Meet the Savile Row-Trained Tailor Who Traded London for the Berkshires

Great Barrington, a charming little town of just over 7,000 in Massachusetts’ bucolic Berkshires region, has long drawn visitors enticed by its natural beauty, thriving arts scene and nearby ski slopes. And now, the community can boast of another—if somewhat unlikely—addition to the attractions above: bespoke tailoring.

That’s all thanks to FEN Bespoke, a one-woman operation located at No. 3 Railroad Street in the heart of its downtown, sandwiched between a Western wear outfitter and an ice cream parlor. It’s a long way from Savile Row, which is precisely how its founder—and Row veteran— Siân Jones like it. 

Born into a British family of craftspeople, Jones was encouraged to work with her hands from a young age. With time, Jones came to focus on fashion and sewing, and made her first bespoke suit while still a student at boarding school. This earned her a job at 18 with the London tailor Thresher & Glenny, where she worked for a year before entering the London College of Fashion, studying bespoke tailoring while simultaneously working on the Row. After graduating with 1^st Class Honors in 2016, Jones joined the 150-year-old firm Dege & Skinner as an apprentice cutter, and soon transitioned to coat making.

However, by 2019, Jones grew disenchanted with both the Row and tailoring itself and walked away to join Camphill Village Copake, a charity-focused communal farm in rural New York. “If you want the opposite of Savile Row, then go work on a farm in Upstate New York,” Jones says of the reasoning behind her U-turn.

While at Camphill, Jones met her now-husband, who was involved in the Hudson restaurant scene. The two relocated to Hillsdale—some 11 miles west of Great Barrington—and when the pandemic hit, Jones found herself reaching for a needle and thread once more.

“It gave me an opportunity to kind of fall back in love with tailoring and sewing outside of Savile Row,” Jones says. “And then the more I spoke to my husband, the more I realized that there was really a market for it in the Berkshires.”

FEN was founded in 2022, with Jones initially fitting clients in her own home to deliver what she describes as a “very clean, very simple,” vision of bespoke tailoring. “I don’t like to over complicate things. I don’t like to over design things,” she continues. “I just love good quality fabric and a beautiful cut, and I love it when things fit really well.”

By June of 2024, FEN had garnered enough local interest for Jones to set up her storefront on Great Barrington. In contravention to the typical Savile Row approach, in which an appointment is required to access a closely guarded front room, FEN’s street-level space is accessible to the public on weekend afternoons, where walk-ins might discover some of the sample garments Jones makes available for ready purchase, or browse an eclectic range of third-party items made by her friends and family, including scented candles from Hudson’s The Quiet Botanist or leather bags by the Montana-based Brick Bound Leather. 

It’s an interesting blend of sales floor and showroom, where a shopper might just walk out with a three-piece silk, linen and wool suit or an Irish linen popover, presuming that the sample Jones has made fits them. If not, it provides the opportunity for the potential client to see her work in the flesh, and then begin a dialogue about the bespoke process and a potential commission.

“I want it to feel like people can come through the door and ask questions, and also turn around and say ‘Yeah, this isn’t for me,” but be comfortable enough to come in and learn about it,” Jones says of her accessible approach.

If so, a new client will begin the process with an initial appointment to take measurements, with jackets—which starts at $1,700—being ready to fit in about 8 weeks’ time. In another deviation from the industry norm, Jones skips over the basted stage—in which an in-progress commission is stitched together with temporary thread—owing to her less structured make, and presents clients with a garment that’s about “80 percent” finished, with any further alterations made in advance of a potential third and final meeting.

As you might expect given its setting, FEN creations tend to run a little less town and a bit more country, with casual offerings such as corduroy overshirts with matching trousers or field coats with waterproof linings. Jones estimates that about half of her clientele are female, with a simply styled women’s overcoat becoming a particular favorite locally.

“They work because you can go for a walk in it with a nice pair of boots and get through the forest or you can head to the restaurant and have a pair of jeans underneath,” she says of the versatile favorite. “You just feel chic and you’re wearing something that’s beautifully made.”

Demand is now such that, in an ironic twist, Jones is in the process of enlisting London tailors to assist with making a client’s repeat orders after she has first nailed their fit. On another front, Jones is looking to branch into ready-to-wear for women with a potential line of workwear-inspired pieces like overalls and coveralls that would be made in India from more luxurious fabrics like sand-washed silk. 

Savile Row is where Jones learned her craft. But Great Barrington, it might be said, is where she finally discovered what she wanted to make.