Savas

Savas was founded in 2015 by Savannah Yarborough, who studied menswear at Central Saint Martins in London and then worked as senior men’s designer for Billy Reid in Alabama before opening her own atelier in Nashville. What she went looking for was a gap rather than a market. “I learned all about the fine intricacies of tailoring and realized there’s no one in the world doing Savile Row–style clothing for leather and suede,” she has said of the London years. What followed was, in her own words, “the weekend looks for the guys who wear those suits.”

The house puts its foundation in two places at once, “classic American menswear” and “the precise rigor of English tailoring”, and it is the second one you feel in the making. It begins at the hide. “Working with a third generation tannery in Italy, we develop our own leathers,” which is why the materials carry house names, Antico Lamb, Chateau Calf, Ironed Calf, a calf suede called Wedgewood, and are specified to a tenth of a millimeter rather than left to the word premium.

The making is split between two places, and Savas says which is which on every piece. Some are cut and sewn in the Nashville atelier. Others go to a woman-owned factory in Tuscany, which is where the suede work is hand-cut and sewn. Neither is the cheap half. The Roving, for instance, is unlined through the body with Bemberg sleeves so that it goes on over a shirt, and its buffalo horn buttons are made in England and sewn on by hand with what the house calls “a box-like stitch detail designed to give every hand-sewn button its own signature square”. Eleven stitches to the inch, on a garment most people will never look inside.

Savas builds a small number of models and returns to them in different skins rather than replacing them. The Denham is the trucker, “designed with function and tradition in mind”, with four body pockets, brass snaps, double-needle stitching, and selvedge finishing on the inside where nobody will see it. The Lowry is the western overshirt, made in full grain lamb and in suede, with a curved shirttail and a longer back so that it can be worn out. The Roving is the work shirt taken into suede. The Legend is the zip jacket, cut slim, with a subtle western shoulder yoke, three exterior zip pockets, adjustable sleeve gussets, antique brass hardware, and a polka dot silk lining nobody but the wearer will ever see. Garden & Gun reports that only three to seven examples of any one style are made.

The bespoke and made-to-measure work is where the London training shows most plainly. A client is fitted first in a canvas mock-up built to behave the way leather behaves, because leather will not forgive a second opinion once it is cut. The atelier then keeps a backup hide for that client, so that a repair years later can be made in the original skin rather than the nearest match. That is a long way from how leather is usually sold.

Savas at W Department

Santa Fe has a long and complicated relationship with the western jacket, and most of what gets made in that idiom is costume. The yoke does the talking, and there is nothing underneath it. What is good about Savas is that the western is structural rather than applied: a yoke that actually shapes a shoulder, a shirttail curved because a shirt jacket gets worn out over a trouser, snaps that are solid brass because they are being asked to close a jacket for twenty years. These read as tailoring that happens to be cut in leather, which is a rarer thing than it sounds.

What we carry from Savas is menswear, sized on the house’s numbered run, and the models are not interchangeable. A shirt jacket is drawn to go over something; the Legend is cut slim and tailored, and the house’s own advice on that one is to take a larger size if you mean to layer a sweater underneath. Leather is unforgiving about the difference in a way that a knit never is, so call us before you choose, or come and put one on. Leather and suede both want a specialist rather than an ordinary dry cleaner, and our care guide says what to do between times.

Continue Exploring

• All Savas. The jackets and shirt jackets, in calf and in lamb.
• Coats and jackets. Outerwear across the houses we work with.
• Ann Demeulemeester. The Antwerp house, and another argument for leather cut like tailoring.
• The Fabric Care Guide. Leather, suede, and nubuck: what to do at home, and what to leave to a specialist.
• How to Build a Wardrobe. Our writing on building slowly rather than seasonally.
• The Library. Our writing on the houses we work with, plus the monthly playlist.
• Visit W Department. 54½ Lincoln Avenue on The Plaza, open daily, 11 to 5.

Shop Savas

Leather, size, and where each piece was made are on the individual pages.