Portsmouth's oldest trade: Bentley's Tailors

The News, Portsmouth

Bentley's has been providing a high quality, personalised bespoke service, with each suit being hand cut and styled to your individual requirements for over 75 years  Situated in Albert Road Southsea, Portsmouth and continuing five generations of traditional bespoke tailoring

Transcript

00:00My name is Alec Bentley and I've been a tailor in Albert Road for over 60 years now.

00:08We're presently at 136 Albert Road. That preceded by my father's business which was at 233 Albert Road.

00:17So we've only moved a few hundred meters, not anything further than that. And we make handmade

00:23suits all the way through, jackets, trousers, coats and all that sort of thing. And what we specialise in

00:32is British material. 95% of all our cloth is made within the British Isles including Northern Ireland

00:39and Southern Ireland for Donegles and linens and tweeds and things like that. And only 5% is coming

00:47from Italy and that's ultra lightweight. So if you wanted a really good solid oval suit,

00:54wear the people for it. In the old days you would do a training scheme which would last an apprenticeship.

01:04You'd be indentured into a company to teach you what to do and that would be roughly seven years.

01:11Now the only people that did seven years training were architects and in some of the medical profession.

01:21So it was a very very long period to be called a master one way or another. I trained under my father

01:30and I think I learnt a tremendous amount that way. But you adapt as times go by and you realise that

01:40styles change and you change to meet the requirements of your customers. And we're in a unique position

01:49because sometimes people come to us and they say, I want something exactly like the 1940s. Can you do it?

01:57And we've actually got the patterns where we can do it from to show them what it's like. So they have a

02:03visual impression before we even go to start. We're always looking to see what are the

02:09imperfections in a person. Nobody's perfect. The old statement was you're not a god to either your

02:17tailor or your doctor. And that's absolutely true because we've all got imperfections.

02:23The number of people who don't know they drop on one side to the other. They have a curvature of the

02:30spine or all sorts of difficulties. What I really enjoy is when someone does have

02:37a series of really difficult problems physically with their body and they just want to be comfortable

02:46and look like anybody else. They don't want to be noticed for their disability. And we do all sorts

02:52of wonderful things to make that as near possible as we possibly can. I'm 73 now. There is virtually nobody

03:00left in our trade. My own children have gone on to do wonderful things and they're all fully employed

03:09and engaged and doing very, very well, very successful in what they've chosen to do.

03:15I've got seven grandchildren, three great-grandchildren. Two of the grandchildren are doing other things.

03:24One's in the army. The other one's in computers. I don't know what the younger ones will do. There's always

03:31a possibility that somebody may come in and we can put and whoever as well. But in reality, I think that

03:40we will probably be coming to the end of our days, really, and truthfully. And that's something which

03:48I have to accept.

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