How Anderson & Sheppard Perfected the Drape Cut
Anderson & Sheppard, founded in 1906 on Savile Row and now operating from Old Burlington Street, perfected a style of tailoring so distinctive that it constitutes its own school within English bespoke: the drape cut. Where most Savile Row houses produce structured, architectural garments, Anderson & Sheppard creates suits that move with the body, draping from the shoulder with a softness that looks effortless but requires extraordinary skill to achieve.
The drape cut was developed by the firm's co-founder, Per Anderson, a Swedish-born tailor who had trained with Frederick Scholte — the Dutch cutter credited with inventing the English drape style. Anderson refined Scholte's techniques, adding extra fabric through the chest and shoulder blade that creates a controlled fullness, allowing the jacket to flow rather than constrict when the wearer moves.
The key technical distinction of the Anderson & Sheppard cut is the extended chest measurement. Where a structured jacket pins the fabric close to the body with canvas and padding, the drape cut introduces approximately one to two inches of additional fabric across the chest that is eased into the armhole and shoulder seam. This excess creates gentle folds that move with breathing and arm motion.
The house's client list has included Prince Charles (a devotee for over four decades), Fred Astaire (whose ability to dance in a suit demanded the drape cut's freedom of movement), Manolo Blahnik, and Tom Ford. Fred Astaire famously threw new suits against a wall repeatedly to break down their stiffness — at Anderson & Sheppard, no such abuse was necessary (https://www.anderson-sheppard.co.uk).
The current head cutter, Colin Heywood, maintains the house style with remarkable fidelity while accommodating modern preferences for slightly slimmer silhouettes. A first bespoke suit requires three fittings over approximately eight weeks, with prices starting around five thousand pounds. The house also produces a haberdashery line of knitwear, shirts, and accessories from its Old Burlington Street location.
Anderson & Sheppard's soft shoulder — achieved with minimal padding and a natural, slightly extended shoulder line — is immediately distinguishable from the roped shoulder of Huntsman or the padded shoulder of Gieves & Hawkes. The effect is of a man wearing clothes rather than clothes wearing a man, which is the highest compliment tailoring can achieve.
The drape cut's lesson is counterintuitive: precision in tailoring does not require rigidity. Anderson & Sheppard prove that the most technically demanding form of suit construction is not the structured, heavily canvassed garment but the soft, apparently unstructured one — because creating controlled drape that flatters rather than billows demands a mastery of cloth behaviour that no amount of padding can substitute.
