Background: During the last decade or so the century old bespoke tailors on Savile Row have become the epitome of luxury brands as far as menswear is concerned. At the same time, the different establishments on Savile Row have started to modernise themselves through various means to better fit into today’s fast paced retail-market. Aims of the research: The purpose of this research is to discover what factors have played part in keeping the founders of Savile Row, Henry Poole & Co., modern and relevant throughout the years. Methods: This research was conducted as a qualitative single case, case study. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with upper management and other available published sources and then analysed with the help of former research in relevant areas. Results: It was found that the brand of Henry Poole & Co. stayed true to their origins as a bespoke tailor and that modernising is something that has not been forced upon the company and brand but should more be seen as a continuous process where each new generation bring something new to the company. The company had adapted modern ways of communication such as social media and a responsive website and also incorporated step down line extensions, where they sell ready-to-wear and made-to-measure garments in China and Japan. This is a way to develop their brand into other segments but they still kept their original brand vision intact as being a pure bespoke tailor located on Savile Row and kept their different business operations on a distance. Contributions: This thesis has opened up doors to an area that has not had much interest from the academic world. It hopefully gives way for new research ideas, but it has also highlighted management tools and best practices that has contributed to the success of a more than two century old company.

This thesis explores high-end and bespoke menswear, tailoring and fashion, asking the question - why do some men choose to spend large sums of money to have clothes made for them? Using tailors and high-end menswear as a lens, this thesis unpacks how men construct their notion of self in the digital and terrestrial worlds through the clothes that they wear and the identities they perform. Based on twelve months' terrestrial fieldwork in London and twenty-four months' concurrent digital fieldwork with Instagram, this thesis examines notions of dress, performance and the individual across a multi-dimensional fieldsite set within a blended digital and terrestrial landscape. The fieldwork comprised visiting and interviewing tailors, and observing inside their workshops and at their fashion shows. In addition, the analyst-as-client built relationships with tailors, and constructed a digital self within Instagram through the publication of self-portraits and images of clothing. This thesis is presented in four chapters, flanked by an Introduction and Conclusion. These chapters move from an exploration of terrestrial research in the first two, to an analysis of digital research in the latter two. Five major motifs emerge in this thesis: the importance of the anthropology of clothing and adornment within western society; the nature of the individual in a digitised world; the difficulty in conducting western-centric fieldwork without an element of digital analysis; a methodological restructuring of digital anthropology; and the idea that a digital self can acquire agency. This thesis employs a pioneering blended methodology which brings together the fields of digital anthropology, visual anthropology and material culture to question how selves are constructed in a rapidly changing and increasingly digitised modernity. In conclusion, the thesis argues that individuals construct multiple digital selves and a sense of identity (around the notion of 'authentic individualism') that is illusory.