You can commission a bespoke suit on Savile Row today, provided you are prepared to spend somewhere in the range of £4,500 to well above £7,000 for a first suit, wait twelve to eighteen weeks at minimum from first appointment to delivery at many houses, and sit through three to five fittings across that span. The route in is simpler than the mythology suggests: most houses accept new clients by appointment, booked directly through the house. The difficulty is not getting through the door. It is understanding what you are actually buying, and from whose hands.
Why Huntsman and Its Neighbours Book Out Faster Than You Expect
Savile Row runs for roughly a quarter of a mile through Mayfair, and the number of cutters working the traditional bespoke method, where a paper pattern is drafted from scratch for each client's body, is smaller than the street's reputation implies. At the established houses, a head cutter may carry a book of several hundred active clients. Each suit requires a full canvas construction, hand-padded lapels, and a minimum of three fittings; the cutter's time is the constraint, not the cloth room.
The craft itself enforces scarcity. A basted fitting, where the coat is assembled in rough form to check the pattern against the body, takes the cutter an hour or more to prepare and another hour to conduct. A finished coat from a house like Huntsman or Henry Poole may carry forty to sixty hours of hand work before it leaves the workroom. That labor arithmetic means a single cutter working at full capacity can complete only a limited number of new commissions per year, which is why lead times at the busiest houses stretch well beyond a year for new clients. The Row is not slow by accident; it is slow by method. At Huntsman, bespoke garments are made entirely in-store at 11 Savile Row, a point of discipline the cutters will mention if you ask.
How the Row's Seasonal Calendar Shapes Your Opening
Savile Row houses do not publish reservation windows the way a restaurant publishes a booking drop. Most houses accept new client inquiries on a rolling basis, but the practical lead time from first contact to first fitting varies by house and by the cutter's current book. The houses do not publish their current wait times publicly; the only reliable way to know whether a specific cutter's book is open is to contact the house directly.
Seasonally, the Row follows a rhythm shaped by London's social calendar. The period from January through March tends to be when new clients initiate commissions ahead of the spring and summer season. September and October see a second wave, as clients plan for winter cloth and the run of events from November onward. The weeks immediately before Christmas and during August, when many cutters take their own leave, are the least productive times to begin a new commission; a first appointment booked then may not yield a basted fitting until well into the following year.
If you are working toward a specific occasion, a wedding or a significant event, begin the process well in advance. Attempting to commission a first bespoke suit in under six months is possible at some houses but carries real risk: the fittings cannot be compressed without compromising the result, and a rushed final fitting is where most bespoke suits go wrong.
How to Make First Contact with a Savile Row House
The most direct route is a telephone call or an email to the house's front of house, requesting a first appointment with a named cutter if you have a preference, or asking to be matched with a cutter whose book is currently open to new clients. Henry Poole can be contacted by phone at +44 (0)20 7734 5985 or via an online appointment request; Huntsman accepts bespoke enquiries by email at shop@huntsmansavilerow.com. Huntsman London is open Monday through Friday 9am to 5:30pm and Saturday 10am to 3pm; walk-ins are welcome but appointments are advised for bespoke services.
The first appointment is a consultation, not a commitment. You will discuss cloth, construction, and style with the cutter; the house will take a deposit before cutting begins. The deposit structure and its amount are set by each house individually and are not published; ask at the consultation. For clients outside London, Huntsman trunk show visits are by appointment only, and Huntsman New York on W57th Street operates by appointment only. The final fitting, and ideally the penultimate one, should be done in London if the result is to be trusted; a suit finished entirely on the road carries more risk of a fit that satisfies no one.
How to Improve Your Odds and Your Result
The single most useful thing a new client can do before the first appointment is to arrive with a clear sense of what the suit needs to do. A cutter at a house like Anderson & Sheppard, whose soft-shouldered Drape cut has been the house method since Frederick Scholte developed it in the early twentieth century, will ask questions about how you carry your shoulders, how you sit, what the suit is for. Arriving with photographs of suits you admire, and suits you do not, saves time and reduces the number of correction fittings.
Ask to see the house's cloth book before the appointment if possible. Henry Poole holds 6,000 samples of cloth, and offers up to ten complimentary fabric swatches that arrive within a working week. Knowing whether you want a 10-ounce fresco for year-round wear or a 13-ounce flannel for winter before you sit down with the cutter moves the consultation forward considerably.
If you are new to bespoke and uncertain which house to approach, the practical advice from those who have worked across several houses is to choose by cutter rather than by name. The house's reputation was built by specific hands; those hands change. Ask who will be cutting your coat, and ask how long that cutter has been at the house. A cutter in their fifteenth year at a single house, who has worked through the full range of the house's clientele, is a different proposition from a newcomer still building their book, however well trained.
Alternatives When the Established Houses Cannot Take You Now
Savile Row and Near-Row Bespoke: A Working Comparison
| House / Maker | Typical Lead Time | Approximate Starting Price | Books Open to New Clients | How to Initiate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Huntsman (Savile Row) | 14 to 16 weeks from first appointment | From £7,000 (two-piece) | Rolling; confirm directly | Email or telephone; initiated by booking an appointment |
| Henry Poole (Savile Row) | Not published | Not published | Rolling; confirm directly | Phone or online request; trunk shows available |
| Anderson & Sheppard (Old Burlington St) | Not published | ~£6,500 average | Rolling; confirm directly | Direct contact; Haberdashery shop open walk-in |
| Steven Hitchcock Bespoke (Savile Row) | Not published | From £6,000 (two-piece, ex-VAT) | Typically open; confirm directly | Direct contact via website |
| Thom Sweeney (Old Burlington Street) | Shorter than traditional Row; confirm directly | Not published | Typically open | Direct contact via website |
If the house you want has a wait that does not fit your timeline, several routes are worth knowing. Anderson & Sheppard's Haberdashery on Clifford Street operates as a separate retail and made-to-measure shop; it is not the same as a full bespoke commission from the main house, but it is a way to understand the house's cloth and construction sensibility before committing to the longer process. Steven Hitchcock Bespoke publishes its prices openly: a two-piece suit from £6,000, a lounge suit from £7,400, all exclusive of UK VAT, with a deposit of half the total required to secure the order. Thom Sweeney, based just off Old Burlington Street (24c Old Burlington Street, Mayfair), works in a tradition that draws on Row training and offers a reported faster process for clients who cannot wait, though lead times should be confirmed directly with the house.
Three Fittings, One Coat: What the Commission Actually Involves at Huntsman
The first appointment is a consultation: the cutter takes a full set of measurements and asks questions about posture, stance, and how you carry weight across the shoulders. Cloth is chosen from the house's bunches; the cutter advises on weight and construction for the suit's intended use. Huntsman recommends two to three fittings for new customers before the garment is finished. The house does not publish the duration of individual appointments; confirm the schedule at the consultation.
The basted fitting is where the coat exists for the first time as a physical object. It is assembled in the chosen cloth but not finished: the lining is absent, the sleeves may be pinned rather than set, and the lapels are roughly shaped. The cutter marks corrections directly onto the cloth with chalk. This fitting is the most technically demanding for the client; you are being asked to assess a garment that does not yet look like a garment.
A forward fitting follows, where the corrections from the basted stage have been incorporated and the coat is closer to finished. Most houses require at least one more fitting after this before the coat is completed. The trouser fittings run in parallel, typically two sittings, and the waistcoat, if included, adds at least one more. Huntsman aims to deliver a bespoke suit within 14 to 16 weeks from the first appointment.
The workroom itself is rarely visible to clients at the larger houses, but the evidence of it is in the coat: the hand-padded canvas that gives the chest its shape, the pick-stitching along the lapel edge, the hand-sewn buttonholes that take a skilled buttonhole maker the better part of an hour each. Huntsman does not allow tour groups or organised parties, or groups larger than four people, into the shop at one time to visit the Kingsman Room; the fitting floor is a working space, not a showroom.
The room where fittings happen is typically a private fitting room, not a shared floor. You will be alone with the cutter and, at some houses, a coat-maker or trouser-maker who attends to assess their own work. The conversation is practical and specific. The cutter is not performing; they are working.
Who Should Commission Here, and When
A Savile Row bespoke commission is the right choice for a client who has a body that does not fit standard sizing well, who intends to wear the suit for twenty years or more, or who has a specific functional requirement, a coat that must accommodate a particular posture or physical asymmetry, that cannot be addressed by any other method. It is also the right choice for someone who wants to understand, through the process of the fittings, what their body actually looks like in cloth, and to build a pattern that can be used for future commissions. A Huntsman bespoke commission includes membership of the Huntsman Club, granting access to private fittings and events.
It is not the right choice for someone who needs a suit in three months, who is uncertain whether they will wear bespoke again, or who is primarily motivated by the name on the label. The label is the least interesting part of what the Row produces.
The client who gets the most from the process is one who treats the fittings as a collaboration rather than a transaction, who asks the cutter questions about why a correction is being made, and who is willing to return for an additional fitting if the result is not right. The Row's best work comes from long relationships; a first commission is the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one.
The Verdict: Is a Savile Row Commission Worth the Wait?
For the client whose body, budget, and timeline align with what the Row actually offers, the answer is yes, without qualification. A coat cut from a paper pattern drafted for your specific body, built on a full canvas, and fitted across three or more appointments is a different object from anything produced by any other method. The wait is not a drawback; it is part of the method. A suit that has been through five fittings over several months has been corrected, adjusted, and thought about in a way that a suit produced in six weeks cannot be.
The practical advice is this: choose by cutter, not by house name; begin the process well before you need the suit; and treat the first appointment as a conversation about what you actually need, not a performance of what you think bespoke should look like. If the house you want has a wait that does not fit your timeline, Steven Hitchcock Bespoke and Thom Sweeney are the most accessible alternatives that work in the same tradition without compromising the method.
The cutter's book is the only route that reliably works. There is no shortcut to the front of it, and no reason to want one; the wait is when the pattern is being thought about. A commission begun with patience and a clear brief tends to produce a coat that outlasts the occasion it was made for, and that is the point of the whole discipline.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far in advance should I contact Huntsman to commission a bespoke suit?
Huntsman does not publish a recommended lead time; the only way to know whether a cutter's book is open is to contact the house directly. Huntsman aims to deliver a bespoke suit within 14 to 16 weeks from the first appointment, but this depends on the cutter's current book. If your timeline is tight, ask specifically about cutters whose books are less full, or consider houses like Steven Hitchcock Bespoke or Thom Sweeney, which are reported to have shorter lead times, though you should confirm this with each house directly.
Can you walk into Huntsman on Savile Row without an appointment and begin a commission?
Huntsman welcomes walk-ins during opening hours (Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm, Saturday 10am to 3pm), but appointments are advised for bespoke services. A cutter's schedule is booked tightly enough that a walk-in rarely results in more than a brief introduction. The more productive approach is to email shop@huntsmansavilerow.com or telephone in advance and request a first bespoke appointment, ensuring the right cutter is available and the consultation has the time it needs.
What does a Huntsman bespoke two-piece suit cost, and what does the price include?
Huntsman bespoke two-piece suits start from £7,000, and the commission includes membership of the Huntsman Club, granting access to private fittings and events. Bespoke shirts start at £380 with a minimum order of three. Ladies' bespoke also starts from £7,000 for a two-piece. These figures are published by Huntsman but should be confirmed directly with the house, as prices may change.
How many fittings does a Huntsman bespoke commission typically require?
Huntsman recommends two to three fittings for new customers before the garment is finished, with a minimum of three fittings required for the bespoke process. Trousers typically require separate fittings, and a waistcoat adds at least one more. The total number of appointments across a full three-piece commission is commonly five or more. Houses do not compress fittings without compromising the result.
Does Huntsman offer trunk show appointments for clients outside London?
Yes. Huntsman trunk show visits are by appointment only, and Huntsman New York on W57th Street also operates by appointment only. Trunk show garments are cut at 11 Savile Row or the New York premises depending on the arrangement. For the best result, the final fitting and ideally the penultimate one should be completed in London. Contact the house's bespoke department directly to ask about upcoming trunk show visits to your city.
