“Fashion is one thing; taste is another thing,” Madness frontman Suggs tells the camera, with all the authority of—well, Suggs, clad in a black shirt and creamy fawn jacket. “The clothes John Simons sells are 20 times better than any passing fad I have seen, before or since.” The scene cuts to John Simons himself, arranging shoes, adjusting a sharp cravat—and then Paul Weller appears and describes John’s store as “a revelation”. This is John Simons—A Modernist: a film about the life and times of the most influential, yet perhaps least lauded institution on Chiltern Street.
Marleybone Journal: As a new documentary about his life is released, the Journal meets the highly influential menswear designer John Simons and the son who followed him into the business
