The story of Burton’s began in 1900, when Lithuanian Jew Meshe David Osinsky (1885–1952) moved to Britain to escape the Russian pogroms, changing his name to Montague Burton. The years following his arrival are hazy: some sources state that he settled in Leeds, others that he worked as a Manchester peddler. Either way, he established a small shop in Holywell Street, Chesterfield in 1903/4, selling men’s ready-made clothing purchased from a wholesaler. Shortly he opened a second Chesterfield shop, then a third in neighbouring Mansfield, capitalising on the thriving market for affordable, mass-produced, off-the-peg men’s suits.

In 1906, Burton made a fundamental change to his business operations, entering into a contract with a small Leeds garment manufacturer to offer a wholesale bespoke tailoring service of a kind pioneered by menswear multiples such as Joseph Hepworth & Sons (est. 1860s). In 1909, the year in which Montague Burton married Sophie Marks and changed the business name from M. Burton to Burton & Burton, this concept advanced further. The company now began to manufacture its own goods, ostensibly in the impressive-sounding ‘Progress Mills’, but with production chiefly carried out in small individual workshops.

New ideas and wartime contracts
Entrepreneurial Edwardian outfitters like Hepworth’s and Burton’s were generally known as ‘tailor-retailers’. By embracing both the manufacturing and retailing aspects of men’s tailored outerwear, they could offer decent made-to-measure suits for a similar price to their ready-made or off-the-peg equivalent. Whereas fine-quality bespoke suits had traditionally been the preserve of the wealthy, now ordinary working men could own comparable tailored garments. Intuitively Burton knew that ‘Good clothes develop a man’s self-respect’ and he promised to deliver a ‘five guinea suit for 55 shillings’. So successful was Burton’s burgeoning business that on the eve of the First World War he operated 14 tailoring retail outlets.

When war broke out in July 1914, there was a sudden, unprecedented call for millions of standardised uniforms for the armed forces and various auxiliary organisations – an urgent requirement that continued unabated throughout the war. All existing British garment manufacturers had to rapidly rationalise production, streamlining their methods and processes to meet bulk demand with maximum efficiency. Service uniforms and the ‘demob’ suits issued to servicemen returning home after the war were made by various clothing companies, including Burton’s, which secured huge contracts for both.

Boosted enormously by the lucrative wartime work and underpinned by a strong business ethos that emphasised a moderate profit margin and, at the same time, a good quality product, between the two world wars Burton substantially extended his network of stores. Already by 1919 he operated 36 outlets, those opening during the war including Wandsworth, Coventry, Dudley and Swansea, and subsequently he added on average 27 shops annually between 1919 and 1939. The company was now referred to as a ‘multiple tailor’ at what was a time of immense and widespread retail growth, characterised by expansion across many consumer outlets and indeed the evolution of the modern high street, especially in more affluent areas of the Midlands and the South.

Interwar branding
During the early 1920s most of Burton’s shop premises were rented, but were instantly recognisable from their striking green fascias emblazoned in white lettering with logos proclaiming ‘Montague Burton. The Tailor of Taste’. The windows beneath often bore slogans expressing the values on which Burton’s reputation was built: ‘taste’, ‘elegance’, ‘courtesy’ and ‘economy’. From mid-decade onwards, and particularly after the company went public in 1929, it purchased more carefully selected freehold sites on which were then built new dedicated premises. Their own in-house architect, Nathaniel Martin, designed new standardised art deco-style shop fronts, each comprising an upper-storey frieze and tall windows with solid backs for displaying selected suits and cloths. Some of these distinctive interwar buildings are now Grade II listed and, although repurposed, remain a feature of shopping centres today.

A Montague Burton suit
Inside, the typical Burton’s store was relatively small: with garment manufacturing being carried out off-site in the company’s Leeds factory, individual shops carried little stock. The new-style stores were oak panelled with wooden block floors and mahogany fittings – chiefly cases, shelves for displaying bolts of material and long counters on which cloth could be unrolled and viewed. The general ambience was hushed and refined, important for maintaining a desirable image in the mind of their average customer, the lower-middle-class and ‘respectable’ working-class male.

The process of being personally fitted for a new Burton’s suit was designed to be comfortingly straightforward for the client, while embodying an element of ritual that elevated the bespoke experience above that of buying ready-made clothes. A customer entering a Burton’s shop would be guided by an assistant in choosing a style of suit from a catalogue and selecting a fabric from among the samples kept in store. His choice of both would depend on various factors including the purpose of the suit – for example, professional workwear, evening suit, weekend/leisure wear and so on – and the season. Then his measurements were taken and recorded, and he paid a cash deposit to the cashier, who was usually the only female on the premises.

Next the measurements were despatched to the Burton’s factory to be made up. The factory at Hudson Road, Leeds employed over 10,000 people and was reputedly the largest clothing factory in the world. With the factory reportedly turning out over 30,000 suits a week, each completed set of clothes was returned to the relevant shop so that the customer could try it on before completing payment. Usually this stage took around a week, although signs around the shop reminded patrons that tailored garments sometimes needed more time, reinforcing the superiority of bespoke suits.

Ready-to-wear
In offering a reliable service and producing affordable quality suits for the image-conscious working man and members of the middle classes, Montague Burton did much to break down the old pre-WW1 sartorial distinctions that once separated and defined the different strata of society. The company was also, in this more enlightened era, mindful of the needs of its staff, who largely received decent pay and worked in amenable surroundings. By 1939 Burton’s had almost 600 branches nationwide: at the height of its success and popularity, the company had now overtaken Hepworth, yet major changes to the selling and buying of clothes in a modern world were already afoot.

Despite the kudos still attached to bespoke garments, convenient ready-made clothes for men and women were a growing trend throughout the 1930s and from mid-decade onwards Burton’s began to introduce ready-to-wear suit departments in some branches. So rapid was this development that in 1938 off-the-peg suits and other ready-made garments took over both the ground- and first-floor showrooms in Burton’s flagship New Oxford Street store, their traditional bespoke tailoring now consigned to the basement.

The Full Monty
By shifting business operations to meet contemporary demands Burton’s were also now coming into direct competition with competitors such as Austin Reed. Yet they still commanded a large share of the market and when war broke out again in 1939, Burton’s again secured substantial government manufacturing contracts, producing around one-quarter of British military uniforms and one-third of demob suits for veterans. Besides a lounge suit comprising jacket, trousers and waistcoat, the clothes provided for ex-servicemen also included underwear, a shirt and tie and was nicknamed ‘The Full Monty’.

During the 1940s and 1950s Burton’s continued to modernise, renovating branches and increasingly supplying ready-made suits, the acquisition of Peter Robinson in 1947 bringing women’s wear on board. Sir Montague (he had been knighted in 1931) died in 1952, his company still the largest multiple tailor in the world. Nonetheless, when Burton’s provided suits for the England World Cup team in 1966, most of its trade was still in traditional made-to-measure garments. By the early 1970s the company also sold men’s shirts and ties, but it was now lagging behind others as a provider of modern menswear. Instead it focused on women’s wear, launching Topshop and acquiring various other chains such as Dorothy Perkins in the 1970s.

End of an era
More mergers and takeovers soon followed. Despite the Burton Group acquisition of Debenhams department stores in the 1980s, the role played by Burton as a brand declined. In 1998 the Burton Group was renamed Arcadia and under questionable management by Sir Philip Green from 2002, eventually Arcadia went into administration in 2020. The Burton brand was put up for sale and in February 2021 it was acquired by British online retailer Boohoo.com. Now the Burton’s brand – albeit representing a much-changed, impersonal enterprise – has an online presence and through affiliate and partnership arrangements, new ‘Burton of London’ signs are appearing on modern shop fronts across the globe. {