It was cold Tuesday morning, and raining. The cars going by in the wet street outside sounded like waves crashing on the shore before receding in a foamy white. It rained and then didn’t and then drizzled and then settled into that fine, damp mist that London does particularly well. We sunk into the low seats at Sketch, me and Maud; while the world bustled about us we curled up in mismatched and wildly upholstered armchairs spread out around the tearoom like so many multicoloured petits fours.



We’d come in up Savile Row, where for more than 200 years the tailors have sat with their pincushions and loops of measuring tape. Tuesday morning while the mannequins stood smartly in the windows, we peered down into the lower-ground studios where buttonholes were being finished, surely, and waistcoats adjusted. Surely the tailors in their workshops reached for the chalk in their pockets with precise fingers, and surely their needles trailed fine threads behind them.