PATRICK GRANT'S E. TAUTZ ARCHIVE
Currently one of the most exciting brands in
British menswear, E. Tautz is a very welcome
new addition to oki-ni for
spring/summer ‘11.
To mark this occasion, we were invited by
the brand’s creative director, Patrick
Grant, to spend the afternoon in his Savile
Row studio, so that he could talk us
through a collection of historic clothing,
with itemsfrom both the E. Tautz
archive and his personal wardrobe,
which has directly inspired this
season’s E. Tautz output.
Use the navigation arrows on the right and the left of this page to begin the tour of Patrick’s archive.
Introducing E. Tautz
With the current heritage trend booming in men's fashion, it is important to note that heritage and tradition alone are not an instant recipe for success.
Pre 2005, E. Tautz was a name that even some Savile Row connoisseurs might struggle to recall. Part of the larger Norton & Sons, E. Tautz was typical of many Savile Row tailors: rich in history, tradition and craftsmanship, but largely anonymous outside of the closeted and exclusive world of The Row.
Founded in 1867, E. Tautz initially made its name as a military and sporting britches maker and spent the following century and a half honing the art of tailoring, accumulating both knowledge and an enviable client list that included the great and the good - from Winston Churchill to Cary Grant. Yet nearly one hundred and fifty years after its creation, E. Tautz had the appearance of a label whose best days lay behind it.
Enter another Grant - this time Oxford graduate, Patrick – who, in 2005, purchased Norton & Sons with the intention of giving the old British archetype a shot in the arm. Five years after his takeover, and E. Tautz, effectively rebranded as the ready-to-wear arm of Norton & Sons, is one of the most exciting brands in British menswear, with accolades, plaudits and admirers growing by the day.
The origin of this success is Patrick Grant. A man so obviously in love with the craft of British tailoring, he holds true to certain principles: that a gentleman should take pride in his appearance, dress to the occasion, and build a wardrobe of quality items that will stay with him for life. With this code guiding him and the E. Tautz archive at his disposal, Grant has revived E. Tautz as a label that references the past without being stranded there.
Heritage is all well and good. More vital, however, is the desire to explore that heritage, engage with it, and produce something that is an updated and refined version of an idea first sketched out years ago.
Sportswear
Heritage
In the late 1800s sportswear was not a dirty word. Then, gentlemen who rode, shot and hunted did so in tailored outfits, and if those particular gentlemen were connoisseurs those outfits may well have been made by E. Tautz.
Today, sportswear references from the early days of E. Tautz feed back into the collection. With an enthusiast’s hunger for detail, Patrick has assimilated details from a 1900s riding jacket, 1920s tennis trousers, and a 1950s blazer, and used them as a jumping-off point for a modern re-examination of traditional British sporting clothing.
1907 Riding Jacket
It seems apt to begin with the oldest piece in Patrick’s collection. The tailor’s label in this jacket is dated the 27th of November 1907, confirming this jacket’s antique status at one hundred and three years old. But while some would want to hurriedly place this piece in a museum under glass, Patrick thumbs it carefully, looking upon its age as a challenge to create new Tautz pieces that will outlast their forbears.
‘The inside of the jacket is a little bit worn’, he notes, ‘but otherwise it’s in really good nick considering the age. (It’s because) we make clothes to last. We make clothes out of the best materials that we can find because we want them to last 104 years and we want people to still be wearing them decades from now - as part of a wardrobe that you build’.
This jacket is testament to the fact that longevity is woven into the fabric of E. Tautz clothing, not just traditionally but also going forward. When you buy an E. Tautz piece you know that, barring misfortune or mischief, you have that piece for life.
Cashmere Cords
Within the field of sportswear, E. Tautz first established their reputation as a britches maker, creating sporting trousers for men at play.
These 1920s cashmere corduroy britches were a sporting trouser favoured by one of Tautz’s more famous patrons - Winston Churchill.
‘In his early orders you've got “white cashmere racing breeches” and other interesting pieces. He was a young slim guy when he was a Tautz customer; we made his racing silks and his polo outfits'.
‘The handle on these is just amazing considering how old it is, and we’ve put quite a lot of corduroy into the winter collection'.
Gieves & Hawkes Blazer
Age and famous patrons are, however, not everything. This Gieves & Hawkes blazer from 1964 is unremarkable in terms of material and history. It does, however, exemplify the style of tailoring that Patrick is now trying to produce.
‘It’s very much about a soft comfortable sporting jacket. The unstructured linen double-breasted jackets that we do are all about being worn in a casual way; we’re trying to put tailored pieces into people’s wardrobes, but not in a stiff formal way. We want them so that you can wear them with a pair of jeans rolled up, or a pair of chinos, or whatever else it might be’.
This formal, yet relaxed, style was epitomised by one man, the fantastically named Anthony Drexel Biddle - winner of the inaugural America’s Best Dressed Man title in the 1950s.
‘There was a way that he wore his clothes’, says Patrick with a wry smile. ‘There’s a great photo of him leaving the tennis court with a classic pair of oxford brogues; a deep turn-up, but soft; and a soft double breasted jacket that he wore with just the bottom buttons done up – that’s just a very cool way of wearing tailoring’.
Military
Heritage
‘Serious sport is war minus the shooting' - George Orwell.
It comes as no surprise then, that the other main area of E. Tautz and Savile Row heritage is military uniform. England expects great tailoring, and E. Tautz provided the uniform for military men both on and off duty - from the pomp and circumstance of late 1800s right up to the daring aviators of the 1950s.
Naval Great Coat
An iconic military piece, the aptly named Naval Great Coat is laden with authentic details. Yet, it was also the shape of this 1949 coat that caught Patrick’s imagination.
‘There’s all sorts of fantastic stuff in this this coat: this long pleat that goes all the way through, the vent in the bottom concealed within the pleat, and the gap there for your sword. But it just has the most incredible shape, and we used this shape for our winter coats’.
Yet the coat is only half the story. Being military uniform, it was accompanied by matching trousers, and these particular trousers, as well as having military heritage, have also been reimagined in the current E. Tautz collection, as Patrick explains:
‘Until about the turn of the 19th century officers in British regiments wore britches with long boots. Then the Russians introduced the idea of wearing long trousers over the boots, which were buttoned underneath. Tautz made these for everyone from Winston Churchill to the King of Spain, and that’s where our slim trouser comes from. Obviously we don’t cut them Simon Cowell style right up to the chest, but that is where trousers used to be worn’.
Colonel Chuck Yeager's Harrington Jacket
A world apart from the ceremonial dress of the Great Coat but cut from the same cloth, so to speak, the next piece in Patrick’s collection was made for the off-duty military man, and one record-breaking off-duty military man in particular.
‘The idea of the tweed Harrington came from a piece we made at Norton & Sons about twenty odd years ago for Colonel Chuck Yeager, who was the guy who first broke the speed of sound in an aircraft. He was a Norton & Sons customer and he had us devise this jacket’.
It was Chuck Yeager’s Harrington and its remarkable heritage that led Patrick to produce an updated version of this tweed Harrington for the E. Tautz spring/summer ’11 collection.
British Overcoat with Tautz Lapel
E. Tautz is not only tied to the history of sporting and military clothing but also to the history of Savile Row. One tailoring feature that jumps out and demands to be including in any modern E. Tautz collection is the eponymous Tautz lapel.
‘When you come to Savile Row’, say Patrick ‘you can buy a single breasted lapel, a peak lapel or a Tautz lapel. Most double breasted lapels are very sharply rakes, whereas the Tautz has a very horizontal cut to it and a rounded tip’.
Seen on this classic British overcoat from Patrick’s collection, the Tautz lapel had and has its admirers. ‘It was very famous and people like Cary Grant sported the Tautz, so that’s very key to us and if you look at the unstructured linen double-breasted jackets from this season, the lapel shape is very much the Tautz lapel shape’.
US Naval Peacoat
As rich as the E. Tautz heritage and tradition is, Patrick has not myopically restricted his influences to vintage E. Tautz items, nor has he tied his hands by slavishly fabricating historical reproductions; more important is fit, finish and overall feel, not the weight of tradition.
For example, this US Naval Peacoat from Patrick’s personal collection is not particularly old or particularly significant, in term of history. What is does have, however, is first-rate fine detail and excellent proportions, as Patrick explains.
‘The collar on it is fantastic. It’s a really easy piece to wear; the proportions are just right. We’ve done these for fall in a number of colours’.
Knitwear Heritage
Moving past sporting and military tradition, knitwear is an area where production is key. Yarn selection and knitting technique are the main factors to consider, and a recurring theme with both is a lament that things ain’t what they used to be.
This cardigan, for example, may seem simple, but the devil is in the details, as Patrick notes.
‘I showed it to a friend who works in the knitwear industry and he reckoned it must be fifty-plus years old, but the quality of the knit is unbelievable and it’s almost impossible to get this quality of knit these days. We buy our yarn from a spinner up in Kinross and they still spin their yarn using older kit than most people. Most other people have moved onto much more modern, faster machinery, which spins the yarn in a different way and you don’t get that same handle to it’.
The cardigan is incredibly soft and it is this quality and feel that Patrick seeks to re-create with E. Tautz knitwear.
Lawrence Smith Marl Knit
The inclusion of this piece in Patrick’s archive reiterates - as if repeating a knitting pattern - that with knitwear, texture and material are all important. This Lawrence Smith marl knit, produced in the Shetland Islands, is an ordinary design made extraordinary by material choice. Patrick notes how this is a trait typical of new and old E. Tautz pieces.
‘The clothes are very simple, we just focus on cutting nicely, making them as well as we can and on choosing nice materials. We used this jumper as a reference for some of the jumpers in the winter collection just gone, because of the interesting marls. We work very hard with Corgi who make our knitwear. It’s a small business and they have about eight ladies who knit the jumpers in a tiny factory at the far end of the M4. But they’re making for Thom Browne and Balenciaga as well as us’.
Harris Yarn Aran Knit
Knitwear within Patrick’s collection is not without its historical and cultural significance, however, as the macabre story of this Harris yarn Aran knit reveals.
‘Different villages and ports would all have a different knit pattern, so if a sailor or fisherman got washed overboard and ended up on a beach, they’d know from his jumper which village he came from’.
The practice may now have ended, but so to, it seems, has the quality knit manufacturing that has produced such excellent knitwear.
‘This is an amazing Harris yarn, kind of rough, but it’s entirely hand knitted. We still make some of our knitwear pieces by hand on the needle. Most of them are made on a small hand machine where they do proper hand cabling. The oki-ni exclusive knits are all done on a small hand machine, which gives them all a totally different handle. Most knitwear is knitted on a 6 or 12 bed machine that is 15 to 20 meters long and it’s a machine that knits very rapidly. These knit slower at a lower tension and the knit has a different handle to it. It’s a much more expensive way of knitting a jumper but because of that, and the Duncan yarn we use, pieces will last longer and feel better’.
Public School Heritage
The third major influence on the re-vamped E. Tautz is the British public school tradition. An alumnus of Edinburgh Academy, Patrick has drawn on the scarfs, ties, and school colours of his youth for the current collection, along with a playful, schoolboy approach to colour and design details.
This George Heriots School scarf from Patrick’s collection is typical of this. ‘It’s not the school I went to’, he notes, ‘but I always thought their scarf was really cool so we did this scarf, plus the Royal High School scarf, for autumn/winter ‘10’.
The other essential public school accessory is the tie. E. Tautz ties for this season are slim, designed to be worn with a very small knot sitting high in the collar, and their inspiration comes from this tie from Patrick’s archive.
‘I buy lots of old ties and this is fairly representative of those. This tie is completely unlined so it ties a really tiny knot. Our ties won’t tie such a small knot and we’ve done the Tautz fox logo tie based on this kind of old British school and club tie’.
Rugby School Sports Jersey
From such an expansive and impressive collection you might think it would be hard to choose a favourite. Not so. This seemingly tatty sports jersey is, by a nose, Patrick's favourite, and as such it has been directly referenced in the current collection.
‘This is an old Rugby School rugby jersey from, we think, about 1910. What the boys used to do is sew on, by hand, these badges to show what house they were in. There’s a great photograph from Winchester school that we’ve got, with the whole of the Winchester first fifteen, and they’ve got 6 or 7 badges from different houses all lined up together’.
It is this public school tradition that is mirrored in the spring/summer ’11 fox jumpers. The fox itself, an E. Tautz stalwart, also has considerable heritage and has been with the brand from the beginning.
‘The fox obviously comes from the Tautz monogram and if you look back at the old adverts, from around 1874, you see the monogram with the fox and the intertwined spurs and whip. But the actual fox itself predates that. We started, as you now know, as a hunting britches maker, and the fox was part of that identity from the start. I think the first advert was all text but the first time there was any sort of illustration in the advert it was the fox running. He went through various different permutations because he was always hand drawn - sometimes his nose looked a bit wonky, sometimes his tail was half chewed off, but he was always there’.
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