The perfect fit

He's best known as a fashion designer to punk and rock stars, so what is Joe Casely-Hayford doing at Gieves & Hawkes, one of the bastions of formal British tailoring? Ryan Borroff went to No.1 Savile Row to find out

Gieves & Hawkes is not a brand often associated with anarchy. Steeped as it is in a history of dressing the British monarchy, military officers and City business types, the arrival of designer Joe Casely-Hayford as creative director in 2005 caused something of a stir. But two years on, the changes he has made to one of the longest residents of Savile Row have been met with widespread critical acclaim from the famously hard-to-please fashion press pack. Justifying his inclusion in its Fashion Power List, The Independent praised his efforts in bringing "traditional English tailoring into the 21st century."

For his part, he admits his background is more nightclub than gentleman's club. "I have been heavily influenced by club culture," explains the softly spoken Casely-Hayford, sitting in the offices above Gieves & Hawkes's flagship store and HQ at No. 1 Savile Row. "But where my style is unusual is in the collision of anarchy and conservatism. I have always been interested in youth culture, but I have been involved in high and low art. This is one of my strengths. I have worked designing for ballet, but also with punk and rock bands."

Gieves & Hawkes, on the other hand, has quietly gone about the business of crafting conservative and oh-so-British suits with very little change. Tradition is tradition, after all. So Casely-Hayford's appointment represented something of a revolution for the firm, albeit a sober one.

"We are in a period where excess is very appealing," he says. "But Gieves & Hawkes is for a very understated consumer. What has happened is that a lot of middle-aged  and older guys have been brought up in a design era and are used to living in a designer world. As they get older they don't want to give that up. We are getting 50- and 60-year-old guys that are just as interested in music, fashion and art as younger people. It is a growing sector.

"Also, we are at a really interesting point in time where a lot of young and fashionable guys want to wear formal clothing. There is a definite move towards men dressing up again. We are in a new period of flamboyance and luxury is very appealing to a lot of people. My role is to make these clothes more acceptable to a wider range of customers."

Casely-Hayford is attempting to do this by making more luxurious products, with a greater attention to detail and a higher level of design input, while remaining understated. It's a difficult brief and something of a tightrope to walk, though he appears confident.

"I could have come in here and turned things upside down, but that wouldn't have been wise," he says. "A lot of the changes I am making are subtle, but quite significant in moving the spirit of Savile Row into the 21st century. The traditional structure of an English suit is really quite heavy, quite rigid, and what I am working towards is to create a much lighter weight of suit that works for [men today]."

Fashion was not an obvious career choice for the young Casely-Hayford, coming as he does from a family with a tradition steeped in law and politics. For a start, he is the grandson and namesake of Ghanaian statesman and leading exponent of Pan-Africanism J. E. Casely Hayford. But he says he knew at a relatively young age he wasn't destined to follow the conservative route laid out for him.

"As a kid, I was aware very early on that I wasn't an academic. I was always interested in visual identity; in the various social tribes in the 1960s and 1970s-such as Sloane rangers and skinheads-and the way people were prepared to wear certain uniforms to make a particular kind of expression. I guess I felt to a certain extent like an outsider and I felt I wanted to create my own style as an individual. When I was 15 years old, I made my own clothes by adapting second-hand clothes and reworking them."

His formal career began by training at the traditional Tailor and Cutter Academy, before working for tailor Dougie Hayward. After attending Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where he studied History of Art, Casely-Hayford made his catwalk debut at London Fashion Week in 1986. By the turn of the 1990s, he had earned a strong reputation for creating contemporary classics with a signature style of finely crafted original, yet wearable, clothes for both
men and women.

Inspired by contemporary designers such as Scottish fashion legend Bill Gibb and the fusion between music and fashion that blossomed in the late 1960s—he cites his musical influences as jazz, reggae and prog rock—Casely-Hayford set out on a path that would ultimately see him dress a wealth of rock stars, including Lou Reed, The Clash, Robbie Williams, Liam Gallagher and U2, as well as designing for film, theatre and the ballet. His work was so popular that he was the first designer to collaborate with Top Shop, launching a sell-out line in 1993.

But it is a rare ability to fuse tradition and craftsmanship (not to mention technical know-how) with contemporary style that explains his move to Gieves & Hawkes. Not many trained tailors can keep up with the speed of fashion, while most fashion designers lack the technical ability to cut the mustard at a traditional bespoke tailors. In Casely-Hayford, Gieves & Hawkes managed to find a creative head that would appear to be the perfect fit.

"Tailoring and designing are two completely different disciplines," explains Casely-Hayford. "A lot of the time you find tailors who are incredibly technical but who lack creativity. Their clothing doesn't really have the flamboyance or the sex appeal. On the other side of the coin, an incredibly creative designer without the technical skills cannot always express themselves in arriving at the perfect cut, the perfect shoulder, the perfect waist shaping. You need to be able to understand the two disciplines and bring together the finer points. Only then are you are able to push the technical elements of design."

But rather than start from scratch, Casely-Hayford is currently working at reviving some forgotten tailoring touches. "I am interested in reintroducing forgotten details, such as the idea of having more volume in the construction in tailoring," he says. "A lot of the suits on the high street, even bespoke suits, are quite flat in their construction. What a lot of people forget, is that in order to remain classical you have to progress. The suits we are making here now are simultaneously voluminous and light."

According to Casely-Hayford, he is designing clothes for a man who travels frequently and therefore requires outfits that are trans-seasonal. This means that suits increasingly need to fulfil a new set of requirements.

"We will have a much more rounded appearance to our suits, which is traditionally linked to hand construction. It is a quiet detail, but gradually people will pick up on it. Gieves & Hawkes has very quiet sartorial notes, such as the slightest sleeve head or hand-stitched button and that is all the statement you need to make."

No doubt because of this technical knowledge, Casely-Hayford loves to get very involved in the development of new fabrics. "We visit the mills. What's great about it is that a lot of the things we are doing involve celebrating the past, working with British mills like Edwin Woodhouse, whose methods are the same as they were 100 years ago. We are going into their archives and redefining some of their archive fabrics. We are redesigning them so that they look the same but the fabrics are much, much lighter.

"Traditionally heavier fabrics have tended to be stiffer. But today, new fabrics can be stiff as well as light," explains Casely-Hayford. "They straighten the back rather than hang on the body. This very much draws on the brand's military heritage—the idea of straightening the back. A lot of men want to buy into bespoke clothing because of the restriction, which is the antithesis of casual wear, that tends to be unconstructed and floppy. Men like the formality and the rigidity that changes their posture; it's a sexier and more masculine approach. We are also taking on an increasing emphasis on the fusion between technology and craftsmanship."

So how did he find the culture shock of coming to work in-house after having his own label? "There are enormous constraints," says Casely-Hayford. "The weight of the heritage of Gieves & Hawkes is always there but it is also a huge advantage. I believe that to create with limitations has always been a very positive way of developing new ideas. I feel very comfortable here. The brand has a very traditional customer base. If I am doing my job correctly I should attract new, younger customers into the brand [but] not alienate existing customers. That has to be reflected in the way the clothes are designed."

According to Casely-Hayford, suit connoisseurs appreciate the subtle touch, rather than making a huge fashion statement in something that will date very quickly. But nevertheless, Casely-Hayford is keen to bring his signature blend of sartorial elegance, anarchy and 21st century British taste and style to the party.

"A brand like Gieves & Hawkes should not really be touched by design. Although I am introducing new elements into the collection, they are always done with a view to transcend fashion. It needs to be approached with a great deal of sensitivity."