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Blades was founded in 1962 by Rupert Lycett Green (b. 1938), cutter Eric Joy and accountant Charlie Hornby. It was allegedly named after the fictional gentleman’s club in Ian Fleming’s 1955 novel Moonraker, but the name also deliberately referred to tailor’s shears and a dashing young man. Located at 25 Dover Street, in London’s Mayfair, Blades specialized in bespoke suits, offering a more contemporary approach to traditional tailoring than the nearby Savile Row, earning it a following among celebrities such as Mick Jagger, David Hemmings, Ray Galton, Alan Simpson and the Marquess of Harlington. Both Joy and Hornby left the business in 1965 with Joy going to work for Mr Fish. In 1967 Blades moved to 8 Burlington Gardens and held one of the first men’s ready-to-wear fashion shows in Savile Row in March 1969, going on to sell off-the-peg menswear the following year. At this time, a bespoke Blades suit cost around £80, with ready-to-wear suits at 50 guineas, sports jackets at 28 guineas and trousers at 10 guineas. In 1969 Blades opened on Madison Avenue, New York; however, the shop closed after four years. In 1980 Lycett Green had sold Blades in London as a going concern. In 1992 a Blades boutique opened in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. Adverts for Blades continued to appear in The Times up to 1997. The company stopped trading in 1998.

Sources: Cally Blackman, 100 Years of Menswear (London: Laurence King, 2009); Lance Richardson, House of Nutter (London: Chatto & Windus, 2018); Richard Lester, Boutique London: King’s Road to Carnaby Street (Woodbridge: ACC, 2010); Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men 1963–1973 (London: V&A Publishing, 2011); The Times.

Mr Fish was a menswear shop founded in 1966 by Michael Fish (b. 1940) and his business partner Barry Sainsbury (1929–99), the grandson of John Sainsbury, the supermarket chain’s founder. Michael Fish trained as a shirtmaker and spent nine years at New & Lingwood and then Turnbull & Asser designing shirts for a variety of clients, including actor Sean Connery’s dress shirts for his first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962). Located at 17 Clifford Street, off Savile Row in London’s Mayfair, the shop specialized in flamboyant menswear, particularly bespoke shirts and ties. In 1966, a revival of extremely wide men’s ties reminiscent of those worn in the 1930s became known as kipper ties, which Mr Fish claimed to have coined as a pun on his surname.

Mr Fish became known for their male celebrity clients, including Noël Coward, Lord Snowdon, Sammy Davis Jr, James Fox, Mick Jagger, Lord Lichfield and Duke Ellington. In 1969, Mick Jagger wore a long frilled white Mr Fish tunic shirt for the Rolling Stones’s free concert at Hyde Park, while David Bowie wore a ‘man-dress’ designed by Mr Fish on the cover of his 1971 album The Man Who Sold the World. Mr Fish also designed Muhammad Ali’s boxing robe for his 1974 ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ bout with George Foreman. While the business flourished, with its mixture of celebrity clientele and young aristocracy, the withdrawal of Barry Sainsbury’s financial backing in 1969 led Michael Fish to find new investment from Captain Fred Barker, who then shut the Clifford Street shop. Mr Fish briefly reopened after investment from rock managers Robert Stigwood and David Shaw in new premises in Mount Street in 1974, but shut later that year after a fire. The brand was revived in 2016 by investor David Mason, producing a range of shirts inspired by the Mr Fish originals.
Sources: Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men 1963–1973 (London: V&A Publishing, 2011); The Observer.

1968–present
Calvin Klein Collection 1973–2017 Calvin Klein 205W39NYC 2017–19
Calvin Klein Inc. was co-founded by Cavin Klein (b. 1942) and Barry Schwartz (b. 1942) in 1968. Initially producing womenswear, the company introduced menswear for Autumn Winter 1978 through an initial five-year licensing deal with Maurice Bidermann. In 1986 Klein bought the licence back from Bidermann Industries USA, planning to relaunch the menswear with an in-house design team later that year. However, it was not until Autumn Winter 1992 that Calvin Klein re-entered the menswear market after signing a manufacturing and marketing deal with GFT USA Corp. John Varvatos (b. 1954) served as head of menswear between 1990 and 1993, followed by Stephen Fairchild (b. 1962) as design director for menswear until 1996.
In 2003 Calvin Klein Inc. was sold to Phillips-Van Heusen Corp. (PVH) for US$400 million, plus US$30 million in stock and up to US$300 million in royalties tied to revenues over the next fifteen years. In 2003 Italo Zucchelli (b. 1965) was named as the creative director for the men’s Calvin Klein Collection, where he remained until 2016. Belgian designer Raf Simons (b. 1968) was announced in August 2016 as the new Chief Creative Officer of the brand, responsible for all aspects of design, marketing and communications, across all product lines for men and women. Under Simons, the Calvin Klein Collection was renamed Calvin Klein 205W39NYC and his first runway collection for the brand in February 2017 presented menswear and womenswear together. In December 2018, eight months before the end of his contract, it was announced that Simons would be leaving the company with immediate effect, as the company had decided on a different direction for the brand. In March 2019 Calvin Klein announced it was to discontinue the Calvin Klein Collection division of the brand.

Calvin Klein was named Menswear Designer of the Year in 1999 by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and in 2009 the award went to Italo Zucchelli for Calvin Klein Collection. In 2017 both the awards for Womenswear and Menswear Designer of the Year went to Raf Simons for Calvin Klein.
Sources: British Vogue; Dow Jones Institutional News; Lisa Marsh, The House of Klein: Fashion, Controversy, and a Business Obsession (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003); New York Post; The New York Times; WWD.

John Weitz (1923-2002) was a German American menswear designer who started his business John Weitz Designs Inc. in 1954. He was born Hans Werner to a German Jewish family in Berlin and completed his education in London including being apprenticed to fashion designer Edward Molyneux. He initially designed women's sportswear and worked for retailer Lord & Taylor from the late 1940s but moved into menswear in the 1960s. He was known for emphasising functionality and practicality in his designs.

He was an entrepreneurial businessman who was one of the earliest American designers to enter into licencing agreements. Between about 1966-1968 John Weitz was contracted by British menswear company Austin Reed to develop a range for their boutique Cue and in the mid-1970s Burton licenced his name with a collection. He became well known in the 1970s for his opinions on men's fashion design. In 1979 he returned to womenswear and he continued to design men's and women's fashion for the rest of his career.