Adapted from Anderson & Sheppard: A Style Is Born, edited by Graydon Carter and Cullen Murphy, to be published this month by Quercus Publishing; © 2011 by Anderson & Sheppard.

In March of 2005, Anderson & Sheppard, the standard-bearer of Savile Row—tailors to Fred Astaire, Noël Coward, Gary Cooper, and the Prince of Wales, not to mention sundry dukes, barons, maharajas, marchesi, industrialists, actors, composers, Rothschilds, Guinnesses, and Waughs—did something utterly at odds with its tradition-bound history: it moved.

And not only did it move. It moved off Savile Row, relocating from its corner spot at No. 30, where it had stood for 78 of its 99 years, to a smaller space a block west in Old Burlington Street.

The move caused some grumbling—as much within the firm as without. It will never be the same, the grumblers said. How can Anderson & Sheppard be Anderson & Sheppard if it isn’t in old No. 30, with its heavy double doors, its mahogany paneling, its herringbone floors, and its long tables in the front room piled high with bolts of cloth?

Yet it wasn’t long after this move that the Anderson & Sheppard staff came to a pleasant realization: the customers were still coming in. In fact, orders picked up at the new place, and walk-in traffic remained as brisk as ever. Steeped in lore as the old premises at No. 30 were, they turned out not to be what mattered. What mattered were the cutters, tailors, and salesmen with whom the customers had developed enduring relationships; the happily anticipatory experience, which time and age can never temper, of picking out fabrics and linings and buttons for the latest wardrobe upgrade; and, above all, the distinctive way an Anderson & Sheppard suit looks and feels—softly elegant, cut to show the wearer’s style rather than impose one on him.

The natural look. The sloped shoulder. The limp silhouette. The English drape. What to make of these curious phrases, all reliably used to describe the Anderson & Sheppard style? To the uninitiated, these words might suggest lightness and grace, but then again, they might suggest a strange clientele of invertebrates. Why the unrelenting emphasis on softness? To answer this question, it helps to know what the fledgling firm was rebelling against in its early decades.

Yes, rebelling. “Establishment” as Anderson & Sheppard is now thought to be, it was once the renegade of Savile Row. Its sign pointedly identified the firm as CIVIL TAILORS. For civilians, not the military—not the place to go for clothes that would cinch you up and make you stand at attention.

This was something of a radical stance in 1913, the year the young firm left its original space, in Sackville Street, and took its first address on Savile Row, at No. 13. At the foot of the Row, at No. 1, stood Hawkes & Co., military tailors of long standing. Just atop the Row, in Conduit Street, was J. Dege & Sons, uniformers of the cavalry. At Nos. 36–39 stood the firm credited as the first to establish Savile Row’s reputation as a bespoke mecca, Henry Poole & Co., which specialized not only in military tailoring but also in livery and court dress.

The work of these firms was every bit as skilled and accomplished as Anderson & Sheppard’s would be, but still very Victorian in its formality and stiffness. It was only when an innovative Dutch tailor named Frederick Scholte hung up a shingle at 7 Savile Row that the great softening began, and that men’s fashion plunged headlong into the 20th century.