James SherwoodHenry Poole & Co.: The First Tailor of Savile Row

The bulk of this book is short biographies of famous Poole customers. The book arises from the author's work preserving the Poole order ledgers. Each bio cites the amount of money spent by the person profiled and the main garment. The bios contain little-to-nothing else about the person's relationship with Poole, or their style. The bios are simply the type of thing one can find in Wikipedia with a few minor exceptions. I read the book description and understood that customer bios were a key feature, but expected more--something on the lines of fairly recent book on Anderson & Sheppard. I would have been interested, for example, in an examination of garments Poole produced over time, the evolution of style and output, and other things that would provide inspiration to modern customers. There are several short essays in the book on Poole's business, etc., but they do not add much. There is a separate book on Poole's history. Had I flipped through a copy of this book in a store, or even seen a sampler on the Amazon site, I would not have bought it. The author produced two previous books on Savile Row and London menswear that I bought and enjoyed, so I had high expectations for this book. I was mistaken. Still, the author will presumably have been commissioned to produce the book in the form taken, so I cannot fault him too much for doing what he was commissioned to do.