Daisy Knatchbull first hit headlines in 2016 after waltzing into Royal Ascot — the week of horse races that is a cornerstone of the English summer social season — wearing a top hat, blue waistcoat, full morning coat with tails and six-inch Louboutin heels.
Never mind that morning suits were traditionally the sartorial reserve of English gentlemen. Ms. Knatchbull — a great-granddaughter of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and a third cousin of Prince William then employed in the press department of the Savile Row tailor Huntsman — had ruffled society feathers, becoming the first woman to wear the event’s signature outfit.
“It also made me realize,” Ms. Knatchbull, now 32, said this month. “that there was a serious appetite among women for bespoke tailoring and a suit-shaped gap for them on Savile Row.”
Ms. Knatchbull started selling made-to-measure suits in 2019 with just four styles. Initially known as the Deck, then rebranded in 2024 as Knatchbull, it was the first women’s tailoring label to take up shop on the world’s most famous street for men’s clothing.
“On a street so full of history, and given how fast we had been growing, Knatchbull felt like a better way of saying to people we are building a new legacy with what we do,” she said.
Changing tastes in men’s wear and a decades-long drift from formal wear, especially in the workplace, had left Savile Row in a state of perilous decline. The pandemic, with its elasticated waists and travel bans, hurt the street’s legendary tailors further still, with some eventually going into liquidation.
But Ms. Knatchbull believed that while the men’s business may be struggling, more women than ever were willing to pay handsomely for a made-from-scratch suit designed for their bodies by experienced pattern cutters — just like their fathers, brothers and husbands may have done once upon a time.
The difference? The Knatchbull staff of more than 40 are all women.
“Our clients are served by women who have Savile Row training but really understand the changes a woman’s body can go through, which most men don’t,” Ms. Knatchbull said. “If a client is undergoing fertility treatments, menopause, mastectomies, miscarriages, heavy periods or even sweating too much, we can listen to her and accommodate that with our garments.”
Blond and statuesque, she sat on a plush sofa in the bright and airy store she moved into in 2022. One floor below, dozens of staff members were hard at work on orders.
“We’re not the first women’s tailor, but we’re the first shopfront on Savile Row to exist for women,” she said. “We accommodate women of all sizes and proportions, and that’s the whole point.”
Prices start at 3,300 pounds, or roughly $4,400, for a made-to-measure suit, with at least three fittings over 12 to 14 weeks. After initial measurements are taken, a client will choose her own fabric — the 7,000 options include velvets, corduroys, tartans and cashmeres — as well as the lining, buttons and monogramming for her suit.
Today, Knatchbull has a Rolodex of 2,500 clients whose orders can range from traditional power suiting and three-piece looks to slouchy wide-legged pantsuits, old-school tuxedos, safari sets and jumpsuits. The first color of choice is often navy, Ms. Knatchbull said, and most of those buying are professional women between 45 and 65, though the youngest client thus far was 13 and the oldest was 96.
Knatchbull’s repeat order rate is 62 percent. Some clients have gone further still by investing in the business. (Ms. Knatchbull declined to name her private investors but said she has closed three rounds of funding.) The most lucrative market is the United States, which now accounts for 45 percent of orders and is where Ms. Knatchbull travels four or five times a year to do trunk shows and fittings in New York, Washington and Dallas, as well as Palm Beach, Fla., and Greenwich, Conn.
Aerin Lauder, whose favorite piece is a belted black safari jacket, found out about Knatchbull from the fashion editor and stylist Amanda Ross.
“There is just a real elevated simplicity and versatility to her pieces that I love, alongside the personalized tailoring experience,” Ms. Lauder said.
Anna Scott Carter, who runs digital stationery start-up Electragram, said that after reading about Knatchbull in Air Mail, the newest publication of her husband, Graydon Carter, she resolved to visit the shop the next time she was in London.
“I imagined the tuts of disapproval all up and down Savile Row at the idea of a woman invading their territory and thought, ‘Good for her,’” Ms. Carter wrote in an email. She had found the experience of being fitted for a custom suit to be one of life’s great pleasures.
“Putting on a custom Knatchbull suit is like wrapping a force field around you,” she said.
The company’s next visit to the United States will be mid-September, with stints in Los Angeles and Washington, and next year they will venture out to Chicago, Alabama and Aspen, Colo. Ms. Knatchbull and her team will go wherever there is demand, see as many as 150 clients at any one go, then come back again three months later, she said.
“I think people all over the world love the idea of English heritage and the bespoke craftsmanship of the Row,” she said. “Clients often say, ‘I wish I had you as an option when I got my big promotion or had to sit next to my ex-husband at my daughter’s graduation and needed to look hot.’ They could go to many luxury brands, but they like how a Knatchbull suit makes them feel.”
Knatchbull has also leveraged the customer data collected since setting up shop to expand into ready-to-wear that can be worn with or separately from suits: linen skirts, silk camis, poplin shirts and cashmere sweaters that are manufactured either in Britain or Portugal. The couture business has also been heating up. (Christine Schwarzman, wife of the Blackstone billionaire Stephen, wore a black and white Knatchbull couture creation to the Met Gala this year, the dress code being “Tailored for You.”)
Ms. Knatchbull was back at Ascot last week. One of her looks — a tailored white three-piece suit with a galloping horse embroidered on the back and a giant wide-brimmed hat topped at the back with a big black bow — felt like a modern wink to the fashion of another legendary disrupter of the races: Eliza Doolittle, played by Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.” It’s hard to escape a sense that Ms. Knatchbull, charming, privileged and audacious, believes she is only getting started.
“Eventually, we want women to buy their whole wardrobe with us because the foundations of what we do are simple but powerful,” she said. “It’s not about a perfect body. It’s about your body and how we can make the clothes fit you — not the other way around.”
Elizabeth Paton reports on the global fashion industry for The Times, a topic she has covered for more than a decade. She is based in London.
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