Thanks to two enterprising brothers from Chennai, tsunami victims in Tamil Nadu have found a livelihood by making Savile Row suits
In a workshop in Mahalingapuram, Chennai, a group of former fisherfolk, people who lost their livelihoods in the tsunami that followed the 2004 South-East Asian earthquake, are using their once-calloused hands for some very precise needlework. They are crafting suits. Not just any suits: These are for the Classic Bespoke line of a Savile Row establishment, Whitcomb and Shaftesbury.
Yes, Savile Row, that so-called golden mile of tailoring in London’s Mayfair, playground of the rich, meeting place of the powerful, where the air is thick with wealth and the purring hum of gleaming black Daimlers is broken only by the clip of doors being opened, as wealthy passengers exit into the shops of Piccadilly and the softly lit interiors of private members clubs. Like those clubs, the tailors’ shops of Savile Row have deep leather armchairs and mahogany-panelled walls. These shops are portals of luxury, part of an alternate universe inhabited only by the wealthy and privileged. A bespoke Savile Row suit is considered the pinnacle of men’s luxury.
Against this, suits made in India tend not to be associated with luxury, but with mass production and even sweatshop labour. Nevertheless, here they are, these former seafarers, and the suits they’re making will be sold on the Row. Remarkable, some would say. How did this happen?
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Whitcomb and Shaftesbury isn’t your typical bespoke suit tailor. For one, there aren’t—and never were— any Mr Whitcombs or Mr Shaftesburys around. The founders are Suresh and Mahesh Ramakrishnan, brothers, two of a set of triplets, born in a city then called Madras. Like many smart young Indians of the time, the early ’90s found them working abroad, in New York: Suresh, a Wharton MBA, worked as a Goldman Sachs investment analyst; Mahesh as a systems consultant with Sapient Corp. The standard Indian dream.
But then, a decade ago, they gave all that up, to follow a new dream. They founded a small, traditional tailoring service in London, and named it after two roads that intersect in Mayfair.
For many, though, ‘bespoke’ is just a word. A glut of e-commerce sites use the Savile Row name to sell machine-made, ready-to-wear or custom-made suits for a few hundred pounds.