I love this quote from one SR tailor: ""We want to be a household name, but only in the houses we wish to be known in."

http://living.scotsman.com/features/-A-world-where-schmutter.3742447.jp

The very august SR firms look down their noses on the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch and other companies invading the sanctity of their neighborhod that don't enjoy the same high exalted stature, but there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in their disdain.  I note with puzzlement that Richard James, once derided on "the Row" for not being a trained tailor, is now a member in good standing of the Savile Row Bespoke Association, formed recently to protect the integrity and purity of the tailoring tradition on Savile Row.  How does RA help achieve those objectives when he prolly has never handled a needle and thread?  Same with Ozwald Boateng, tailor to the stars, another member who is not a trained tailor, but who neverteless has successfully cashed in on an associaton with SR.  Gieves, another member that was once a great SR bespoke firm, has seen their shrinking bespoke business increasingly overshadowed by its growing retail operations, pushing jeans and other such "pedestrian" items that would have previously been thought of as not in keeping with a venerable SR name.  And, WTF is up with Japanese-based jeans maker Evisu also being a member?  Other members of the association, self-proclaimed Savile Row master tailors, produce very spotty garments of mediocre quality that does not reflect well at all upon the Row's reputation.  As I see it, the Row should be far more concerned with their future demise caused from within than with interlopers they deem beneath them.