London’s Most Colorful Tailor John Pearse Can’t Stop Breaking Rules

LONDON — There’s a little patch of bohemia lighting up the tourist-clogged streets of Soho, a tailor shop full of swirly peacock feather prints and polka dots. It’s a place where regulars can have their threadbare clothing repaired, and try on tangerine corduroy jackets, or flowery shirts that look as if they were made from old-fashioned upholstery fabric.

At the center of it all is John Pearse, a legend dressed in a little bucket hat and round hippie sunglasses who trained as a tailor on Savile Row and later made the clothing for the Swinging ’60s shop Granny Takes a Trip, including the flowery Liberty print jacket that’s featured on a Royal Mail postage stamp.

Pearse did all that when he was still a teenager and living in north London with a group of friends (including the road manager for The Who). It was a rock ’n’ roll start to life, but it wasn’t nearly exciting enough for Pearse. After leaving Granny, he decamped to Spain and then to Italy, where he befriended Federico Fellini, who encouraged him to make films.

“I thought I could be the Fellini of London or the [Jean-Luc] Goddard or the [Andy] Warhol — or maybe all three,” said Pearse in an interview at his tailor shop in a Georgian building in Soho.

He made a few films in the 1970s — including “Moviemakers,” “Maneater” and “Jailbird” — but it was an expensive business, and difficult to maintain the momentum.

He eventually quit the movie business, and in the 1980s returned to his roots as a tailor, attracting clients who remembered him from his Granny days, including members of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and their families, and a new Young British Artist crowd, including Damien Hirst.

In those days he had a Hollywood following, too, with clients including Jack Nicholson, whom he’d visit every year “during the Santa Ana winds” to take measurements and orders.

The arty, socialite and music crowds still flock to his tailor shop on Meard Street in Soho, and so do their children and grandchildren. Bill Nighy has clothing made there, as do some of the younger Niarchoses and Elkanns. Pearse remains close to Georg Baselitz’s children and grandchildren.

They love his freewheeling style, anti-establishment attitude and liberal use of deadstock fabrics for everything from trippy patterned shirts to jackets and coats with a retro twist.

“We don’t do ‘neat’ here, and we’re not too stuffy,” said Pearse, who points to a rack of coats he’s repairing. Some are battered, but clearly beloved, including a long topcoat he’s altered for a female client who’s put on a few pounds. On another rack is a coat made with a tweed that belongs to the family estate of an aristocratic customer.

Pearse works closely with his clients, whipping vintage denim into a suit or adding a rainbow-bright lining to a classic jacket or coat. He draws on his cinematic, and 1960s, past for inspiration.

“I’m producing one-offs — that’s the beauty of what I do. I’m not interested in fashion whatsoever. Fashion is all about money, and you’ve got to keep selling it. Here, stuff can hang around for as long as it hangs around until somebody ‘gets’ it” and brings it to life, he said.

Pearse has always been a free thinker. When he returned to tailoring in the 1980s, it was the age of the power suit and the exaggerated, architectural styles of Giorgio Armani and Yohji Yamamoto.

“The English cut had gone,” said Pearse.

But it didn’t matter, he just kept doing what he liked and the old clients returned. His first big comeback suit was a dark brown wool chalk stripe made from deadstock fabric. He made it a four-button, single-breasted style with patch pockets and ’60s Mod flair. It was a hit with his clients.

He has always had a sense for texture, shape and color. “Cloth — worsted wool, tweed and velvet — is a joy to work with, and my color sense probably comes from out of the womb,” said Pearse, whose mother was a milliner in Mayfair.

“Mummy would make me a pair of trousers, say, in orange. And I’d tell her, ‘I’m not wearing that.’ Then I would tell her what I wanted, and how it should be made and how I wanted to look. I think I was doing that from around the age of 5,” he said with a laugh.

Pearse’s long-term clients say his instincts are still spot-on, and his pieces become staples for life.

The dark wooden armoires in the shop (originally from a Welsh chapel and purchased from his client Christopher Gibbs, the late British antiques dealer, interior decorator and aesthete) are filled with pieces that look as if they were pulled from a mid-20th century film set.

One dark coat has a dramatic hood, while another corduroy one is long and skinny with a military feel. “And this is the ‘Brancusi,’” he said, showing off a coat inspired by one the Romanian sculptor wore. “It’s an overall [style] that looks like it could have come from the Renault factory. It’s got beautiful pockets and is comfortable to wear.”

That’s just the tailoring. Some of the shirts, too, are made from deadstock in trippy prints and velvety textures that recall his Granny days. Friends bring him bolts of cloth and he gets creative. He also does bib fronts, Mexican wedding shirts, sporty woven cotton styles, and others with polka dots.

“Dots have been doing well forever and ever,” said Pearse, adding that demand for dots intensifies “every time there’s a Bob Dylan film or Keith Richards shows up.”

There are hats, too, made from fabric offcuts — flat caps and bucket styles similar to the brown suede one he wears around the office.

Although Pearse left the film industry long ago, he still does the odd movie. He worked with his old friend, the award-winning costume designer Milena Canonero, on “Oceans 12,” dressing actors including Brad Pitt, and is rumored to be working on costumes for Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles biopics.

At nearly 80, he’s still having fun doing what he loves and it’s not just the tailoring that feeds him — it’s the social life and even the commute to work. Pearse lives near Hyde Park and cycles to and from Soho every day “even if there’s a blizzard,” he said. “A lot of people probably think I’m a Deliveroo driver.”

He loves his Georgian townhouse store on Meard Street, too. The “Pearse” on the shingle is upside down, and mirror backward, a nod to the renegade inside.