Discussing House of Nutter with author Lance Richardson

Journalist and writer Lance Richardson speaks with Patricia Mears, deputy director of The Museum at FIT, about his new book, House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, published by Crown Archetype.

House of Nutter tells the surprising true story of two gay brothers—one a fashion designer, the other a rock photographer—who influenced some of the most iconic styles and pop images of the twentieth century. In 1969, at the age of twenty-six, Tommy Nutter opened an unusual new boutique on the “golden mile” of bespoke tailoring in London. While shocking a haughty establishment resistant to change, “Nutters of Savile Row” became an immediate sensation among the young, rich, and beautiful, beguiling everyone from Bianca Jagger to the Beatles—who immortalized Tommy’s designs on the album cover of Abbey Road.

Meanwhile, David Nutter’s innate talent with a camera vaulted him across the Atlantic to New York City, where he found himself in a parallel constellation of stars (Yoko Ono, Elton John) who enjoyed his dry wit almost as much as his photography.

Drawing on interviews with more than seventy people, House of Nutter presents a dual portrait of brothers improvising their way through five decades of extraordinary events, their personal struggles playing out against vivid backdrops of the Blitz, an obscenity trial, the birth of disco, and the devastation of the AIDS crisis.