Tina Loder

I was born in London.

My mother was German and my father is English. I am a descendant of King Charles II by his favourite mistress Nell Gwyn.

My interest in making clothes started when I was young. I cut and sewed my way through childhood and in my teens haunted the Kings Road and High Street Ken. It was the era of Ossie Clark, Biba and Zandra Rhodes.

I trained for a career in fashion at the City and Guilds School of Art, Epsom School of Art and Design and finally the Royal College of Art.

I started to make men’s clothes while I was at the RCA. It was the time of the New Romantics and it was ok for men to dress flamboyantly. My collections were successful and sold to Paul Smith, Joseph, Whistles, Bloomingdales and Macys.

The search for manufacturers led me all over the East End. I came across Bengali machinists crammed into dusty rooms of exquisite 18th century panelling. I visited a noisy factory in a wind swept industrial estate. The next day it had vanished and the only sound coming from a crowd of people banging on the recently reinforced and padlocked door. A harassed man with a gloomy factory in Balls Pond road agreed to take on my orders but each piece had to be bundled separately with all the trim before he commenced. One omission would get him on the phone frightening me by refusing to start manufacturing. It was an exciting time but I often arrived at the RCA ashen faced.

Customers started asking me to do one off suit commissions which meant searching for a different sort of maker and this is how I discovered the world of the bespoke tailors. In and around Soho, in top floor workrooms worked scores of mainly Greek Cypriot tailors. They were the independent out-workers for all the best tailor shops in Savile Row. Their workmanship was superb and their expertise and skill unsurpassed. Nearby were cloth merchants selling from mahogany counters in cavernous premises and also trim suppliers in tiny shops packed with thousands of items in the style of an oriental bazaar. The neighbourhood was like a village and I was the new person. I was helped enormously. Tailoring for individual customers took off and I stopped selling wholesale to shops.

During the 20 years that I have been in the tailoring business there have been breaks when Fate has thrown irresistible opportunities across my path. I worked for some years as the women’s wear designer for Arabella Pollen Ltd. It was the time of Princess Diana, shoulder pads and Mrs T. The company grew rapidly and became known for snappy tailoring and bold colour. I took on freelance work designing collections for Jigsaw, Dorothy Perkins, Laura Ashley and Whistles. I enjoyed the swift pace, glorious fabrics and quick turn over of ideas but I missed the courtesy, precision and subtlety of gents bespoke tailoring and most of all working with individual customers.

After a spell in the Mount street workrooms of the venerable tailor Doug Hayward I went back to my tailoring business full time. My customers have been coming back ever since.