Where the design process really sets itself apart is with its
relationship with Anderson & Sheppard’s bespoke cutting room.
“We don’t do the design in a traditional way,” says Rowland. “‘I
went off to Bhutan and I saw this amazing… whatever, and was
inspired’ – we don’t do that, because that’s not really how men
shop. Guys coming here are not looking for that. We do things that
we think fit well into our customer’s lifestyle.” Every tailored
garment begins life as a pattern cut by the bespoke cutting team,
before being graded and then passed on to the specialist workshops,
which has allowed Anderson & Sheppard to retain its unique
shapes and silhouettes when moving to larger-scale production.
Trousers were the initial focus, but the range now encompasses
everything from outerwear to loungewear to swimwear, and everything
in between. Although all of its clothing is strikingly of a piece,
many of the garments were developed initially to help customers
find the things their wardrobe was missing. For Rowland, the trick
to developing them was, once again, to listen. “We don’t have the
same problem as a lot of big brands in that there’s no separation
between the workroom and the shop floor,” she says of the design
relationship. “In a lot of places the communication comes down to
the shop floor but it’s not so easy for the shop floor, who is
actually talking to the customer to say, well this worked, or that
didn’t work, or we need these things. Here it’s a constant
dialogue.”
It’s a process best exemplified by the brand’s relationship with
someone who knew a thing or two about dialogue - the late,
brilliant author A.A. Gill. One of Anderson & Sheppard’s most
stalwart – and demanding – devotees, Gill was involved with “pretty
much everything”, product-wise says Rowland. “That work jacket, we
really went backwards and forwards with him on.” Charlies
continues: “It was great, because he would wear things, like the
travel jacket, for a week and then take it off and say, 'this
works, that doesn’t work, this pocket is too high' and so on. So it
was great to have someone bash it around.” Gill had a unique
ability to rethink or re-contextualise the pieces they created,
says Charles, recalling a particularly memorable deployment of the
linen pyjamas. “Adrian took them to Rome and wore them in Rome for
a weekend with a T-shirt with the pyjama top open when it was
boiling hot. Everyone kept saying, ‘Oh that’s a great jacket, where
did you get it?’ He just came to things from a different angle.
Sometimes you would agree with him, and sometimes he was just
difficult for the sake of being difficult. But he was such an
original mind, and brave about how he put things together or what
he could do with things.” Several more pieces inspired by his ideas
are in development, though Rowland says they’re not ready to talk
about them just yet.
The work jacket that they developed with Gill has been one of
the range’s greatest success stories. Like most of the products,
it’s not strictly seasonal, instead having been designed for a
purpose, in this case providing an easy-wearing yet elegant weekend
layer. “That will be on a nineteen-year-old or a guy in his
seventies,” says Rowland, “as a jean jacket alternative, as a
lightweight travel jacket, even as a boating jacket with a pair of
shorts. It fits into a lot of different activities depending on how
you style it.” The travel jacket – a robust, thirteen-pocket take
on a field jacket that still carries the brand’s easy-wearing
handwriting – is another success story. “I think particularly
what’s good about that field jacket is it’s got a really solid
construction. It’s pretty hefty. Our thing is that we know a lot of
guys just don’t like carrying luggage. They’re travelling a lot,
they’ve got a day here or there. With this you can screw it up,
it’s tough enough to do that, and stick it in the overhead locker
and you know that nothing is going to fall out. It’s replacing a
bag essentially.”
As with the rest of the range, from polos, to fine
knits and elegant trousers, there’s a sense
that the jacket has evolved towards some sort of platonically
idealised form of menswear – all frippery and embellishment cut
away to leave a pure and singular construct. “I hate embellishment.
It’s like when you get mint leaves on a plate of strawberries,”
says Charles. “You think, well what’s the mint for? There’s very
little design in it here, and it’s never designed for the sake of
it. Where form and function meet, that’s when something works.”
Anderson & Sheppard's travel jacket is rendered in corduroy for
autumn/winter. Photograph by James Munro.
