Press

Luxury Briefing

FEBURARY 2009

A tie for first place

Michael Drake’s eponymous company is the UK’s largest manufacturer of handmade ties, turning
out 4_5,000 a week to supply gentlemen’s outfitters all over the world. Drake has run a factory in
Clerkenwell for 20 years (since before it was trendy), employing 45 people there and roughly the
same number of home workers. The Italians love him and, in Japan, a glossy magazine voted
Drakes the fourth most desirable luxury brand for men. KATE PATRICK hears why
Selling silk ties to the Italians: now there’s a proposition that calls to mind ‘coals’ and ‘Newcastle’.
You would think that stylish ties would rank up there with risotto and romance as being particularly
Italian preserves.
But they are ultra_cognoscenti , these Italians: they don’t necessarily want to go out looking
all sharp_suited_and_Zegna, with a Ferragamo tie that has the same joke on it as the one being
worn by the chap drinking espresso in the other corner of the ristorante. What they want is English
style: high quality, handmade in small runs, conservative_with_a_twist. And for the past 30 years,
this is what Michael Drake – smart guy – has successfully been giving them. “In reality,” he says,
“traditional British style is either fuddy_duddy on the one hand or naff on the other. I wanted to
give Italians the English look as they imagine it to be, rather than how it is.”
A similar philosophy has served Ralph Lauren well, but beneath the smoke and mirrors it’s
not just an elegant confidence trick. Drake’s ties are fine quality, totally handmade in a small
factory in Clerkenwell in the east end of London and, as he says, “They look completely different
from flat, machine_made ties. They’re not pressed hard, so they have a three_dimensional quality,
the edges are rounded, they use generous amounts of very fine fabric, and they are printed in a
different way from how the Italians print. The end result is original, mellow; and the Italians
appreciate that difference, that level of craftsmanship. They think it is more sophisticated. They
spend more time choosing what they buy, and there are more independent shops in Italy.” Indeed,
there are an impressive 275 stores there currently retailing Drake’s ties and scarves. At the Pitti
Uomo menswear fair in Florence in January, the largest in the world, the Drakes stand was
“mobbed”.
What Drakes pulls off is the tricky balancing act of appealing simultaneously to both the
most fashionable and the most conservative. At one end of the scale, you have Old England in
Paris, Drake’s first customer back in 1979: conservative, discreet, ‘held_back’. At the other, Drakes
manufactures for Comme des Garçons, to be sold in the hip Dover Street Market; and also
produces specially coloured Breton scarves for Monocle magazine’s online and new London stores
(see left). This followed a visit to the factory by Tyler Brûlé, who had first been charmed by Drakes
products he’d seen in Como. (Cool_arbiter Brûlé also bought a variety of Drakes scarves as
Christmas presents for his entire staff at Monocle.)
“This has been the case right from the beginning,” explains Drake. “After Old England,
our second customer was Agnès b – she saw us at the first exhibition we did in Paris in 1979, and
bought into our scarves. They were just bigger, and in brighter colours, the right thing at the right
time. We opened the smallest booth we could get at that show, and didn’t even think about trying
to make it look incredible. We took £100,000 of orders in three days – an enormous amount even
by today’s standards.”
Drake is a confident practitioner, who appears sure_footed when it comes to taking the next
big business decision. But he did not, in fact, set out to be a tie manufacturer when he started the
business in 1978: it was the potential of men’s suiting that lured him from the relatively safe haven
of 13 years at Aquascutum.
“After studying at the London College of Fashion I was employed as a management trainee
at Aquascutum. It was a fantastic system: you got to work in all areas. Eventually I became the
chief designer, developed the famous Aquascutum check and started the accessories division. It
was a private company then, owned by Gerald Abrahams who took me under his wing and
involved me in decision_making: this mentoring was very important and it doesn’t happen much
nowadays.”
During this period he and sales director Jeremy Hull, a fluent Italian speaker, struck up a
relationship with Belvest, an Italian suit_maker. When Belvest offered Drake and Hull privately the
license to sell its collection to all the English_speaking countries in the world (Italian factories were
not, in those days, peopled with English speakers), they took the plunge. The hard graft of trawling
across the US followed, but eventually the company was selling over 30,000 items a year,
generating the finance to add Scottish cashmere scarves and then ties, in response to customer
demand. When it came to selling these in Europe, the Aquascutum years had given them a
headstart: “We had traded with similar, family_owned companies in Germany, France, Italy,
Austria, and traditionally the sons of the owners had come over to do internships. This proved to
be a great network of contacts”. Drake realised that if you could sell scarves and ties to Italy and
France, you could sell them anywhere. “It was true when we started and it’s true now, although
everything is more difficult now. But Italy is still our biggest market.”
Japan is the second biggest, and here Drake avoided going into department stores, the
usual route_to_market for UK manufacturers, but went direct to good, independent shops. “Tokyo
and Milan have more in common than you would imagine,” he observes. “Young Japanese,
whether traditional or trendy, like the quality, and they like the fact that the Italians like it. The
‘made in Britain’ factor is very important.”
In the UK he is contending with a market that has a longstanding love affair with sexy
European brands and, anyway, is increasingly dressing down at work. There are only around 20
retailers stocking Drakes products. “But I don’t always wear a tie to work. If you’re spending £75
on a tie you’re not necessarily buying it to wear to work. People wear ties for other reasons, other
occasions. One of the things our retail customers in the UK like is that we can tailor_make pieces in
small runs. They want originality and colours that are exclusive to them. We can do this because
we love design and we control our own manufacture.”
Likely to have an impact on the UK market is Drake’s new sortie into internet retailing.
“We have just taken the major step of launching online shopping. That’s a big thing, especially
considering we don’t have a retail base and haven’t traditionally retailed direct to the public. But I
know exactly what I want to achieve with the site: purvey special, difficult_to_find, ‘nice things’
across a range of product categories.”
Drake’s vision may have evolved over 30 years but at base is a keen and realistic self_
awareness and a consistent attitude to the relevance of fashion. “You need to know who you are.
We are a small, private company. Customers see you as being a certain thing, just as they
perceive CDG or Paul Smith. Fashion doesn’t really play a part in what we do. You’ve got to
have your own handwriting, and not be chopping and changing. The first thing customers say is
‘what’s new?’ What they actually want is ‘new’ but with the same handwriting. Quality,
Englishness, something similar, but with small surprises. There’s a handwriting that goes through
everything that Hermès does, for example, and our customers are also Hermès customers. Emma
Willis, in Jermyn Street, sells ties by both Hermès and Drakes. Her customers are hedge funders.
They’re not all broke!”