>Brand Profile
Kilgour is a British luxury brand that specialises in classic bespoke and ready to wear mens tailoring. The company was established in 1923 when T&F, a French bespoke tailor merged with A.H. Kilgour, based on Savile Row. Brothers Fred and Louis Stanbury joined in 1925, a pair of tailors whose elegance of cut and style brought the company’s reputation to Hollywood within a decade. In 1934 Kilgour received a special commission to dress Fred Astaire in the movie Top Hat and the company’s name was later changed to Kilgour, French and Stanbury, reflecting the brothers’ contribution to galvanising the brand’s international reach. The company’s look soon became synonymous with other well-dressed men over the following decades, including Rex Harrison and Cary Grant.
Kilgour, French and Stanbury’s design ethos of modernising the traditional Savile Row style, coupled with its reputation for technical excellence was maintained throughout the 1970s under the company’s first Creative Director, Tommy Nutter. The Kilgour suit continues to embody the tenets of symmetry, minimalism, provenance and proportion that Nutter re-instilled there, making the brand a popular choice for the millennial dresser with prestige clients today including Jude Law and Daniel Craig.
In 2003 Kilgour, French and Stanbury was brought under the ownership of KFS Group Ltd., an international investment company established to develop emerging British luxury brands. The brand became known by its new name, Kilgour, and began to diversify its product range, adding ready to wear collections to its existing bespoke services. New ownership also brought the company under the creative direction of Carlo Brandelli, an Englishman of Italian parentage whose understanding of both traditional English tailoring and Italian style served to strengthen the brand’s global appeal. It was Brandelli who enlisted the creative collaboration of Nick Knight and Peter Saville for a new sophisticated campaign concept to begin in the same year and continuing to the present day. Brandelli has received highly-sought recognition for his work at Kilgour, winning the British Fashion Council’s Menswear Designer of the Year in 2005. Under his direction the brand has become an important emblem for English modern classic dressing in today’s global luxury marketplace.