When Australian tailor P. Johnson opened its Mayfair store a couple of weeks ago, it was a homecoming of sorts. The brand may have been founded thousands of miles away in Sydney, but this corner of Central London played an important part in its origin story. Co-founder Patrick Johnson wrote on Instagram of living in London 20 years ago, when he would “weave the streets of Mayfair with magnificent imaginations of my future shop”.
P. Johnson has had a physical store in London since 2016, first in Soho, before moving to Fitzrovia, from 2017 to 2021. But the new outpost on Old Burlington Street, adjacent to Savile Row, represents a coming of age for the brand, within one of the traditional tailoring centers of the world. “We’ve had a lovely and warm welcome,” says co-founder Thomas Bede Rile. “Ten years ago, we would have felt threatened and insecure about opening here, but we stuck to our guns and kept doing what we loved. We’re older now, we’re 17 years deep and we have a bit of confidence. I think we’re pretty good at what we do, we have something to say, and we have a voice in this world.”
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Johnson and Riley founded P. Johnson in 2009, when the former returned from London with plans to set out on his own. The pair had met at the University of Adelaide, where they were studying oenology — the science of winemaking — and bonded over a shared love of clothes. “We were aesthetes at heart,” says Riley. After graduation, Johnson headed to Europe, while Riley went to work in Barossa Valley, deep in the Australian wine country. Johnson started work in Mayfair, watching some of the traditional tailoring houses at work and beginning to dream of having his own place. “He called me up and said, ‘Come and work with me,’” Riley says. “We loved clothes, this was our thing.”
A decade and a half since that phone call, P. Johnson has gone from strength to strength. Over time, it’s grown out of its Australian roots to become an international tailoring house, with outposts in Jakarta, New York and London, as well as nine locations across Australia. The company doesn’t publicly share earnings or revenue. “The goal is not to have dozens of stores, it’s to have very good stores, and to provide a joyful, intimate experience for the client,” says Riley.
People are drawn to P. Johnson for the way it decodes tailoring. Unlike traditional tailors, the brand’s website is open about the process, price and timings behind garments, as well as offering three different tiers of product, ranging from AU $1,195 ($844) to AU $2,895 ($2,000).
While P. Johnson’s roots are in the tailoring world, the brand has broadened its product offering in recent years, to create a fuller wardrobe. In 2019, P. Johnson expanded into womenswear, responding to calls from the wives, girlfriends and partners of its devoted client base. “We started as a tailor, but we felt that wasn’t enough and we needed to give people the full wardrobe and the full experience,” says Riley. “You look back at tailoring houses and they come with a certain superciliousness and status. We’re not studded leather couches and cigars and whisky, we’re a hospitality business. We’re in the business of making people feel comfortable and making them feel the joy we feel about clothing.”
Through this more relaxed, casual approach, P. Johnson is part of a new wave of tailoring brands, operating somewhere between high luxury and contemporary fashion, while building devoted client bases. There’s Anglo-Italian and Speciale, who are based in London, as well as New York’s J. Mueser and Stockholm-founded Saman Amel. Each one is reinterpreting classic clothing and suitmaking in a less stuffy and buttoned-up way, to cater to modern people’s needs.
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These brands take inspiration from the forms of classic menswear — suits and ties, knitwear, shirts and jeans — without the stiffness and affectation associated with it. “[We have] have taken some degree of pomposity out of the sartorial side and made it more accessible,” says Riley. “People are less certain about what they’re meant to be wearing, and [these] brands are able to explain.”
A less serious in-store experience is what sets P. Johnson and its contemporaries apart from more traditional neighbors on Savile Row. “People who visit the store have all these pressures in their lives, when they step in that door, they should have an escape. We’ve got a saying in our business, which is to take the job seriously, don’t take yourself seriously. I think that’s a lovely bit of the Australian attitude. We’re serious about what we’re doing, we love this and we really care about it, but we’re going to have fun while we’re doing it.”
P. Johnson’s Aussie attitude has also helped the founders carve out a brand identity separate to those founded out of London, New York, Paris, or Milan. “We can go and cherry pick all the best elements from North America, from Europe, from Asia, from wherever, and formulate our own perspective,” Riley says. “We get to go and collect all this excitement, all the best parts, and then mash it altogether.” He draws a parallel between P. Johnson’s tailoring and classic Italian styles, both designed for hotter climates than London or New York’s tailoring houses. In the past, the brand has worked with London-based photographer James Harvey-Kelly, shooting campaigns on Italian beaches and London terraced streets.
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That said, in a nod to its roots, P. Johnson sells belts plaited from kangaroo leather, a tribute to an Australian bushcraft tradition that almost died out. Each belt is hand-plaited, a process that takes eight hours and a huge amount of skill and experience. “These things are beautiful, and they’re part of our vernacular,” says Riley.
The brand’s arrival in Mayfair is the culmination of its journey from Sydney to tailoring’s traditional heart. The store is 17 years in the making, and more than a decade after P. Johnson first opened a store in the British capital. It’s a testament to the P. Johnson approach: sticking to their guns and growing gradually over time. “We’ve never been in a rush,” says Riley. “Whatever we do, we just want to do it well, do it slowly and do it strongly.”
