Dunhill’s creative director Simon Holloway on why he would like to forget quiet luxury and focus on timeless luxury instead

The brand’s founder Alfred Dunhill was an innovator. Inheriting his father’s equestrian saddlery and harness-making business in 1893 at the age of 21, he went onto build hugely successful motoring accessories and tobacco businesses, later opening shops outside of the UK. Like Dunhill, Kingston University fashion graduate Holloway has been depended on throughout his career to innovate and lead brands to greater things. “I [have] always ended up being given more responsibility everywhere I worked. If I worked in one place, they’re like, ‘We’re going to do a new shoe collection—can you go to the shoe factory in Italy and figure it out?’ It was always like that,” says Holloway, whose portfolio includes design roles at Ralph Lauren, Agnona, Jimmy Choo, Hogan, Michael Kors and Narciso Rodriguez. “I did menswear, womenswear shoes ... whatever they needed me to do. I’ve learnt on the job.”

His previous job as the creative director at Richemont’s outdoor atelier and bespoke gunmaker James Purdey & Sons, where he oversaw the brand’s apparel offerings, sowed the seeds of what he most enjoys about his work, leading to perhaps his most suitable role yet. “[Dunhill] plays to a lot of the things that I really love about clothing and design. The role was really an opportunity to do a deep dive and exploration into beautiful British tailoring and the vernacular of British fabric,” he tells Tatler. “We also worked very hard on reimagining the knitwear and outerwear for Dunhill. It’s been a very full experience in that respect.”

There are different types of creative directors. There are those like Dries Van Noten or Jonathan Anderson, who stick to their uniforms—often opting for a simple sweater and jeans—no matter how glamorous their designs are. Then there are those who wear outfits that make them the most persuasive spokesperson for the brand. Holloway is definitely the latter, effortlessly sporting two looks from his collection for our photo shoot— one, a checked, toffee-coloured, double-breasted cashmere blazer paired with an ivory sweater; the other a grey three-piece ensemble. “I do wear suits and I wear separate jackets a lot, often with knitwear,” he says.

During his research into the archive, Holloway learnt that jackets were important to the brand’s founder, too. “Alfred Dunhill really invented the car coat, and they were uniquely made in leather or tweed; the tweed ones were sometimes lined in leather. The leather ones were sometimes lined in camel hair. And there were little driving jackets ... a lot of very distinctive outerwear, essentially,” says Holloway. “I think that that was the true clothing origin of Dunhill.”

This legacy stood out in his first collection. The 41 looks shown included bespoke three-piece suits, chocolate car trench coats, suede shearling aviator jackets, wide-lapelled shearling pea coats, collarless cashmere jackets and velvet dinner jackets. They were elegantly styled with driving gloves, Moroccan-style carpet slippers, well-polished evening shoes, minimalist sneakers, silk scarves and gorgeous, colour-coordinated and patterned accessories. Proving to be something of a fabric geek during our conversation, Holloway was particularly excited by the embedding of British craftsmanship in the designs.

“We’ve worked closely with mills up in Yorkshire and in the West Country [England’s southwest region], and very small, specialised suppliers, like the only printers left in England that does screen printing ... it’s very artisanal, very human—and that’s really beautiful,” he says. “Similarly, there’s a weaving company in Sussex, a very old historic weaving mill, that we’ve been working with to produce woven fabrics.”

Having worked extensively on knitwear in his previous positions, Holloway also made sure Dunhill’s knit offerings are elevated. “We are textile designers before we are fashion designers. So we’re designing the yarn and the way it’s executed, whether it’s two ends or three ends [two- or three-ply] of yarn. And you can play with the ends and the plies to create interesting effects,” he says.

“There’s a lot of intricacy in our knitting that may look quite simplistic in the end-product. I almost like to call it invisible innovation.” This invisible innovation is evident in other technical details: take, for example, his tweed wool jackets, which one might expect to be thick and heavy, but here they are constructed from the lightest canvas possible, with no padding in the shoulder; or how some of the seams on the leather ready-to-wear pieces can hardly be seen by the naked eye. “That’s consistent with the way Alfred Dunhill designed things originally, 120-something years ago,” Holloway explains. “There’s a leather driving jacket here [in the collection] which is lined in camel hair; that’s because one of the original coats we had found in the archive was done that way. It’s a very discreet detail.”

Zooming out from the details and looking at the collection as a whole, it exudes an old-Hollywood glamour—an homage to the brand’s past, referencing the high art deco period of the 1920s and 1930s when Dunhill became known for luxury goods ranging from compact cases to clocks and lighters.

“Dunhill had some of the crème de la crème of old Hollywood [as well as royalty] as clients; [for example,] the Duke of Windsor [the former British king, Edward VIII] who was a Dunhill client for his entire life. That idea of looking like a movie star is really seductive,” says the designer. “It’s funny, because I recently had a meeting with a menswear stylist who has a lot of important actors that they dress. [One question they asked me] was ‘What do you really want people to look like?’ I said, ‘I want movie stars to look like movie stars.’” We then asked who he’d most like to dress—remember when Jude Law was the face of Dunhill in the late 2000s? He replied: “Ultimately, the person who we need to dress is James Bond.”

While the past two decades in the menswear world has been fused with streetwear collaborations, the athleisure aesthetic and fluid dressing—a good sign that the industry is becoming more inclusive and diverse—it’s also refreshing to see how Dunhill is now reinstating classic elegance with a modern twist. The collection is a curation of pieces for the country, city and home; day and night; formal and informal. But don’t you dare label Holloway’s work with that ubiquitous trending term used to describe such clothing.

“I’d like to forget about quiet luxury and just call this like timeless luxury, because it’s my intention that we must be entirely contemporary in terms of the proportion and the attitude of the collection that is built with great level of quality and timeless style,” the designer says. “All of this adds up to a very rich look and a very refined sensibility. I think that that voice has been missing in fashion for so long. But there is a very interesting and interested audience of menswear aficionados, who love all these elements. And this is really about the joy of getting dressed, the delight that one can take from having a wardrobe full of these elements, which are really fun to play with.”

Holloway is on a mission to rebuild the British brand’s unique position—and having seen the reaction to his debut, he’s optimistic. He defines a Dunhill man as “ageless”, acknowledging there is a youthful audience that is interested in tailoring and a slightly glamorous, old-world look. “[When I] travel in Japan and China, I do see an emerging clientele who is very sophisticated; really a connoisseur [who has] real love for great menswear. And that will continue to supersede some of the other trends—it’s a longer arc trend that we’ll see develop over many years.”

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