Tailor-Made Success

When Nafisa Tosh’s image appears on my screen for our video call, she is wearing, what at first glance, appears to be an avant-garde fluorescent yellow necklace. When I take a closer look, it reveals itself to be a tape measure. How fitting, I say. She laughs and makes to take it off. “No, I love it,” I tell her. “It adds to the effect.” 

The effect is that of a music conductor poised to lead an orchestra. Eyes twinkling, the measure strung carelessly over her shoulders, Tosh’s hands hover above her, as if ready at a moment’s notice to fold together pleats and cajole silk and tweed and starched linens into a state of sartorial harmony. This particular brand of harmony is, after all, what Tosh, a second-generation tailor, is renowned for — her ability to synchronise a garment with its wearer, to align its lines to the particular contours of the body that it will enfold. 

In the last few weeks Tosh’s schedule has been packed — a whirlwind Paris Fashion Week in September where she worked on runway shows, celebrity fittings and red-carpet appearances. A more recent assignment was to dress Tilda Swinton for the British Film Institute’s Luminous Gala that was held in London on October 1. Swinton, Tosh admits, is one of the few people she still gets “starstruck by”. I tell Tosh that Swinton has such an integrity to her style that I would believe the actor comes armed with a fierce vision of what she wants to wear and how she wears it. Tosh nods in agreement. “[Swinton] is very selective about which brands she works with. They mirror her political stance, her ideology, as well as her tastes.”

While Swinton is one of the most notable names in the modern film world, she is only one of the constellation of stars that Tosh has worked with in her four decades as a tailor (she celebrated 40 years in her line of work in mid-October). Others include Zendaya, Amal Clooney, Anna Wintour and the late Princess Diana. 

But the world of the famous that she now inhabits is a far cry from Bolton, a town in Greater Manchester, where Tosh grew up to working-class Gujarati parents. And in that milieu, tailoring was not seen as an aspirational line of work — especially for a daughter. “Even these days, I’m the only woman on set,” she says, adding, “And I don’t see South Asians represented.” This is often, she says, because her career is still not recognised “as something respectful or decent”

Tosh has worked with eccentric and creative geniuses such as Alexander “Lee” McQueen and French fashion editor Emmanuelle Alt, and she routinely deals with clients accustomed to only the very best. Perhaps that explains Tosh’s aura of preternatural calm, the kind that one imagines would be a life raft in the chaotic swirl of fuss, ego, last-minute requests and spiralling ambition that surrounds her. “Nafisa’s… attention to detail and calm are second to none,” confirms celebrity stylist Fabio Immediato, who has worked with Tosh for years. It’s clear that she also has gumption. After all, she had to fight to go to fashion school after graduating — despite or rather because of the fact that her father was a tailor himself.

It was her father who first instilled in her a sense of wonder about clothing. She watched two-dimensional fabrics transform into three-dimensional pieces fit for a body to inhabit. “For me, it was magic. I became quite obsessed. It’s a kind of alchemy.”

But it wasn’t a simple road. “The only reason I was allowed to go to art college was because my sister was allowed to go to do painting — which was, you know, respectable.” Tosh’s work, though, was associated with labour and toil, with long hours, fine details and technicalities, with overhead lights and “dirty factories”. “It was not something that you wanted your daughter to go into,” she says. 

When Tosh’s father moved his family to the UK in the ’60s, he was offered a job “below the stairs” at the renowned tailor Gieves & Hawkes on Savile Row — considered ground zero for craftsmanship — rather than on street level. In the workshop in the basement, he would be paid half as much as those above. He refused it. “He was like, ‘I’m too good to work downstairs’,” recalls Tosh. He had endured his share of negative experiences in the industry and was duly fearful of his daughter experiencing the same. “But he always taught me that we are just as valid as the white people in the room,” says Tosh. “You don't settle for second best. Once you accept second best, you’re always gonna be given second best.” 

Fifteen years ago, as Tosh was gaining recognition for her work as a tailor, Gieves & Hawkes invited her to come and work with them. It was a full-circle moment. “I was working upstairs, and I was a woman. And in one day, I was paid what he would have gotten paid in maybe a week. So things have changed for the better.” But Tosh lost both her parents a few years ago which makes the recognition she has been receiving for her work ‘bittersweet’,” she says, “because it’s just a little bit too late”

While Tosh is trained in traditional Savile Row techniques, her muses stem from her childhood. Growing up, all her clothes were made for her by local South Asian seamstresses. Fabric chosen specifically for a person’s skin tone was fashioned to fit the individual’s body. It was her first schooling in bespoke. 

“What I learned from them was to see how fabric works against skin tone, whether the decoration in the fabric flatters you, your complexion, your figure. These women were amazing. They didn’t make patterns. They would look at your body and cut freestyle. They didn’t have time to create a pattern and grade it and, you know, make sure that all the notches matched. They just did it by eye.” 

It’s something she came across again, much later on, and in a very different environment. She smiles, reflecting, “Lee McQueen did it as well. I told him, ‘This is what it was like when I was growing up.’” 

Tosh recalls the late McQueen, who she worked under in the mid-2000s, as a captivating figure: a genius whose atelier spilled with creativity and technical prowess, a leader who reeled into his orbit those who were able to think in his peculiarly lateral way. The studio environment was “intense”, she says. Everyone hired would work a minimum of 15 hours a day, seven days a week. “It wasn’t for the weak,” she laughs. “Where some studios would have a dozen interns, Lee would have hundreds.” The American designer Christian Siriano was one of the interns that Tosh trained. “​​It was the most creative space I’ve ever worked in.

The Widows of Culloden collection, of Autumn/Winter 2006, is one of the most storied of McQueen’s work, both for its deft splicing of history and fantasy, and for the way he wove his Scottish heritage into its threads. Which fashion acolyte can forget Kate Moss appearing in tiers of ruffles as a ghostly, ethereal, haute hologram projected in a glass pyramid? Her dress was entirely hand-dyed, recalls Tosh, and created in less than 24 hours. At the time, she says, all of the atelier workers smoked inside the studio, near the clothes. One seamstress looked down that afternoon in horror at her cigarette held aloft. The ash had burned a hole right through the body stocking that Moss was to wear. The solution? “Fuck it. Let’s add more layers.” Not smoking was not an option. “Not at all.”

What is it like to look back and know that that collection as well as others by McQueen and the numerous renowned pieces she has worked on, from Zendaya’s looks from the Challengers press tour to Wintour’s gala dresses, are stitches in the tapestry of fashion history? “We never had time to reflect because it was always just on to the next and the next and the next,” she says. “I’ve started to look back now. I’ve had more time to think about how important that work was. And it’s just really humbling.” 

Giles Deacon, designer and celebrated former head at Bottega Veneta, affirms Tosh’s contribution to the space. “As a designer who looks to make specialist pieces…to be able to work with the best craftspeople and makers is essential,” he tells Verve. “Nafisa is one of the very few who has consistently shown her experience and expertise in making outstanding and often highly complicated work.”

While Tosh’s work is celebrated by those around her, she is acutely aware of the imbalance that exists in the industry between garment workers and others. “The people who create the fashion, the ones who work on the dresses and gowns in terms of the tailoring are never acknowledged by the fashion industry. And this is what I’m fighting for, all the time.” 

“It happens in Hollywood. There are technical nominations and awards. So why can’t the fashion industry acknowledge the workers? Why is it such a dirty secret, or something to look down on?” she asks.

Tosh believes that this matters the most because the promise of recognition could encourage younger generations to take up the profession. “Young people who graduate from colleges and universities are not aware of the technical side of fashion. It’s not something that they aspire to and it’s not something that they want to go into.” After 40 years, Tosh has been given her flowers. But she wants others to have them too — to be able to pause, reflect, and smell those roses. “If we elevated garment workers and the people who create our actual clothes…wouldn’t that be wonderful?