Supposedly you can set up shop in Cannes before the film festival or at the Chateau Marmont before the Oscars and the stylists will come past, choose what they want and tada, you get your bow tie on a celebrity on the red carpet.
It’s never been something I sought out. Someone yesterday, because sometimes people introduce me as “the world’s best” blah blah and inevitably I get asked the question “who is the most famous person that has worn your bow ties” as the following up question from said new person I am meeting. Answer, I dunno. I also don’t care that much.
Our reputation wasn’t built by celebrities. It was built by men who wear bow ties or tie their own bow ties or just like knowing they are wearing a hand-tied bow tie.
Men like Liam Hudson, pictured, who posted the other night tagging us, we didn’t ask him to, he wanted to. Out and about, enjoying himself, being a human.
And the truth is, we do deal with some pretty well heeled people, I loathe the word billionaire, but some of them are. There is one customer I dealt with over the past three weeks that is so accomplished and probably one of the more influential people in the world of media today, and, well, I just don’t really talk about it too much, I am sure he doesn’t want me telling my customers about him and when he sends over a photo I don’t publish it. But he came to me, I assume, for the same reason Liam did, we actually make stuff.
I am not like some plane hovering from 10,000 feet surveying the business and applying pressure from up high, I am down in the trenches, designing the silks with my illustrators, cutting silk on my bench, tying bow ties every day of the week, cutting new patterns in clear plastic. That should count for something shouldn’t it? And on top of that, I answer my phone when you ring “bring bring bring bring allo?” …
I don’t think any other designer is doing that these days, most of them sit very far away from their customers, but that philosophy comes from my grounding in retail ever since I saw my father on the floor of his pharmacy as a young boy watching him serve customers with dignity and patience and sending them home with some free jelly beans for their kids or offering a little old lady some antiseptic cream on the house after he filled her script.
That’s just how I like to roll. Does it work? Has so far. Will it continue to work ? I dunno. It’s up to you guys and whether you continue to want to be my mouthpiece.
And as for the ones that require our discretion, no matter, we are happy for you to keep us to yourselves. It’s all the same to me, you all matter, you have all built our reputation in one way or another.
