THE KILGOUR PHILOSOPHY

KILGOUR'S AESTHETIC & PHILOSOPHY

• Aesthetic: Modern, discreet, and purist. It prioritizes texture over color and line and proportion over embellishment.

• Design Principles: The clothes emphasize abstraction, symmetry, and balance. They use the design device of the dot or circle. The style has "British reserve" but also a "global design lexicon."

• Approach: The brand is resolutely not retrospective, treating its past with respect while looking to the future. It uses craft to achieve modernity and avoids pastiching the past.

• Design Process: The approach is described as scientific and systematic, with clothes engineered to be functional and comfortable while looking "effortlessly chic."

• Influences: It draws influence from contemporary art, architecture, design, typography, and music.

• The Wearer: The man in a Kilgour suit will be the best-dressed but will "blend with the shadows" and wear clothes that speak of "a quiet self-confidence."

HISTORY & CLIENTELE

• Founding: The company was founded in 1880 as T & F French.

• Evolution of the Name: 1923: Merged with A.H. Kilgour to form Kilgour & French. 1937: Changed to Kilgour, French and Stanbury after Fred and Louis Stanbury (who introduced the house's foundational elegance of cut) joined in 1925. 2003: the brand became simply Kilgour.

• Notable Clientele: Classic: Cary Grant and Fred Astaire. Contemporary: Jude Law, Daniel Craig, Karl Lagerfeld and Bryan Ferry.

Kilgour is a historic tailoring house that uses precise, modern engineering and craft to create a quietly confident, minimalist, and intellectually rigorous form of menswear.