Gieves & Hawkes’s Fall Collection Honors Britain’s WWII Fighter Pilots

What’s in a name? Quite a lot, it turns out. After Royal Air Force squadron leader Dick Churchill was shot down and captured by the Germans in September of 1940, he conspired with his fellow prisoners of war to dig escape tunnels. Seventy-six men ultimately fled Stalag Luft III prison, and all but three—including Churchill—were recaptured within days. Two-thirds were executed. Churchill’s life, however, was spared, because his captors mistakenly assumed he was related to Winston Churchill.

The event, later dubbed the Great Escape, inspired the 1963 film of the same name starring Steve McQueen. At its London premiere, Dick Churchill wore a bespoke dinner jacket from Gieves & Hawkes, the Savile Row tailor whose military heritage dates back to the late 18th century. This season, the house pays tribute to that legacy with its Eyes in the Sky ready-to-wear collection. (Gieves is widely regarded as the first Savile Row tailor to introduce such a line in the 1920s, which it initially called immediate wear.)

“I love nostalgia, and British tailoring is nostalgia at its peak,” says creative director Joshua Roberto Scacheri, who joined Gieves & Hawkes in 2023 to restore the institution’s “Britishness.” For Scacheri, that meant re-creating its core line only with textiles made in the U.K.—sourced from storied mills such as Dugdale and Alfred Brown—while redefining the house block with slightly roped sleeve heads, smaller and higher-cut arm holes, widened lapels, and a proprietary soft shoulder pad that marries structure and comfort. “It has that military-esque feel, because it’s quite fitted, but without the traditional rigidity.”

Highlights include a blouson jacket that reinterprets a 1942 Royal Air Force battle dress jacket and an English silk-jacquard tie decorated with CAD drawings of the Supermarine Spitfire. “We’ve forgotten what a role the Spitfire, so quick and agile, played in winning WWII,” says Scacheri of the single-seat fighter jet, widely credited with turning the tide in the Battle of Britain.

But the real story lies in the details: historically accurate map-print linings produced with Bellerby & Co. Globemakers and a palette of greens, browns, slate grays, and bold reds drawn from flight suits, insignia, and wartime skies. “The collection is a celebration,” Scacheri adds. “We’ve got to remember these people, because without them, we would all be speaking German today.”