The London Look

The 60 or so tailoring establishments that cluster in and around London's Savile Row seem as immutably English as crumpets or coronets. And, like many another English institution, from the gentleman's club to the butler, the sartorial capital of the male world has been hard hit by rising costs and sagging incomes. Most of all, perhaps, the market for the classic "bespoke"* men's suits--which can run over $600 apiece--has been crimped by changing tastes and Savile Row tailors' haughty reluctance to acknowledge that, even in men's clothing, fashions do change.

"Finally," says Michael Skinner, young (40), bustling managing director of J. Dege & Sons (est. 1865), "we realized that we had to change our ogre image and our whole concept of marketing. We had to be more forthcoming, with clothes that would sell themselves." The result has been perhaps the greatest turnaround in English tailoring since Beau Brummell first sported trousers instead of breeches. At a spring fashion show--the first in its history--the 200-member Federation of Merchant Tailors presented a new London look called "the Delta line." The collection consists of nearly 40 models for town, country, leisure, travel, the tropics, evening wear, and sports such as shooting, racing and golfing. It demonstrates, says Federation President Robert Bright, "that Savile Row could create a modern line without sacrificing traditional quality."

As its name suggests, the look is fashioned around the triangle, with its base at the shoulders and its apex at the waist. The triangular theme is emphasized by the skillful use of angular seams--accented in some models by piping and also reflected in the lapels and jacket points, even in the buttons. The trousers, in contrasting or complementary colors if the customer wishes, can be flared at the cuff. The double-or single-vented jacket, with its absence of external pockets and flaps, gives the wearer a slim, dashing look that would certainly be approved by Bond but never by M.

Relax and Forget. Instead of settling for the time-honored solid blue or gray business suit, the customer is encouraged to pick from a range of colors and materials that might have appeared subversive a decade or so ago; early returns indicate that lighter colors and dark colors with wide stripes are among the favorites for business suits. In place of the heavy worsteds and woolens that once made the perspiring milord a laughingstock at Mediterranean watering places, the new look employs mostly lightweight (11 oz. to 14 oz.) fabrics, including polyester and cotton blends. Most of the suits can be brightened up or toned down with stylish waistcoats. Customer and tailor are free to interpret the line as they see fit, choosing from a range of some 4,000 fabrics and endless color permutations.

A suit designed for travel has a jacket of RAF blue flannel and trousers of navy blue. The leisure clothes for the

Delta line are designed, in Skinner's words, to make the wearer "relax and forget." A wrapover jacket, with elbow-length sleeves, deep cuffs and blue lapels that match the mohair trousers, has a stylishly picaresque look. Evening suits feature subtle colors and such untraditional designs as a lightweight jacket (a wool-rayon-acrylic blend) made with a chain-effect check of white on black with Delta panels, collar and cuffs. Also the collection brings back the dashing Inverness cape in lightweight blue wool with a satin lining.

"The idea," says Tailor Skinner, "is that the customer should say, 'My God, what a super suit!' " Adds Bright, a partner of Cordas & Bright: "We think that it could also be called 'the disciplined line.' These days the businessman does not want flamboyance. He wants disciplined elegance; the Delta line offers him that, and we think it suits today's psychology." The fashion may be on its way to the U.S. Savile Row firms that send representatives to the U.S. several times a year report that their American customers are enthusiastic about the new look; so are American visitors to London. TIME'S London Correspondent Roger Beardwood predicts that some U.S. and British ready-to-wear chains may do a "knockoff" (copy) of the Delta line--without using its name.

And what of Savile Row's uncompromisingly traditionalist customers? "Lord Shufflebotham may not like it," says one seer of shears. "But then we don't see much of Lord Shufflebotham these days."

* The term, meaning custom-made, goes back to the 16th century, when a buyer would formally "bespeak" an order for goods.

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