Dunhill

Alfred Dunhill founded the company in London in 1893, after inheriting his father’s saddlery business on Euston Road at the age of 21, and developed a line of automobile accessories called Dunhill’s Motorities.

The first collection included car horns and lamps, leather overcoats, goggles, picnic sets and timepieces, all sold under the strap line “Everything But The Motor.” The proposition was clothing and equipment for the early motorist, a customer who barely existed yet.

In 1907, Dunhill opened a tobacconist’s shop in St James’s, offering tailored tobacco blends, and the house drew a clientele that included Winston Churchill and George VI. A New York Times review of his 1924 monograph The Pipe Book credited Dunhill with making pipe smoking “a gentlemanly diversion,” a phrase that fixed how the early business was read.

The firm received its first royal warrant in 1921, as tobacconist to Edward, Prince of Wales, an early credential that signaled where the customer sat.

Menswear arrived through the side door, beginning with motoring coats and accessories before broadening into a full ready-to-wear offer. By the late 1970s, Dunhill stocked a range of 3,500 luxury goods across more than 20 stores worldwide, and the brand had grown into men’s ready-to-wear clothing.

The design language traces back to the archive of driving coats, leather jackets and tweeds. That places the house in the same English tailoring conversation as Savile Row institutions and the country-wear of Purdey, with a sharper city sensibility than Barbour or Cordings.

Ownership shifted across the twentieth century, from the Dunhill family to outside investors. In 1967, Rothmans International, controlled by Anton Rupert’s Rembrandt Group, acquired 50.6% of the company, and in 1998 the company joined the Richemont Group, where it still sits.

Creative leadership has turned over several times in the recent era. Mark Weston exited as chief creative officer in late 2022 after more than five years, shortly after the arrival of CEO Laurent Malecaze, with the brand wanting to accent tailored clothing, classic menswear silhouettes and luxury fabrics, in contrast to Weston’s sporty wrap jackets and split-hem trousers.

Simon Holloway, who took the role in April 2023, used London Fashion Week to unveil his debut menswear collection and to swing the spotlight back onto British menswear.

Today, Dunhill dresses an international tailoring customer across stores in London, New York and Asia, sitting alongside Alaïa, Chloé, Delvaux, Montblanc, Peter Millar, Purdey and Serapian in the Richemont portfolio, and operating as the group’s English menswear house.