DAKS
 |
|
| Industry | Fashion |
|---|---|
| Founded | City of London, England (1894) |
| Founder | Simeon Simpson |
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Key people
|
Paul Dimond, (Deputy chairman) |
| Products |
Clothing Accessories |
| Website | daks.com |
Paul Dimond, (Deputy chairman)
DAKS is a British luxury fashion house, founded in 1894 by Simeon Simpson.
DAKS holds royal warrants granted from three members of the Royal Family, one of 15 firms (out of 820) to do so. Officially granted to DAKS’ Simpson Piccadilly store in 1956 was the royal warrant of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, followed by that of HM The Queen in 1962 and HRH The Prince of Wales in 1982.
Worldwide, DAKS is exported to 30 countries and sold in over 2,000 specialty shops, major stores and concessions. The name is a combination of the initials of Alexander Simpson and an initial and final letter of his business associate Dudley Beck.
In 1894 Simeon Simpson, aged 16, rented a room on Middlesex Street, East London, with the intention of setting up a business in bespoke tailoring, focused on high standard craftsmanship. Several innovations of technology at the time were being introduced with machinery capable of making buttonholes and electric powered saws to cut many layers of fabric at once – Simpson saw the potential for such equipment for producing garments in higher quantities while still upholding quality tailoring techniques, aiming to improve ready-to-wear standards as no male or female professionals considered ready-to-wear for suitable attire at the time. Simpson’s methods proved successful in speeding up the process and he set up several factories within London, which soon required expansion in its early years through popularity of the label.
Alexander Simpson, his second son, joined the business aged 15 in 1917, and by 1929 had planned and opened a larger factory in Stoke Newington where production could be centralised, this again had to be enlarged a few years later.
With the continued growth of the company Alexander Simpson began to take more control of the business, and in 1935 DAKS gained further fame for the S Simpson brand as an innovation in the tailoring world of the first self-supporting trouser. He went about to invent a way to support his trousers that wouldn’t need braces as these interrupted his swing whilst playing golf and caused his shirt to become untucked. The DAKS trouser was invented – it had a channel within the waistband at the back wherein an elasticated strip was attached at the sides with tabs attached to one of two buttons for adjustment. On the inside of the waistband were sewn-on rubber pads that gripped the shirt and stopped it from becoming loose. This happened in a world where to buy a pair of trousers of high quality one would have to have a bespoke pair made by a tailor, and thus this new design allowed the ease of ready-to-wear trousers. Simpson was so sure of his new design that he had 100,000 pairs made before being introduced to the public at a high price of 30 shillings in a time when a whole bespoke suit would cost 50 shillings. The trousers were available in many colours and fabrics that weren’t generally associated with menswear. They became so popular that the trousers were incorporated into suits and soon after a DAKS womenswear line was released, using the patented waistband for skirting.
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Wikipedia