Holland & Sherry
Holland & Sherry was founded in 1836, two years before Charvet and twenty-two years before John Lobb arrived in London from Cornwall. The house has occupied positions on or adjacent to Savile Row for most of that history — currently at 9–11 Savile Row itself, with showrooms also in New York, Hong Kong, and other cities.
The function of Holland & Sherry is not the function of a mill like Vitale Barberis Canonico, and understanding the difference is the first requirement for using either intelligently.
What a Cloth Merchant Does
Holland & Sherry does not weave cloth. It is a cloth merchant and agent — an entity that sources cloth from mills across the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, and occasionally further afield; commissions exclusive designs and colourways that cannot be obtained elsewhere; holds these cloths in substantial stock; and supplies them to tailors on a per-metre basis.
This structure has several consequences that benefit the serious buyer. The tailor gains access to thousands of cloths representing the best of multiple weaving traditions without the capital commitment of holding full rolls in their own premises. The merchant gains the ability to negotiate exclusive designs with mills — cloths that appear in the Holland & Sherry book and nowhere else. The buyer gains access to a curated selection of British and international cloth that no single mill can match.
The Key Ranges
Shetland Tweeds — Woven in the Outer Hebrides from wool produced by Shetland sheep, these tweeds have a surface texture and natural warmth that manufactured substitutes cannot approach. The H&S selection represents the full range of traditional colourways alongside exclusive commissions in less conventional grounds. These are the cloths for overcoats and sport jackets worn in genuine weather.
Huddersfield Worsteds — An important distinction from the Biella tradition: the Yorkshire worsted, produced in the mills of Huddersfield and the West Riding, produces a harder-finished, crisper cloth with a characteristic brightness that is the correct choice for formal suiting in the British tradition. Where Biella cloth tends toward softness and drape, the Huddersfield worsted tends toward precision and edge. Both are correct; they are different.
Scottish Tartans and Clan Checks — Holland & Sherry holds an extensive selection of traditional Scottish tartans alongside a programme of exclusively commissioned check patterns in colourways developed in collaboration with the house. These cloths — for trousers, sport jackets, and the occasional suit — represent the British country tradition at its most refined.
Crispaire — H&S's open-weave tropical worsted, constructed to allow airflow while maintaining a presentable surface. The English summer cloth of choice for men who wear suits in warm weather and wish to do so without visible suffering.
The Savile Row Relationship
The position of the Holland & Sherry showroom on Savile Row itself — literally a shopfront on the street — creates a physical proximity to the tailors that is one of the most practically useful facts about the house.
A client commissioning a bespoke suit can walk from their tailor's premises to the cloth merchant and select fabric in natural light, handling the swatches, assessing the weight and drape, examining the colourway against their skin tone. This is the correct way to choose cloth — not from a small sample card under artificial light, but from a length of cloth in conditions approaching those in which it will actually be worn.
Holland & Sherry facilitate this directly.
Access for the Private Client
Unlike VBC, Holland & Sherry can be visited in person by a private individual who is commissioning bespoke work. The showroom is not a retail shop in the conventional sense, but it is not closed to non-trade visitors approaching with a genuine commission in progress.
The practical approach: bring the name of your tailor and the commission you are working on. The showroom staff understand that fabric is chosen, not merely selected from a catalogue, and will work with a client who comes prepared.
Pricing
Cloth is priced per metre. The standard commercial ranges begin at approximately £80–120 per metre for worsted wools; the exclusive designs and finer weights begin at approximately £150–200 per metre and climb beyond that for exceptional fibres. A suit typically requires 3 to 3.5 metres.