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Saturday 22 November 2008

To the manner born

James Sherwood discovers a new meaning to the phrase ‘fashion house’

It is both blessing and curse for luxury goods brands that they largely appeal to cads and parvenus. Would a true gentleman wish for a £15,000 white alligator attaché-case or oversize sunglasses whose frames could accommodate a Velázquez? Such frivolities, to quote Lady Bracknell, ‘seem to display a contempt for ordinary decencies which remind one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution’. The men who these brands aspire to dress flee from their flagship stores like wits from a dinner party bore.

It is not without irony that the revival of the English gentleman aesthetic has caught the big brands on the back foot. All of a sudden heritage and quality, not fashion and luxury, are leading menswear. The prestige brands need authenticity and exclusivity to lead emerging markets such as China, Russia and India by example. This cannot be achieved with identically branded, soulless temples of Mammon peppered across the globe from the Ginza to Geneva.

The answer is to get one’s house — or more specifically home — in order. This month Alfred Dunhill, purveyor of quality gentlemen’s requisites since 1893, opens its new London Home at Bourdon House; a Grade 2* listed Mayfair mansion built in 1720 and occupied by the Duke of Westminster, that combines brand showcase, townhouse and exclusive private gentlemen’s club with rooms.

The wrought-iron gates of Bourdon House sell the illusion of Dunhill as part of Mayfair’s private aristocratic playground. In short, the house is proffering a duke’s life in 21st-century London: a concierge, in-house barber, bespoke tailor, humidor, reserved cellar space for wine, customised Bentley Continental Spur on call and ‘dishonesty bar’ to drain in the restored Duke of Westminster bedroom when one’s in town.

More articles from: James Sherwood | this section

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