Another British fashion brand: saved
Jaeger has been given a makeover by entrepreneur Harold Tillman
By Josh Sims
Harold Tillman could probably make a good pair of short trousers, though he has long since ceased wearing them. But back in the days when he was plain Harry Tillman, a small boy from Streatham, south London, his milliner mother and tailor father would walk him down Regent Street and stand to admire the clothes in the window of what has now been a landmark store for 125 years.
The window was that of Jaeger – the German Dr Gustav Jaeger’s vision of the health benefits of wearing natural fabrics next to the skin and latterly a Great British Brand, beloved especially by older generations who remember when clothes were stylish and dependable, rather than shiny and disposable.
“In order to keep up with the latest in the business, that was where my parents always went to look first,” recalls Tillman, now 63, stretching his arms contentedly out over the adjacent boardroom chairs in his office off Carnaby Street. “So Jaeger has always stood out in my mind.” Indeed, so much so that in 2003, with a revitalised Burberry and other Brit brands in the ascendant, Tillman bought it.
But the decision wasn’t based just on nostalgia – nor the fact that it only cost him £1. Tillman concedes that his interest is in business before fashion – while he studied at the London College of Fashion, he already had a qualification in accounting.
Thanks to £35m of investment, Jaeger has returned to form with stronger collections – including homewares for the first time this summer – new store openings and profitability.
Tillman proved his mettle by building a business from the ground up – he first created a tailoring company to rival the then-mighty Burton, selling it for what was a gargantuan sum of £1.6m when he was just 24. Along the way he gave Paul Smith his first design job and pioneered the celebrity endorsement with George Best. But he has since established a track record of acquiring and fixing what could be described as ‘problem children’.
Before Jaeger there was, for example, Baird Menswear, which had lost its main contract and was about to go under. Tillman bought it and returned it to profit in under a year. Or there was Allders, the Croydon department store and the UK’s third biggest, again struggling until it received the Tillman touch.
“It was my local department store as a child – it sounds like we’re back to my childhood again,” says Tillman with a chuckle. “Why buy it? Because I’d never owned a department store,” he says unconvincingly.
“Business, whatever else it is, is a discipline and over the years you develop a certain acumen and so can see where other businesses are going wrong. But that only comes with many years. I could be involved in any business that really interests me – I’m involved in restaurants, for example, just because they interest me. But I do love clothes.”
Certainly, his reputation as a dapper dresser does not disappoint. In his polished shoes, baby blue silk tie and Ralph Lauren three-piece suit (in a deft touch, the top as well as the bottom button of his waistcoat left undone) Tillman could be fashion’s answer to Tony Bennett, and with the same easy charm to boot. But he is, first and foremost, an entrepreneur in times when there are, despite reality TV’s suggestion, fewer of them, “and they’re all my age and we’re all a bit tired.” His definition of an entrepreneur? “An entrepreneur has got used to taking risk. If I believe in something I will still get my chequebook out and invest or buy, even at this age,” he says.
“I also have a knack for picking winners,” he warns before I blurt out my own business idea. “I went to a fashion show the other evening, with maybe 50 students showing their collections and I turned to my wife and said, ‘Shall I tell you which one will win?’ She said, ‘How would you know?’ But I picked the winner. That pleases me. Not because I’m a smartarse. I just have an eye for the well made, stylish and commercial. And you can’t teach that.”
This knack has earnt him an estimated personal fortune of over £210m, enough to keep him in sharp suits and chauffeurs for some time. But to call Tillman’s picks ‘problem children’ is not an altogether wild analogy. He has a paternalistic streak, a suggestion that, when put to him, causes a raised eyebrow but then some agreement. He speaks of Jaeger as being a “wonderful institution that deserved to survive” and, with some pride, of having saved thousands of jobs in refusing to let companies go to the wall – and seems genuinely disturbed by the idea of unemployment, an experience he has had just the once.
It is one reason why he has, as the latest chair of the British Fashion Council, recently launched a privately managed fund to help aspiring fashion designers. Tillman finds it frustrating that Britain is good at training creative talent but not nurturing it.
And it’s something he is putting into practice himself. He has used his influence to back rising-star shoe designer Beatrix Ong after meeting her through the London College of Fashion alumni association he runs.
When he is not working, or spending time with his wife of 40 years, or meeting with his children – a son who runs his seven pubs and restaurants across London, and a daughter who is a graphic designer and, for Tillman, a fashion touchstone – he enjoys sharing his knowledge in a speaking engagement or two. So many in fact that he has developed a persistent sore throat and is off to the doctors at the end of the day.
It is also perhaps why, for many of his business interests – from Jaeger to Allders to his involvement in Sebastian Coe’s Complete Leisure Group, stepping in to help while Coe prepares for the Olympics (“And because I like sport”) – Tillman keeps a back seat as chairman rather than MD, guiding where necessary, overseeing, giving fatherly advice. And occasionally getting the belt out.
“I’ve really only had one real failure [in business], touch wood,” he says, reaching right under the glass-topped boardroom table to find some of the lucky stuff. He is speaking of his time at Honorbilt, a company he bought in 1986 and saw go into receivership four years later, with Tillman striking a deal with DTI investigators not to be a director for three years.
“That failed because I was too sentimental about management that wasn’t able to keep up the pace. I didn’t want to say, ‘Sorry chummy, I’ve got to replace you’. Now I’m more of a hard taskmaster.”
But perhaps the chief driver of his expansiveness now is simply the notion that, personally, he need expand no further. He could easily have given up his main residence in London’s Highgate and retreated to an endless round of golf in Marbella long ago and awaited the inevitable knighthood, but says he enjoys what he does and questions whether retirement is as healthy as it is cracked up to be.
“Besides, it’s great to be at that stage in your career when you can look for more than just how to make money out of something, and the beauty of being able to own a business without purely thinking about profit gives you the opportunity to build it more cautiously,” he explains. “There have been times when I was making my way in life when I had a more aggressive business aptitude…”
Indeed, while it is easy for him to say, as he would no doubt admit, Tillman wonders whether the business world has somewhat lost its way in pursuit of cash over creativity. “I enjoy the quality of the things I’m involved with. Rewards will come to you along the way. But we mustn’t let greed take over. There has been too much megalomania and those people have come unstuck. We’ve lost the idea of going into jobs that can provide fulfilment.”
That is not a mistake Tillman has made. He has taken up his parents’ vocation, discovered a passion and a talent, and made a fortune from it. What is left? Does he wish for recognition, perhaps as a result of his Fashion Council chairmanship? Does he want to be more of a public figure, the Alan Sugar of chic?
Not really. “I’m relatively well known,” he says. “I was in a fish and chip restaurant not long ago when someone asked the waiter to bring me over a bottle of champagne because he said he’d seen my photo in the paper. In a fish and chip shop! I do like to be congratulated nicely. But you have to draw the line for a certain amount of privacy. I’m quite happy.” 
The new autumn/winter collection arrives in store this month. www.jaeger.co.uk
