‘Sex workers 20 pages of gorgeous semi-naked girls riding job’s!”
That cover line on a recent issue of British GQ was no lie: inside, in a knowing nod to 1970′s pinup calendars, the magazine delivered exactly what it promised, a bevy of scantily clad lovelies in yellow hard hats and bikinis, toting power tools and disporting on and around huge yellow JCB earthmovers.
So far, soooo blokey. And yet, JCB, this monster piece of equipment, this behemoth of hard-hat supremacy, has a legitimate if somewhat tenuous connection to gentlemanly fashion. For just as GQ hit the stands, Sir Anthony Bamford, the chairman of JCB, was about to open the doors to his new men’s-wear emporium, Bamford & Sons, in Sloane Square in London, where the clothes are decidedly more Merchant Ivory meets Biggles than Russ Meyer meets Bob the Builder.
Banish all assumptions that Bamford & Sons, available for the first time this side of the pond at Bergdorf Goodman, is some kind of blue-collar label. Unless you count an old-school donkey jacket (of the kind once favored by British garbagemen), there is no work wear in the line. Instead we are in Burberry and Paul Smith territory: cable knits, cashmeres, tweeds and outerwear, all displayed alongside toys, books, photographs and gadgets.
The draw is unashamedly aspirational, the landscape familiar: a kind of mythical England where teenagers read adventure stories in hammocks while Mum and Dad putter around on their sailboat before Sunday lunch at the family’s country pile. This isn’t the real world, the England where police officers are on the lookout for suicide bombers; this is a more comfortable place — “Brideshead Revisited” England, or even “Harry Potter.” What sets Bamford & Sons apart is that it’s not the product of some cute marketers with an eye for an unexploited opportunity — the British Ralph Lauren, anyone? Instead it is the real thing, because it reflects the image of its founders.
Rather than relying on fantasy, the Bamfords looked around and decided to take their lifestyle to market. Sir Anthony enjoys classic cars, boats and planes; Lady Bamford, who prefers to be called Carole, is environmentally aware. (Witness Daylesford, their organic farming estate in Gloucestershire, which supplies produce to the cafe located in the store’s basement.) The question then became, “What are the clothes that embody this lifestyle?”
The answer appears to be well-designed classics that are technically pukka: an oilcloth mackintosh, a waterproof jacket in Loro Piana Storm System cashmere, hand-finished Neapolitan shirts (by a maker who has been selling to Sir Anthony for years), Aran sweaters from Ireland and socks from Wales. But this is not merely le style anglais unfiltered. There are plenty of modern twists, like five-pocket gray flannel jeans.
Taking a page from a design house like Dunhill, the Bamford & Sons store was designed with the knowledge that men love to have their clothes contextualized. Thus the place is full of gadgets (sourced from around the world primarily by Sir Anthony’s son George Bamford): limited-edition black and lavender iPods, Tom Cat yo-yos, Rolleiflex cameras, cordless Sony mice. There are also books, toys and unusual things that make a man feel as if he’s not really there to try on pants, like a Ferrari steering wheel or even a whale vertebra.
When I visit, the vertebra is up on the top floor in the boys’ department, among the jars of sweets, Steiff teddy bears, a four-lane Scalextric track and a wooden sled, and suddenly the JCB connection finally makes sense. Boys love their toys, and what, after all, is a big yellow digger other than the ultimate big boy’s plaything?
