Latest Homes Sussex magazine

Andrew Kay travels to a remote spot near Piddinghoe to catch upwith besoke tailors to the stars Gresham Blake and his wife Fal

I first met Gresham Blake and Fal six years ago. It was early days at Latest Homes magazine and I was asked to interview up-and-coming young business people. Gresham, recently graduated, was working from home, a small three story terracced house in Brighton’s Hanover. They had no business premises, no retail outlet and already he was making suits for an impressive number of clients. The Gresham Blake look was soon established, a return to the sharp cut suits of yesterday, fine tailoring, exquisite detail and a quirky, sometimes bizarre twist. He had the knack of marrying fabulous fabrics to traditionally styled suits. The effect was amazing, truly British, a quality that he upholds as being key to his look, but at the same time adventurous.

Pretty soon, he had found city centre premises and the list of clients grew. Business men and women with a desire for something unique started to clamour for his clothes alonside a huge list of celebrities from the world of music, film and theatre. To this day, the client list reads like the gossip page of a celeb magazine and there is no sign of their empire abating, on the contrary it continues to expand.

For some time you lived ‘above the shop’ in Bond Street, when did you decide to move out of Brighton?

Gresham: When Bond Street became too squashed and noisy, about two years ago. It was so noisy that we cut a foam panel that fitted the window but it was like a padded cell.

‘‘We had Heather Mills in, she was doing the whole celeb thing, you know, baseball cap and dark glasses, and I really didn’t recognise her. But in the end she turned out to be really lovely, very easy to work with”

Fal: It did help economically when we were setting up the business but you could never get away from work. Two years was enough of that.

Where did you move?

F: We rented in Partridge Green, a barn conversion, and we fell in love with it but it was just that bit too far away. We had been to the Isle of Skye and stayed in a barn there and fell in love with barns.

G: We found this one for sale on the internet, it was only third property that we had seen as we were only prepared to look at ones that were not in chains. We walked in and saw the height of the space and the layout and we simply fell in love with it.

It’s far more isolated, very diferent from living in town.

G: Yes it is, but it is very easy to get in and out of Brighton and the traffic is never really bad along the coast road, I can do it there and back in 35 minutes.

Do you find that you work more from home?

G: Yes I do, Ideas don’t come to me 9-5 so I will often find myself working late at night.

F: He does a lot of the design work at home as he doesn’t get as distracted as he can in the shop.

When I first interviewed you both you were operating from home.The business has now grown massively.

F: Yes, the business this year has turned over £1,200,000 and it is still growing.
(more…)

Tom Conti takes time away from rehearsals of Romantic Comedy – showing at Theatre Royal Brighton soon – to talk to Andrew Kay

You’ve had an extraordinary career as an actor, but you actually started to train as a musician pianist…
That’s what I wanted to do, yes.

What made you change?
A sign in the music college said ‘College of Drama’ and I thought, what’s that about? I’d done stuff in school – even a bit of amateur dramatics in Glasgow. I went in and talked to this really nice lady and it just sounded really interesting. It’s odd but that’s what happened.

So it was a whim?
Almost, but not quite. It also could have been laziness because music is a very hard life. So is theatre, but it is a hard life in a different way.

Did you think that long periods of rehearsal, touring, living in digs, endless nights in the West End, getting home at midnight, and all the worries of not working would be easier?
No, but the world is full of pianists.

There were indications that you were, perhaps, going to be a piano prodigy…
Oh, Christ, no – that is just legend. I still play, but badly. I was probably better when I was nine.

When you changed from music to drama school, were your family happy?
This was the 50s and all my friends became lawyers and doctors or accountants – you know, all the normal things – and that’s what they wanted for me too. But my father was Italian, and it was kind of his fault – and my mother too – because they were fond of music. They took me to concerts and the theatre from as soon as I could sit quietly, so it was their fault that this passion for performing arts developed. They were really supportive. But, they would rather I had gone to medical school.

(more…)