Burton

For most of the 20th century, if you wanted an affordable custom-made suit, you went to Burton. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, Burton was the country’s foremost high street tailor, with around 600 shops nationwide.

Sir Montague Burton, the man behind the company, was born Meshe David Osinsky in the province of Kovno (modern-day Lithuania). Escaping anti-Semitic pogroms, he arrived in England as a teenager in 1900. After setting up the Cross-Tailoring Company in Chesterfield in 1903, he soon began making made- to-measure suits, opening shops under the name ‘Montague Burton, The Tailor of Taste Ltd’. Customers would visit a shop, choose the style and fabric they wanted, have their measurements taken and place their order. Their suit was then manufactured in one of Burton’s factories.

Burton supplied a quarter of all British military uniforms during the Second World War and was awarded much of the contract for supplying demobilisation suits for about five million British servicemen who were discharged from the armed forces at the end of the war.

Images: Courtesy West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds