Chris Kerr on dressing Tom Hardy for the film ‘Legend’

Chris Kerr on dressing Tom Hardy for the film ‘Legend’

The promotional image for new Kray Twins biopic ‘Legend’, starring Tom Hardy (playing both Ronnie and Reggie), is just about everywhere you look at the moment – posters, magazine covers, online pop ups. So ubiquitous is the advertising that you get a sense of what it must have been like being pursued by the twins themselves.

The best thing I’ve seen so far is a slightly sinister piece of graffiti art in a doorway in Bateman Street, Soho. It’s not a stretch to imagine the actual Krays in a Soho doorway in the ‘60s – which is presumably the effect the graffiti art is aiming to achieve – rather successfully. (more…)

Bond villains & their suits

Bond villains & their suits

Christoph Waltz will play ‘the coolest Bond villain ever’ (according to GQ) in ‘Spectre’ due to hit cinemas on November 6th. You can’t see what he’ll be wearing yet – in the teaser trailer, he’s masked in shadow but in the long tradition of Bond villains, a dinner jacket and possibly even a Nehru jacket are likely to feature somewhere. 

In conversations with Chris recently, it turns out, between his father and himself, they’ve made suits for no fewer than four Bond villains. (more…)

Chris Kerr – A Short History

Chris Kerr – A Short History

Chris Kerr is the oldest bespoke tailor in Soho, now in its 56th year and third generation of Kerr family involvement.

The business was established in 1960 as Len Wilton at 52 Berwick Street, where it remained for 50 years (eventually moving to 31 Berwick Street in 2010). In 1963 a young Eddie Kerr joined as an assistant cutter and by 1970 had been made partner, eventually buying the business outright in 1990.

In the early sixties ‘Mr Eddie’ as he became known by customers began to make bespoke suits for the new pop & fashion scene emerging around Carnaby Street including stars like Matt Monroe, Procol Harem & The Swinging Blue Jeans. (more…)

Style Icon: Jean Gabin

Style Icon: Jean Gabin

What would it take to capture the heart of one of the most famous and beautiful women of the Twentieth century, the actress Marlene Dietrich? Incomparable wealth, or matinee-idol looks? The French actor Jean Gabin had neither, but he did have what tailoring expert Michael Alden has called “nuclear levels of presence”. Like Fred Astaire, who’s clothes seem to exude the charm he’s said to have possessed, so Gabin’s incomparable suits seem to be a manifestation of his charisma. (more…)

There are dinner jackets & dinner jackets …

There are dinner jackets & dinner jackets …

When you order a lounge suit, whether for work or play, or even for a wedding, it’s a relaxing thought that before too long you’ll order another one. Of course you want to get all the details right, but ultimately you can always refine the specification next time around. So it’s relevant that while it seems justifiable to own two dinner jackets, a light-weight one for the summer and a heavy-weight one for the winter, most of us only own one at a time, and rarely replace them. (more…)

Visit Chris Kerr at our Soho shop.

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