Savile Row made its customary strong showing at Monday’s 2015 Golden Shears awards ceremony at the historic Merchant Taylors’ Hall with Dionne Reeves (pictured, top right), an apprentice at Row heavyweight and founding SRBA member Huntsman, winning the Silver Shears Award for her stunning military-inspired frock coat and overalls.

Congratulations should also go to Joe Holsgrove of Denham & Goddard who took the Golden Shears Award and Nuriya Kabirova from the University of the Creative Arts in Rochester who picked up the Rising Star Award.

Founded in 1974, the Golden Shears Awards are open to students and apprentice tailors throughout the UK and are commonly known as ‘The Oscars of the tailoring world’. Since 1998, the awards have focused on supporting education in the tailoring industry and only industry trainees and students on dedicated tailoring courses with less than a total of seven years further education or training are eligible to enter.

This year’s twenty-five finalists were first judged by a panel of elite bespoke tailors, with marks being awarded for cutting, designing and tailoring. A panel of guest judges comprising (as pictured, left to right, with the Master Taylor of the Merchant Taylors’ Hall) of supermodel Jodie Kidd, Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Piers Linney, fashion designer Betty Jackson, actress Jennifer Saunders and former Chairman of the BBC Lord Grade then awarded marks for overall style and selected the winners.

Five of the finalists were apprentices with Savile Row Bespoke Association members, with Ashleigh Jones representing Anderson & Sheppard, Vanessa Black and Dionne Reeves representing Huntsman, James Alexander Weir representing Henry Poole, Maja Jauslin representing Richard Anderson and Maria Thelin representing Welsh & Jefferies.

“I was thoroughly impressed,” commented Jodie Kidd. “Women were really nailing menswear.”

Each of the colleges taking part received a donation towards the cost of buying the cloth and trimmings for their submitted garments from a number of leading cloth merchants, including SRBA Associate Member Dormeuil.

This year’s Golden Shears Awards were kindly supported by CAPITB Trust, Chivas Deluxe Blended Scotch Whisky and the Savile Row Bespoke Association.

Special thanks are also due to the Master Taylor and all the staff at the Merchant Taylors’ Hall.

Pictures by Jon Bradley.