Timothy Everest is a sharp suiter

BRITISH tailor Timothy Everest has introduced a new generation to handmade clothing. Now he's part of a collaboration with BMW's Mini Paceman.

BMW Mini Paceman in the Melbourne concept store.

IT'S 11am at The Grounds, a sprawling food and coffee complex in the semi-industrial Sydney suburb of Alexandria, and it's peak hour.

The place is swarming with a mix of mums with prams and hipsters with tattoos, and WISH is here to meet Savile Row-trained British tailor and designer Timothy Everest. The only problem is that we don't really know what he looks like and there seem to be at least a thousand people spread across the garden, the cafe, the bakery and general surroundings. It's an unseasonably warm late winter's day, the sun is shining and everyone is dressed in T-shirts and jeans-you'd be forgiven for thinking it's the weekend, given the casual and relaxed vibe. We needn't have worried about spotting Everest in this crowd; he stood out like, well, a man in a Savile Row suit in a hipster cafe.

Everest is in Australia as a guest of BMW for the brand's Mini Paceman concept store launch in Melbourne, but more on that later. He's dressed for our meeting in a light-grey three-piece wool suit with a shirt and tie and a carefully considered pochette in his breast pocket. A shirt with a collar would be considered dressed up at The Grounds, yet Everest looks completely at ease in this environment and if his perfectly cut attire attracts any attention at all, it is from admiring eyes. Everest, who trained under the legendary Tommy Nutter, is one of a handful of tailors who has successfully bridged the gulf between the old-world establishment ways of Savile Row and the contemporary British fashion industry. His designs fuse British craftsmanship and expertise in tailoring with contemporary design; and together with designers Ozwald Boateng and Richard James he became known as one of the leading figures of the so- called New Bespoke Movement.

To understand the connection between Everest and Mini Paceman a bit of background is helpful. In the early 1990s, when traditional Savile Row tailors were struggling to maintain their relevance, tailors such as Everest broke away from the conservative and stuffy traditions of the Row. They did the unthinkable - they installed more consumer-friendly shopfronts and windows, used marketing and publicity (practices more commonly associated with fashion brands), used new colours and fabrics, adopted a slimmer silhouette for their bespoke suits, made casual clothes and courted celebrity clients. In other words, they moved with the times.

And in Everest's case he moved away from Savile Row altogether, setting up shop in in Spitalfields in the East End in 1989, which was about as far away from Savile Row in terms of retail environment as you could get at the time. Today he's still based in Spitalfields and Savile Row is still the centre of British tailoring but that hasn't prevented Everest from building a flourishing bespoke business.

"I think we've entered a super bespoke moment and it's really exploded for us over the last 18 months," Everest says. "It's always been very steady for us but we've suddenly picked up a lot of clientele who have done the rounds and they are really looking for something they can't get anywhere else. They've been to Savile Row and they've not got what they wanted. We've been creating a Savile Row wardrobe for clients for years even though we are in Spitalfields."

In 1982 Everest answered a job advertisement in the London Evening Standard by Tommy Nutter for an apprentice tailor. He pestered Nutter, who had dressed everyone from politicians and businessmen to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and was eventually given the job. After five years with Nutter, he left to work at the menswear retailer Levene on Chiltern Street before working as a stylist on film and television and then establishing his own business in 1989, all the while remaining a devotee of bespoke tailoring.

However, in his early days in Spitalfields, he says, it was difficult to get people to buy into the concept of bespoke and his main goal was to make it more accessible. "I was reaching out to a menswear customer who had been brought up on designer brands and we had to convince them to buy something that was perceived as old-fashioned and we had to make it seem cool," he says.

"We had to demystify tailoring by making the process more interesting. The perception at the time was that it was elitist, boring, long-winded and very expensive. It's intimidating and difficult for someone to have to knock on a shop door [on Savile Row] and then probably start the conversation about what they want and then be shown fabrics that they are not quite sure of. We communicate with our customers in a different way. We hold the customer's hand a bit more and we give them updates as their suit or jacket is being made and send them photographs along the way because, frankly, that's what the modern world does."

Today Everest's clients include past and present prime ministers, movie stars such as Tom Cruise and Pierce Brosnan, as well as David Beckham, Mick Jagger and Jay-Z. And, of course, there are far lesser known mortals who trek to his store in Spitalfields to have a suit made. Increasingly, however, they are also buying less formal attire from Everest in what he calls his bespoke casual collection.

"Bespoke casual is probably not a great play on words, but we chose the term because what we do with it is not purely bespoke garments," he says. "I've been banging on the drum since we first started that people crave individuality and quality. It's the idea of casual wear that is coming from the essence of bespoke, so it could be about the fabric or the cut or just an unstructured jacket. It's about individually tailored casual clothing and includes shirts, jackets, T-shirts and jeans. I always think to be casual and relaxed still takes some effort."

In recent years Savile Row has also made attempts to move with the times and earlier this year staged a presentation as part of London Fashion Week, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. And then non-bespoke brands such as Suit Supply and Abercrombie & Fitch have moved into the area. Asked if he would ever consider moving back to Savile Row, Everest baulks: "Good God, no, it would be like moving back in with my parents. Savile Row is still a benchmark for people and there are people working there like Ozwald and Patrick Grant at E Tautz who understand the heritage of what they are doing and I think that's very important."

Another aspect of Everest's work that goes against the traditions of Savile Row is that he likes to collaborate with other brands and sometimes they are far removed from the world of bespoke tailoring. For example, he is a consultant to Marks & Spencer for its men's suiting collection. "We've always had a point of difference and done things that weren't considered the right thing to do, like moving to Spitalfields when it was a dying area," says Everest. "When we started working with M&S, people thought we were mad but as part of our culture we've always thought differently, but there has to be some kind of connection for us to do the collaboration."

Other brands that Everest has worked with include the bicycle saddle maker Brooks England, the British clothing brand Daks, premium bicycle maker Rapha and the denim brand Superdry ... and, of course, Mini Paceman.

Mini opened a unique pop-up concept store in June on Melbourne's Chapel Street - better known for fashion than cars - that will stay open for six months. As well as being a showroom for the Mini Paceman, it's also something of a showroom for six designers from around the world, who will take over the space for a month each. As well as Everest, the designers include the American fashion designer Mark McNairy, American accessories designer Andrew Chen, Danish architect and furniture designer Sigurd Larsen and sock designer Alfredo Gonzales. The idea for Mini, it seems, was just to work with brands that share its values. According to the general manager of Mini Australia, Kai Bruesewitz, the collaborators were chosen for their like-minded approach. "They're bold, cool, stylish and push the boundaries of what is possible. They're not about following the latest trend," he says. "Through their creations they are constantly evolving the notion that Paceman stands for a new slant on things."

For us it was a chance to reach out to a different audience," says Everest. "Interestingly in the last four years I seem to be doing everything with wheels when it comes to our collaborations. With Mini Paceman I'd like to think that, rather than just saying 'buy this car', they're looking at a different way to market it. They've put an interesting group of people together and opened a shop and maybe we are all on the same kind of page with what we do. For me it's certainly been fun and it's been an adventure."