House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row

The story of Tommy Nutter is the story of a man who climbs up from nothing to reshape the silhouette of British fashion. It is the story of a visionary tailor in the bespoke tradition who dresses everybody from Lord Montagu of Beaulieu to Twiggy, who outfits three of the Beatles for the cover of Abbey Road (George Harrison preferred jeans), who puts Mick Jagger in a white suit for his wedding to Bianca and who dresses Elton John for years, using the singer as his muse for his signature outrageous style. Nutter was alluring for his ambiguity — a chameleon who could rub shoulders with Princess Margaret and then dance with the drag queens at Last Resort — and his clothes were the physical expression of a sharp, audacious wit.

House of Nutter aims to capture and explore the Nutter sensibility. It will chart the dramatic life of Tommy Nutter, an underappreciated visionary whose career spanned barely 23 years, ending in 1992 with his untimely death. It is a history of London during an era of economic and cultural upheaval, a celebration of the methods and traditions of Savile Row; and an elegy for what was lost during the worst days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The impact of Nutter’s “fashionable tailoring” should not be underestimated. It can still be seen today with Tom Ford and Stella McCartney, Timothy Everest and Oswald Boateng–all of whom who cite Nutter as a major influence on their work.

With archival access to photos, letters and interviews from Tommy Nutter’s sole living relative, his brother, David, Lance Richardson takes us behind the ’70s glamour to explore the public face and dramatic private life of one of Britain’s most respected yet rule-breaking bespoke clothiers and the celebrities he dressed.