Kathryn Sargent never imagined she would quit the firm with the greatest address in men’s tailoring, Gieves & Hawkes at 1 Savile Row, London. “I joined at 21. I was a Gieves girl. I’d have married into the family!” she says. But as the firm began to fall from grace — after a series of business missteps it has fallen into the hands of Mike Ashley, the pile-it-high king of trainers — she decided to go it alone. It was the best move of her life. Savile Row’s first female head cutter has smashed the pinstripe ceiling to become the first female master tailor in Britain, with ateliers in London and Edinburgh and regular trunk shows across the US.
We meet on a grey winter’s
