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WORK TITLE: House of Nutter
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1984
WEBSITE: https://www.lancenrichardson.com/
CITY:
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: Australian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1984.
EDUCATION:Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author.
WRITINGS
Also contributor to periodicals, including GQ, Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, New York, New Yorker, Slate, and Atlantic.
SIDELIGHTS
Lance Richardson makes his living predominantly as a writer. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including GQ, Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, New York, New Yorker, Slate, and Atlantic. Prior to starting his writing career, Richardson attended New York University’s, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where he obtained his M.A.
House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row is another one of Richardson’s works, and centers on the lives of David and Tommy Nutter, two brothers who led successful and prominent careers within the photography and fashion worlds, respectively. Tommy takes up the majority of the book’s focus. In addition to the creative dimensions of the brother’s lives, Richardson also looks at another facet of their identities. Both brothers were gay, and Richardson also examines this aspect of their personal lives, particularly through the lens of British sociocultural attitudes. Richardson reveals how perilous it was to be openly gay during the period, as well as how iconic Tommy became in particular simply by being himself.
In order to gather the information present within the book, Richardson conducted much of his own research, including interviewing David Nutter himself. Tommy Nutter made a name for himself through his personality just as much as he did through his tailoring. His skill and popularity granted him the opportunity to make clothing for numerous celebrities, including The Beatles. However, the book starts not at the beginning of Tommy’s career, but at his early years. Tommy led a normal childhood, and developed his eye for fashion as a young adult. This discovery led him to become a tailor and soon open a shop, known as Nutters of Savile Row. In addition to tracking Tommy’s career, Richardson also looks at his relationship with numerous celebrities, as well as his general impact upon popular culture and the fashion world. A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked: “Richardson’s affection for his subjects is touching and establishes a tone of admiration.” They later added that “his enthusiasm is contagious.” A Kirkus Reviews writer called the book “an exciting addition to fashion history.” On the Guardian website, Alexander Larman expressed that Richardson “writes with flair and erudition, making extensive use of interviews with David, and bringing something new to the evocation of an era that might seem overfamiliar and cliched to many.” He also stated: “In fact, barring the absence of an index, it’s hard to find fault with this thoroughly enjoyable glimpse into high fashion and low life.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, review of House of Nutter.
Publishers Weekly, March 19, 2018, review of House of Nutter, p. 65.
ONLINE
Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/ (June 3, 2018), Alexander Larman, review of House of Nutter.
Lance Richardson website, https://www.lancenrichardson.com (June 26, 2018), author profile.
LANCE RICHARDSON has written for numerous publications, including The Guardian, New York, The Atlantic, Slate, The New Yorker (online), The Sydney Morning Herald, and several international iterations of GQ. He holds a masters degree in longform journalism from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, NYU.
Originally from Australia, he now lives in New York.
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Print Marked Items
House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of
Savile Row
Publishers Weekly.
265.12 (Mar. 19, 2018): p65.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row
Lance Richardson. Crown Archetype, $28
(400p) ISBN 978-0-451-49646-1
Journalist Richardson transports readers to the colorful days of postwar London in this dual portrait of
brothers Tommy and David Nutter, the former a legendary fashion designer who died of AIDS in 1992, the
latter a rock music photographer. Born and raised in north London, Tommy began his career in bespoke
tailoring as a teenager in I960 before opening his own shop, Nutters of Savile Row, in 1969. Tommy's
relationship with Beatles manager Brian Epstein's assistant put David in the right place at the right time to
photograph the wedding of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which essentially launched David's career. He goes
on to photograph Mick Jagger, tour with Elton John, and befriend Michael Jackson. Richardson provides a
fascinating look into the process of Savile Row tailoring in the 1960s, a history lesson on the fashion
influences of King Edward VII (and the later "Teddy Boys" of the 1950s), and a glimpse of underground
queer subculture of the 1950s where the Nutters found a community. His descriptions of Tommy's designs
are eloquent and vivid (Tommy's suits are called "neo-Edwardian dandyism"), and are accompanied by 170
photographs that capture the fashion spirit of the age, many of them taken by brother David. Richardson's
affection for his subjects is touching and establishes a tone of admiration, and while this results in
occasionally glossing over the Nutters' faults (there are bewilderingly brief references to Tommy's "episodes
of operatic drama"), his enthusiasm is contagious. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row." Publishers Weekly, 19 Mar. 2018, p. 65. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531977378/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cbbe6ebc. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531977378
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Richardson, Lance: HOUSE OF
NUTTER
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Richardson, Lance HOUSE OF NUTTER Crown Archetype (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 5, 1 ISBN: 978-0-
451-49646-1
An expose of the underrated designer who helped shape 20th-century European aesthetics.
In his debut work of nonfiction, Australian journalist Richardson explores the life of Tommy Nutter (1943-
1992), the British designer who contributed greatly to the unique fashion sense of 1960s England. Mapping
out Nutter's life from beginning to end, the author capitalizes on the moments in his subject's life that
caused significant ripples in society. "His life vividly personalized forty years of critical gay history," writes
Richardson. "From the underground queer clubs of Soho to the unbridled freedom of New York bathhouses
to the terrifying nightmare of AIDS--Tommy was there, both witness and participant." It's as if Nutter had
his pulse on nearly every significant moment of the era. After enrolling at a technical college, Nutter
quickly started identifying aesthetic deficiencies in culture; three years later he began working his first
tailoring job. What followed was a series of interactions with some of the biggest names of the time: John
Lennon and the rest of the Beatles, Yoko Ono, Elton John, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and many others.
His cuts were intricately detailed, progressively modern, and inclusive. Refreshingly, Richardson has
created a work that is surprisingly unpretentious; the author looks at Nutter's life with impressive
objectivity, zeroing in on significant episodes and leaving the rest on the cutting-room floor. The author also
gives close attention to Tommy's relationship with his brother, David, providing plenty of room for the
telling of both brothers' lives and experiences. "David adored all this flagrant insolence," writes Richardson.
"While hardly a hippie himself, he appreciated anything that agitated for a more open-minded conversation
by treating alternative lifestyles as legitimate sources of joy." Such were the Nutter brothers: insatiably open
to the world and its opportunities and able to systematically make a splash along their way.
An exciting addition to fashion history.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Richardson, Lance: HOUSE OF NUTTER." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248124/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2c3ab4f0.
Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248124
House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row by Lance Richardson – review
The enjoyable story of Tommy Nutter – flamboyant suit-maker to the stars – casts a new light on swinging London and Britain’s persecution of homosexuals
Alexander Larman
Sun 3 Jun 2018 04.00 EDT
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‘Flamboyant’: Tommy Nutter in his shop in November 1969
‘Flamboyant’: Tommy Nutter in his shop in November 1969. Photograph: Jones/Getty Images
The Savile Row tailor Tommy Nutter – his birth name, rather than a moniker adopted at the height of his stardom – was the exemplar of fabulous but fleeting fame in the 60s and 70s. Emerging apparently from nowhere, he quickly became “the coolest man you’ve ever seen”, designing flamboyant clothes for stars such as Elton John and the Beatles, who, apart from George, wore his suits on the cover of Abbey Road .
Lance Richardson’s splendidly readable and gossipy account of his life has a trump card to play – namely the relationship between Tommy and his photographer brother, David, who acted as a kind of artistic Boswell to his brother’s sartorial Johnson. Tommy died in 1992 of an Aids-related illness, but David is still alive, and his cooperation enhances a gripping read that is as much social history as it is biography.
To be gay, as both Tommy and David were, growing up in postwar Britain was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was a time of chemical castration for “queers” and imprisonment; on the other, it was a world of secret languages and discreet clubs (with less than discreet patrons). Richardson, himself gay, writes about the persecution of homosexuals at the time with bracing anger; readers who expect a series of camp anecdotes may be surprised as he describes how the outing and punishment of gay men was “like a public hanging transposed from the middle ages: prurient [and] ethically indefensible”.
It was in this milieu that Tommy, a talented young “cutter” who learned his trade on Savile Row, opened his first boutique at No 35a with the brilliant Edward Sexton. With the financial and publicity assistance of, among others, Cilla Black and Peter Brown (one of the Beatles’ management team), Nutter was the right man in the right place, strutting about in a gorgeous, ridiculous era peopled by characters such as Michael Fish, who sold silk kipper ties from his eponymous Clifford Street boutique in the shape of actual kippers. Nutter, a “comely youth from Edgware”, north London, soon rose to the challenge, producing outfits that were “an eccentric mix of Lord Emsworth, the Great Gatsby and Bozo the Clown”.
Tommy's idea of making a splash was to throw himself into the Thames after being ejected from a party at the Tate
It is no surprise that the likes of Lennon and Jagger were aficionados; nor that, after quickly scaling the heights, Nutter went into decline, irrelevance giving way to ill health. A lesser writer might have made the story of his downfall depressing, but Richardson has an eye for telling and hilarious details. We learn, for instance, that for Elton John’s (first) wedding in 1984, Nutter created 20 wildly exuberant outfits, “two of each, in case of any mishap, in a wide range of primary colours”.
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It is David who gives the story a wider dimension. He was nicknamed “Dawn Black” for his habit of partying throughout the night in New York, though he was a more introverted and less reckless character than his brother, photographing the stars of the day, but remaining an observer rather than a participant in bacchanalian pursuits. But then he could hardly help seeming less colourful than Tommy – a man whose idea of making a splash was to throw himself into the Thames after being ejected from a party at the Tate.
House of Nutter, Richardson’s first book, is a fine match of author and subject. He writes with flair and erudition, making extensive use of interviews with David, and bringing something new to the evocation of an era that might seem overfamiliar and cliched to many. In fact, barring the absence of an index, it’s hard to find fault with this thoroughly enjoyable glimpse into high fashion and low life.
• House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row by Lance Richardson is published by Chatto & Windus (£25). To order a copy for £21.25 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99