T.M.Lewin Brand Guidelines: An 1898 Shirtmaker, Two Administrations & a Return

Two Lewins and a shirt that opens down the front.

T.M.Lewin dates from 1898, when Thomas Mayes Lewin, in partnership with Geoffrey James Lewin, opened a shop on Panton Street in London, according to the company, Retail Gazette and TheIndustry.fashion. In 1903 the business moved to nearby Jermyn Street, which the company calls the home of English shirt making.

Its founding story rests on one garment. Until then, as English Wikipedia explains, men had pulled shirts on over their heads. Lewin’s “coat shirt” opened down the front, and the magazine London Opinion and Today described it as a “novel idea” in 1903, Retail Gazette and Wikipedia say. Wikipedia credits him with helping to popularise the button-front shirt. The company goes further, calling it “the first ever button up shirt” and him one of its pioneers, with the appeal that a gentleman could put it on without redoing his hair. Those are its own words.

During the First World War the firm supplied uniforms. TheIndustry.fashion names the British Army and the Royal Flying Corps; the company and Retail Gazette name the British Army and the RAF.

The partnership ended in the 1930s. English Wikipedia, citing the London Gazette of June 1938, says it was dissolved from 1 January that year, on retirement, and that the business continued as T.M.Lewin and Sons Ltd. The company dates Thomas Mayes Lewin’s retirement to 1938.

Ownership then moved outside the family. Retail Gazette and Wikipedia say the McKenna family bought the business in 1978, and Geoff Quinn, who would later run it, joined in 1980. The company’s own account says the business continued with the Lewin family after 1938, and that a partnership began in 1983 with John Francomb, a manufacturer at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, and that this brought the Prince of Wales collar shape it still uses. In 1987, it says, T.M.Lewin set up its own factory in Southend, and Francomb joined as creative director.

From a Southend factory to about 150 stores.

The factory did not hold the business for long. In 1993, Retail Gazette and Wikipedia say, T.M.Lewin began an early mail order service and started moving production from Southend overseas into Europe. The company tells this as a matter of scale: demand outgrew the factory, so it turned to sourcing fabrics from mills around the world. It names Biella in Italy, and mills there such as Loro Piana, Vitale Barberis and Reda, as sources of its wool.

The shops came next. T.M.Lewin opened its fifth store, at Ludgate Circus in the City of London, in 2000, and that year began testing the promotional offers that Wikipedia calls a defining characteristic of the brand. Multi-buy deals on shirts became its public face. The National wrote in 2021 that its strategy since the City heyday of the 1980s and 1990s had focused on price and constant deals.

The range widened as well. In 2005 T.M.Lewin moved beyond shirts into suits and supplied the ties for London’s 2012 Olympic bid, Retail Gazette says, and casualwear followed around 2012. By 2011 it had 100 UK stores and outlets. The first store outside Europe opened in Sydney in 2012, and franchise partners later took the name to 16 countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa and the Czech Republic.

Ownership shifted with the growth. In 2006 Caird Capital took a 20 per cent stake, backing a management buyout led by Quinn. Management, backed by Sankaty Advisors, an affiliate of Bain Capital, later bought that stake out. Retail Gazette’s timeline places this under 2012, while Retail Week’s report, cited by Wikipedia, is dated August 2015. Sven Gaede, formerly of New Look, became chief executive in 2018.

The brand’s public image came through sport and fabric names. Gary Lineker became its face in 2017, and Wikipedia records work with Royal Ascot, Harlequins and the England and Wales Cricket Board, along with collaborations with Liberty, Loro Piana, Albini and Falke. The store count reached its height in the mid-2010s, at about 150, TheIndustry.fashion reported. Wikipedia counts 68 owned UK stores and 89 international ones in 2019.

How shirtmakers present themselves.

Shirtmakers show their work through cloth. A bolt of poplin, a stack of stripes or a swatch book does what a logo does elsewhere: it tells a customer what kind of house this is. Charvet presents its shirtings in full bolts rather than on swatch cards, according to English Wikipedia, which describes a wall of four hundred white fabrics on its bespoke floor. Turnbull & Asser says its pattern books from the 1920s and 1930s survive, and it sells bespoke and made-to-measure shirts from its London shops.

Collars are the category’s other recurring image. They are small, repeatable shapes, easy to set out in rows and easy to tell apart. A Highsnobiety visit to Charvet found collar samples pinned to velvet and framed on the wall, and Turnbull & Asser names a collar of its own, the Classic T&A, as its signature style, English Wikipedia says. Paper patterns and fitting shirts belong to the same picture of a trade built on measurement.

Place matters as much as product. London’s Jermyn Street, in St James’s, is home to shirtmakers whose shop fronts appear in their own storytelling, and Turnbull & Asser dates its address there to 1903. In Paris, Charvet’s full name includes Place Vendôme.

Neckwear shares the same visual stock: silk ties folded and laid out by colour, and woven or printed patterns shown in ranges rather than one at a time. This guide sets out what can be checked about each house, including who founded it, who owns it now and where it says its products are made. Where a story rests on a company’s own account, the text says so. The tones and typefaces shown are our own interpretation.

Two administrations and a return to the high street.

The collapse came quickly in 2020. Bain Capital started a sale in April, and on 13 May, Retail Gazette reported, T.M.Lewin was bought by SCP Private Equity through a vehicle called Torque Brands; a later TheIndustry.fashion report says April. Shops were shut for lockdown, about 650 of 700 staff were furloughed, and talks with landlords stalled. On 30 June 2020 the business went into a pre-pack administration: Torque bought back the online business, all 66 UK stores closed and some 600 jobs went. Torque said T.M.Lewin was no longer viable in its current format.

The online-only plan did not hold. On 17 March 2022 Interpath Advisory was appointed as administrator, for the second time in two years, and WWD linked the collapse to the move away from formal shirts. In April, Retail Gazette reported, the brand was sold to TM Lewin Shirtmaker Limited, a company owned by its main lender, Petra Group. The website relaunched in May 2022, and an international online business followed in February 2024, managing director Dan Ferris told TheIndustry.fashion, describing Petra as a US private equity firm. T.M.Lewin was then trading online only; Ferris said that model was hard for formalwear.

The shops returned in April 2025 with a flagship on Bow Lane in the City of London, with in-house tailoring and an exclusive Clerkenwell Jacket, FashionUnited reported. Canary Wharf and an outlet at The O2 followed in November 2025, then a smaller “core store” by Liverpool Street in March 2026 and St Albans that September, Drapers reported. Two more, in Victoria and at Bluewater in Kent, were due in November 2026. Ferris says the small estate is deliberate, and that the old one stretched operations too thin.

The product has changed with the shops. Ferris says the shirt range was cut back drastically, and that rugby shirts, polos, chinos and quarter-zip knitwear now sit alongside the suits, for people who split the week between office and home.

For a design guide, T.M.Lewin shows how a founding date and one early idea can remain the core of a brand after its shops and its owners have changed. Compare Charles Tyrwhitt, which Ferris names as a main competitor, and Thomas Pink, another City shirt name that closed its shops in 2020. For this guide we use a twill navy, an Oxford blue and a collar white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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