E. Tautz

Designer name: Patrick Grant

Origin: Edinburgh

Design background: Patrick studied at Leeds and Oxford. He has been running Norton & Sons, a bespoke tailoring house on Savile Row, since 2005.

What are your design signatures? “At the heart of the E. Tautz collection is Savile Row cutting; elegant shoulders, suppressed waist, well proportioned, well balanced and unfussy in keeping with the sporting and military traditions. E. Tautz like simple cutting paired with bold accents of colour and pattern - cloths with scale and texture; big checks, fine flannels, and stripes.”

How would you describe the E.Tautz man? “The Tautz man has a classic English sensibility mixed with a kind of schoolboy humour; he likes to dress elegantly, but enjoys clothes with wit.”

What is inspiring you for autumn/winter 2010: “We like to return to that very English ideal of pattern and texture and for autumn/winter 2010 we've worked with some great weavers in the Scottish Isles, to create some outstanding new cloths, but with a distinctly early Saint Laurent feel. We've taken this and overlaid an early 20th century naval feel (think Noel Coward and Bernard Miles in David Leans In Which We Serve), heavily tailored with a lot of double breasted pieces and fantastic coats.”

What encapsulates fashionable London for you? “Savile Row is at the heart of the everything that E. Tautz does: the timeless, simple elegance of our cut, and our relentless pursuit of the highest standards of make.”

What do you hope the new decade will mean for your brand? “I'd be delighted if we can get somewhere close to the position we held in the 1910s, when Europe and America knew E. Tautz as England's finest sporting tailor and our salons in London and Paris were dressing the world’s most elegant men.”

How does London influence your designs? “We are constantly inspired by the way the young men of London style their clothes. There's an eccentricity, and a sense of adventure with the way clothes are worn that I don't think exists elsewhere. I cycle from Hackney every day and am inspired constantly by the people I pass.”