In London, artisans are keeping hands-on heritage alive – meet the makers championing the craft revival

Allyson Williams, seamstress

Deep in the Yaa Centre, a buzzing arts hub that nurtures the creativity behind the Notting Hill Carnival through costume-making workshops, steel band studios and a central atrium for performances, is the HQ of Allyson Williams, the festival’s matriarch. Williams is lead seamstress at Genesis, one of the UK’s longest-running mas, or masquerade, bands: the collectives whose handcrafted costumes bring the traditions and stories of Afro-Caribbean ancestry and spirit – plus a contagious joy – to west London’s streets each August. The lush, syncopated rhythms of calypso music fill the air, and atelier-style cutting tables bestride deep plastic containers scarcely repressing explosions of sequins, velvet, silk, brocades and Lycra (“I’ve used every material known to man”). Shelves hold fragments of outrageously bejewelled body sculptures. It’s a fashion collection for street theatre; every year Williams creates samples referencing a theme for revellers to order from, and garments are then tailored to their specifications. Some involve wild proportions: one client masquerades as a Moko Jumbie (stilt-walking dancer). Since she established Genesis in 1980 with her late husband and Carnival co-founder, Vernon Williams, their faithful recreations of historical events and civilisations have been superseded, post-noughties, by fantastical themes rendered in meticulously decorated bodysuits. “Learning those techniques was incredibly uplifting, and exacting; there’s nowhere to hide. I’d like to be remembered as the person who brought amazing designs to life…. and made a mean bikini.” Katie Baron

Anderson & Sheppard, tailors

To step into the high-ceilinged, wood-panelled bespoke tailoring house of Anderson & Sheppard, established 1906, is to take a near-quantum leap into a living slice of quintessential British heritage. It’s wholeheartedly styled like a traditional gentlemen’s club, with a leather sofa, fireplace, crystal decanter and tumblers. Biblically weathered order and measurements books – tantamount to classified documents, in which every client’s details are logged by hand – line upper shelves. “We’re sticklers for tradition,” says front-of-house custodian Martin Crawford. “People like to come in and see their grandfather’s handwriting.” A corridor provides glimpses of the cutters at work, in full suiting, and paper patterns – anatomical blueprints – hanging from metal hooks. The cutters, of whom A&S has trouser and coat specialists, are essentially the architects of the design, measuring, drafting and hand cutting garments ready for construction. Here making a suit is an art form and a vocation, and the experience of buying one is aptly theatrical. A&S developed the “English drape” in the late 1920s: a softer, demilitarised, more glamorous tailoring language made for movement. Popularised by King Edward VIII, it has drawn fans in both business and the arts – including Fred Astaire and Brad Pitt. While men’s styles remain its mainstay (“Other houses are far better at suiting the female form,” says Crawford), A&S also crafted Marlene Dietrich’s famous black tux. Fluidity rules in this perfectionist’s paradise: “The job necessitates being very self-critical,” says senior cutter Leon Powell, “but our work is rooted in feeling, the ‘rock of eye’ [a tailor’s intuition].” KB