway Bar in Paris.

“These clothes are made to go out and have a really good time,” says Rowland. “That’s why we have no real archive. When something does come back to us — like a dinner jacket worn by Laurence Olivier — it’s often battered and torn or slightly brown because it’s so old and it’s been worn so often. ‘Fun’ isn’t pristine — it doesn’t come back into the archive.”

Cortina is one man who knows how to have fun, Anderson & Sheppard style. He was the man who offered Craig the pink tuxedo option, and personally likes to dress in unconventional looks from the tailor.

Cortina swears he’s the only person that Colin Field, former head of the Hemingway Bar at The Ritz hotel in Paris, would allow there in pajamas.  

“Often, I would already be in bed and my friends would call and say ‘come down’ — and I wouldn’t bother changing,” says Cortina, who loves his custom-made Anderson & Sheppard pajamas so much that he’s designed a capsule with the tailor.

Cortina’s pajamas are made from Italian organic cotton with turn-back cuffs, and have been dyed and piped to his specifications in a rainbow of colors including blue, mint and orchid pink. They might just become the unofficial uniform of this stylish Savile Row club.