Mark Powell: Forty Years of Authentic Street Style
Mark Powell
“Beyond the fantasy of mere fashion, those that set the trends do not leave it till Sunday to wear their best.”
“The well-suited gentleman in front of you may be an actor, artist or villain, you just never know - because you may not be in the know. ”
“A tie, a tie pin, a chain, a pocket square, a pinky signet ring, a button closed or a button opened. Sacred practice before transcendence can take place. Every stitch, adjusted knot, peek of cufflink metal, button or pocket square, the transformative power of a Powell suit worn immaculately. ”
“One could meet a flying brick walking down an unlit passage or be forcibly ushered into an establishment, encouraged to buy overpriced drinks for the sake of the pretty company who’d laugh at your jokes until your money ran out.”
“Authentic street style, we have arrived, the magic is apparent ‘up yours’! ”
Mark Powell
Forty Years of Authentic Street Style
PHOTOGRAPHY AND CREATIVE DIRECTION BY RAM SHERGILL
WRITTEN BY DR. NO
GROOMIING BY JOHN CHRISTOPHER
MODELS MARK POWELL, DR. NO, Lex, (all following from MENACE MODEL MANAGEMENT) JACK Y, JOHN-PAUL, TAURAS, WILL R, FERGUS
PHOTOGRAPHIC AND STYLING ASSISTANCE BY ANASTASIA GRANT & NIDHI DHARMAVARAM
POSTPRODUCTION AND ART DIRECTION DAEN PALMA HUSE AT DPHPRODUCTION
2025 marks forty years of bespoke tailor Mark Powell setting up in the heart of London’s Soho. If you see Ram Shergill’s portrait of Mark Powell fly-posted all over Soho in suitably renegade fashion, it is because their collaboration, one of the United Kingdom’s most unique tailors and visionary photographers have come together for this special milestone. Soho is celebrating this in its inimitable style, loud and proud.
The Victorian buildings and cobbled streets between mainstream Oxford Street to the north and grand Regent Street to the west, bordering colourful Covent Garden’s theatre district and China Town’s eateries looking south, Soho has always been its own world of illusion and mystery, it makes its own rules and its own music. Never mind advertising the latest gig at one of the now sadly dwindling selections of local venues, Shergill’s portraits of sharp-suited men (and women) are where it’s at. Wherever these stylish creatures go, day or night, they are not going to be content just watching the action as a member of the hoi polloi audience or left waiting in the wings.
Beyond the fantasy of mere fashion, those that set the trends do not leave it till Sunday to wear their best. The lure of London’s twinkling bright lights, electric dreams, a style capital where subcultures have sprung from, some ace faces and notable names loom larger than others. Stars of stage and screen like Jude Law, iconic models such as Naomi Cambell, pop and rock legends including Goldie or Mr. Style Council himself Paul Weller want clothes that say what they mean and mean what they say. Transcenders of whichever genders of have been transformed by Master Powell to their authentic selves. R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
As Soho’s Photographer’s Gallery website’s Soho Then: Ep.3 Fashion and Tailoring will tell you, the area was traditionally full of textile shops, small workrooms and market stalls. Generations of fabric and haberdashery merchants, often specialising in textiles for theatre costumes, large and small screen wardrobe, as well as for the clothes of dapper wide boys, rock stars and fussy party girls to stand out from the crowd. Material could be found at all price points, top to toe, toff to totter. Selecting treasures from Klein’s Haberdashery, perusing silk-satins and lace from Barovick Fabrics to making do with off-cuts from a Berwick Street barrow market stall.
Costume designers with large budgets or aspiring fashion designers studying at Central Saint Martins (then a stone’s throw, in Charring Cross Road) all bought their supplies in Soho, armed and ready to go and create their respective stuff of dreams. Eateries and designer boutiques may have crept in to the familiar narrow streets more recently, but they are just gentility’s latest late adopters’ attempts to tame the area’s stray cats and flatten the cobbles with mass-produced kitten keels. The well-suited gentleman in front of you may be an actor, artist or villain, you just never know - because you may not be in the know.
It was no coincidence, Collin MacInnes 1959 Mod handbook Absolute Beginners was set in Soho. MacInnes, an early critic of the exploitation of teenagers and an understanding of their collective cultural capital. Teenage David Bowie too had an innate understanding of Soho in the ‘60s. He, like others, was drawn to its magnetic charm and couldn’t keep away. Beatniks and Mods killed their time and emptied their wallets ‘up-West’, where dives were alive with sound of music and full of friends one hadn’t met yet, excitement was the dish of the day just waiting to be ordered for the price of a coffee. Imported R&B lifted floorboards, someone else’s ceiling, smokey modern jazz escaped from basement ventilators in the small numbers of the morning. No wonder wads of cash evaporated rapidly from every Mod’s back pocket as though by magic.
In the 1980s film adaption of Absolute Beginners, Bowie returned to a film-set Soho now a star to play Vendice Partners. Suited and booted, his character sold fantasies to a new generation of dreamers. In the real world, Soho was the intimate home of film, television and other media industries that blurred the lines between reality and fantasy, its trade was selling entertainment and dreams to future hopefuls. In his career, Mark Powell suits graced Temple’s film adaption of the book. The suits and Bowie’s title song were hits even if the film was not.
Like the ebb and flow of life, a hustle here and there and very little plotline. That’s life. That’s modern jazz, that’s Soho too. That’s hanging out, checking the action, club after club, seeing who’s around and what’s going down, Until at long last - breakfast. Whereas gentleman had their private members clubs in St James’s, Soho was peppered with private clubs for the media industry, Blacks, Groucho’s and Soho House were hangouts of the movers, shakers, hopefuls and hangers on, many other members clubs like Ronnie Scott’s, Club Louise or Shim Sham were altogether more specialist, but often altogether more interesting.
Today, the area may be thought of as a different place to when Powell set up his first shop in Archer Street in the mid-1980s, but Soho has always been a diverse and inclusive place. One could meet a flying brick walking down an unlit passage or be forcibly ushered into an establishment, encouraged to buy overpriced drinks for the sake of the pretty company who’d laugh at your jokes until your money ran out. Soho has reportedly cleaned up its act and may seem less exiting at first visit, only recently the Groucho Club has had to hit ‘pause’, but there are bound to be plenty of entertaining characters in dusty corners if you’re listening and looking, going with the flow…
The edgy neighbourhood has provided a colourful backdrop to niche shopping, dining, drinking and rough trade, providing a home for many of the London subcultures and arty sets within its specialist clubs and amusement centres. Every basement club, café, pub and upstairs office, a rich patchwork of historical happenings, legal and otherwise, that changed and challenged the course of British cultural history. Sounds of jazz, ska, punk and electronica still hang around in the air like sonic ghosts of Christmases past. Listen carefully, they are just still audible along with the other-worldly presence of a cast of well-dressed spectres of heroes, anti-heroes and villains that haunt the area and blow in the ether. Mark Powell suited many of those that frequented bars, patronised eateries whether depicted on celluloid or for real, occasionally they owned the establishments or streets too. Bowie to Weller to Goldie, the sounds looked great.
The splendour and the sharpness of a Mark Powell suit, a trophy of individual style and a baton-passing of iconic British tailoring. A little more eye-catching, a little louder than suits from Saville Row ensconced the other side of Regent’s Steet and towards Picadilly, a Powell suit obeys all the rules and etiquette of ‘up-West’ but also whispers “up yours” to those that set those rules. A head turns at every swish and the devil in every detail. Names of each of Powell suits maps out the history of both Soho and his legacy. From Archer Street to Newburgh Street with many suits and fly-posters in-between, each one an homage to a time place and infamous tale. As Ram Shergill portraits hang in the National Portrait Gallery, so too they are plastered, pasted and posted over Soho Streets. None wears his suits so well as Mark Powell himself, the don donning sharp apparel. His clients ranging in ages from schoolboys to dead, angelic choirboys to infamous gangsters, men, women and many in-between.
Fortyish years on, 2020s new faces, teens and twenty-somethings leave their stretchy rompers and odd socks in a heap piled up in the dressing room and pad across the floor. They line up and take turns to transform themselves in front of a mirror in the basement of 10 Newburgh Street. The performative nature of fine dressing is about ritual and transformation. The actor will become him((or her)self. The performance of suiting-up begins. The models may feel like absolute beginners about to go on stage, but they are just about to meet themselves anew. Layer upon carefully chosen layer, details added or subtracted to enhance or balance. A tie, a tie pin, a chain, a pocket square, a pinky signet ring, a button closed or a button opened. Sacred practice before transcendence can take place. Every stitch, adjusted knot, peek of cufflink metal, button or pocket square, the transformative power of a Powell suit worn immaculately. Authentic street style, we have arrived, the magic is apparent “up yours”!
