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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 be taught some tailoring expertise and transfer into designing menswear. After about six weeks I realised that ain’t occurring. Not everybody will be Lee McQueen.”
That was 18 years in the past, and since then Nina has gone on to chop for 3 very totally different, long-established homes of the Row: Dege & Skinner, Gieves & Hawkes and, most not too long ago, Edward Sexton – working below Edward himself till he handed in 2023.
In 2024, Nina took some go away for well being causes. “It gave me some head area, and I began to sketch a few of the designs that I’ve been enthusiastic about for years. My drawings are a bit shit, however they received 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 set house-style, I believe it’s honest to say there’s a sturdy 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 retailers and getting a pint of milk and a scratch card in your manner residence from an evening out. (Nina has beforehand made tailoring for Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, so there’s most likely extra reality to that description than I realise.)
Underpinning all of it is a way of enjoyable combined with considerate intention. “Garments aren’t one thing to take too significantly. However making garments is one thing I definitely take significantly,” she says. Each aspects 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 material by Smith Woollens, topped with a xeroxed picture of Bryan Ferry.
The model is pretty typical of what one can count on from Nina: padded shoulder, reasonably extensive lapel, excessive armhole and a better, suppressed waistline. Nina affords a full bespoke service requiring a minimal of three fittings alongside a less expensive offshore programme the place a go well with is lower by her, however basted and completed offshore after one becoming. 
Considered 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, traditional 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 sneakers 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 evaluation 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 types; they’re untethered from what had come earlier than. I’m fascinated by that inventive freedom, and I really feel like I’m now in a spot the place I get to make the garments I get pleasure from.”
She catches herself, buries her face in her fingers and unexpectedly provides: “Not that I’m evaluating myself to The Beatles!”
Nina expands on what that freedom means for her purchasers: “At a giant 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 area to consider every particular person and their model 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 would possibly 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 thing is completed in session with the shopper. “There’s no level in the event you gained’t put on it. And I really need folks to put on their great things – life’s too brief. However I do have extra confidence telling you what I like, which is a part of what I believe individuals are paying a cutter for.”
And taking cues from the material is how Nina likes to work. It’s the rationale she’s curating a bunch of her favorite materials together with solutions on the types she thinks they complement finest; this may then be introduced to a brand new buyer, which I believe is a good way of introducing them to the model’s world.
“Typically a material dictates to me what it ought to turn out to be as a go well with”, she says. A primary 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 material that had the correct weight and robustness for what she envisioned.
And now the Western go well with she affords is stuffed with technical and hand-finished components that decision upon her previous reducing experiences. Consequently, this model is simply obtainable by means of the complete bespoke programme.
The pockets are curved ‘smile pockets’, completed at every nook with arrowheads which are 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 method 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 an analogous operate rather than darts. All of the yokes are felled and high stitched by hand.
These particulars and methods have been refined over time. “My model is wildly totally different to Davide [Taub, head cutter at Gieves & Hawkes], however I discovered quite a bit from him in the best way he would take a look at one ingredient 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 material 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 material 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 model is predicated on a classic velvet go well with Nina had as an adolescent. “Rising up in north Wales within the 90s, I wore loads of classic stuff and received the piss taken out of me quite a bit as a result of classic wasn’t cool the best way it’s now. However I adored that go well with, it will definitely fell aside and I’ve by no means been in a position to change it till now.”
Nina describes the jacket as “informal nation” with huge patch pockets, swelled edges and most strikingly a notch lapel. “Lots of clients count on it to have a peak lapel, however I’m slowly pulling them over to the darkish aspect.” One other delicate subversion of the normal 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 unique proprietor.
“I believe you purchase classic for the lifetime of a garment. And if you put on it you get imbued with its historical past which influences how you are feeling in it. I not too long ago purchased a ridiculous shearling coat in San Francisco, and each time I put it on I believe: who was the groupie that wore this?”
So how does she need the wearers of her tailoring to really feel? “I would like an odd man to really feel like a rock star,” she says. It’s a declaration that resonates, in a summer season the place the triumphant return of Oasis and the passing of Ozzy Osbourne have gotten me enthusiastic about why so many individuals appear to be craving for old style rock stars.
I believe it’s as a result of the essence of a rock star is somebody who presents a really genuine and particular person expression of themselves, however in as we speak’s cultural surroundings that authenticity is tougher to search out – or perhaps it’s simply tougher to imagine. So feeling like a rock star would possibly merely imply growing a person model 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 want,” says Nina.
To readers preferring that gown 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 cause, there aren’t many restraints on what you can also make – that is bespoke, in any case. “I’m very happy to make a morning go well with or a traditional enterprise go well with,” she says. Though, apparently, 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 question that Nina’s is a method 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 may tick all of the bins, however you have to have chemistry.”
No matter your take, and for the document I’m a giant 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 20 years within the commerce.
Not that Nina believes she is pioneering one thing new. “I’m unsure whether it is potential to do something solely new now, until you’re a extremely avant-garde designer. However I’m not a designer, I simply love the craft.”
And it is true, Nina Penlington Bespoke does evoke a few of the uproarious spirit of 70s trailblazers Nutters of Savile Row. She’s simply turned the amount down barely, to raised go well with as we speak’s viewers.
Manish is @the_daily_mirror on Instagram
Nina Penlington is on Instagram @ninapenlingtonbespoke, and will 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 restricted to traditional types. Extra particulars to return in my evaluation article)
Pictures of Nina courtesy of Peter Zottolo. Photograph of Emma courtesy of James Burns.
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