Drake's Mayfair

Drake's was founded in 1977 in London by Michael Drake, Jeremy Hull, and Isabel Dickson as a specialist tie-and-scarf maker working exclusively in English-and-Italian silk for the British luxury menswear trade. The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce the highest-grade hand-finished ties, scarves, and pocket squares — initially as a quiet white-label supplier to Bergdorf Goodman, Charvet, and the Sloane Street tailor houses, then under the Drake's brand from the late 1980s onward. The Drake's vocabulary expanded substantially under Michael Hill's creative direction (Hill joined as designer in 2006 and became co-owner in 2010 after Michael Drake's retirement): hand-finished Italian-silk ties remained the foundation, but the brand expanded into a complete ready-to-wear menswear collection of cotton oxford shirts, cashmere knitwear, tailored jackets, and footwear. The brand's visual voice — anchored to mid-century Ivy League, mid-1980s Brideshead-aesthetic British dress, and an editorial visual culture that runs in Drake's seasonal in-house magazine — has been a defining force in the post-2010 menswear-classic conversation. The brand is independent and held by Michael Hill plus several long-term British investors. Drake's operates flagship retail in London (Savile Row, Clifford Street, plus the Drake's Haberdashery shop on Lamb's Conduit Street), New York (Crosby Street, Soho), Tokyo (Aoyama), plus international wholesale through MR PORTER, MATCHES, and the major luxury menswear specialty retailers. Few British heritage menswear brands of the post-2010 era have built such a culturally coherent revival of the mid-century English-and-American dress vocabulary.