Tailor & Cutter Magazine - A time when Tailoring had it's own Journal
It seems that, in todays world, everything is going digital. It’s something that I suppose has been happening since the internet became fast (and widespread) enough to accommodate pictorial and video content. We’ve had magazines, and newspapers all abandon the newsagents in favour of the parallel world of the internet. Costs are lower in this world, as such, tangibility seems to be an endangered species (though vinyl does seem to be bucking this trend).
Alas, falling demand on the magazines shelves isn’t a new thing. For over a 100 years the tailoring world had its own dedicated trade magazine in the Tailor & Cutter. First published in 1866 it delivered News from the Tailoring world, pictures of Tailors’ latest creations, articles on cutting and making and business to business advertisements from cloth merchants, trimmings manufactures, chalk makers and every other company relevant to the Tailor (& cutter for that matter). At Robinsons we have a nice collection of a couple of hundred of them dating from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. And it's from this very month (January for the people reading in the future) that we look back at a copy from 1968
The January 5, 1968 Copy featuring an advert from Lear, Browne & Dunsford. Now Part of the Harrisons of Edinburgh group.
A couple of examples of the garments being featured in this issue. A mixture of contemporary and experimental examples.
Will the necktie survive? Tune in to next weeks issue to keep pace of latest developments
The coat drafting process: direct measurements vs proportional measurements. Who wins? There's only one way to find out....... FIGHT!!!
It was in the early 1970s the pillars of supply & demand invariably became unsustainable and the magazine folded. In the world of the Tailor the magazine has never really been replaced. Copies of the magazine are highly sought after these days as they are very hard to come across. Think of how many of these weekly magazines were simply discarded back in the day - very much like the daily paper. Indeed, when we (re)attained our copies Pete, the patriarch of the family business, who turns 70 this year (I note his age purely for illustrative purposes to add depth and context. For this justification he won’t mind me mentioning this fact), noted “We used to have loads of them…… Yeah, we binned them…. THEY’RE WORTH HOW MUCH!!!!!???????”