The Prince of Wales has paid his first visit to his tailor for 30 years. Since becoming a client in 1982, the Prince has been measured and fitted at Clarence House by Mr. Hitchcock, Anderson & Sheppard’s chief cutter. The Prince likes to see Mr. Hitchcock soon after eight in the morning, “Then it’s not interrupting his day, as it were”. When trying on a half finished suit, he relies on the opinion of his valet as well as his own and that of his tailor.
Just before Christmas, Prince Charles paid a personal visit to Anderson & Sheppard to meet the people who measure, cut, sew and press his suits and to lend his support to the firm’s apprentice scheme. The Prince is also putting his weight behind his own Campaign for Wool, which he launched in 2008 to help struggling sheep farmers and promote the use of woollen products in fashion. Last year, His Royal Highness asked Anderson & Sheppard to source wool from Australia and New Zealand, to be used in the suits he would wear on his forthcoming tour of those countries.
On his visit to Anderson & Sheppard, he wore a double-breasted suit in a light grey and blue glen check, which Mr. Hitchcock recognised as having been made in the 1990s. The Prince always insists on jetted side pockets rather than flaps, to prevent him from putting his hands in his coat pockets. On one of Mr. Hitchcock’s visits to Clarence House, he showed the Prince an end-piece of Balmoral tweed, woven exclusively to make an overcoat for Prince Charles, and was commissioned on the spot to turn it into a coat for the Prince’s Jack Russell.
Not only is the Prince of Wales one of Britain’s best dressed men, but it seems his dog is giving most of the population a run for their money as well.