Gold standard as featured in Hertfordshire Life Magazine

If a Master Tailor is someone who is expert in every aspect of his craft, then Geoffrey Golding is the genuine article with a royal warrant to prove it. Judy Sumner went along to meet him

The last thing you might expect to find on an unprepossessing street at the unfashionable end of St Albans is a shop front bearing the Royal coat of arms. But there it is, in all its gilded splendour, over the door of G D Golding (Tailors) Ltd, bespoke tailor by appointment to H M The Queen.

'We have been working for the Royal household for ten years,' said Geoffrey Golding whose business this is. 'To be eligible for the warrant you must have worked for them for more than five years and have the majority of the contract. In the end though, it is the decision of the Queen herself.'

Step into the showroom and you could be in Savile Row or Bond Street among the wood panelling and Chinese rugs.

In the workrooms there are rack upon rack of sumptuous scarlet, blue or purple military ceremonial uniforms, lavishly trimmed with rich gold braid - although this should be no real surprise as Goldings is the UK's largest maker of officers' uniforms, including the Household Cavalry.

Clothing rails are full of beautifully finished, hand-sewn suits both of the sober City variety and some considerably more flamboyant or sporting in style. Every item is created by a team of workers whose standards are high enough to satisfy not only Mr Golding - who supervises every piece personally - but those of the most distinguished family in the land.

G D Golding (Tailors) Ltd - civil, military and livery - has been established in St Albans for nearly forty years but Geoffrey Golding's own story goes back much further. He is the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in the East End of London. From this background he decided very early on in his life that he would not endure the hardships that his own parents had.

Geoffrey's father had fallen out with some tough characters in the East End - gambling being the cause of the problem - and made a new start in St Albans, where he married. The family's meagre lifestyle compared unfavourably with the comfortable live of his father's tailoring clients convincing Geoffrey at a very early age that he had to find a way out.

Although not considered bright - he was in fact dyslexic - Geoffrey was astute enough to start saving for his own business from the incredibly early age of eight. By the time he was 15 he had saved £2,500 - a considerable sum at the time - towards his own business. He was making suits without his father's supervision by the time he was 16 and he was on his way to the very top of his trade.

Since being awarded the royal warrant at the beginning of 2001, the ensuing publicity has boosted business dramatically and it has been necessary to take on extra staff, bringing the present complement to 25.

'My interviews take two or three minutes and are little more than "name and address?" After that I give them a thimble and a needle and I just see what they can do.' And what Mr Golding's highly skilled workforce can do is breathtaking adding intricate regimental badges, fringed epaulettes and ornate fastenings designed to look like rows of tiny golden bullets. This year they have also been kept busy applying the Queen's Jubilee medal to many dress uniforms.

The civil slice of the business continues to grow steadily but the military side is still vast - so vast in fact that there is a Golding shop outside the gates of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst at Camberley to cater for the tailoring needs of the cadets.

'We took this shop over from Gieves & Hawkes nearly ten years ago. The pressure is tremendous but we have never let anyone down. You can't move the date of passing out at Sandhurst - the job just has to get done.

'But if we think we are under pressure, it is nothing compared to the military themselves. Theirs is not an easy job as I saw in particular during the Gulf War. I might have just a ten-minute slot to see a high-ranking officer, perhaps on a Sunday, if they had to be ready for the camera early on the Monday morning.

'You also have to build up detailed knowledge over the years with military uniforms. Very little is written down, you just have to know. The requirement may be a "mess kit, roll collar, pointed cuffs" and that's it. We just have to learn by experience whether the epaulettes have buttons and what kind and how many pips they have - although we must never call them pips of course, officially they are stars.'

Success with military tailoring quite often breeds further success on the civil side. 'I remember that we did a set of Blues & Royals uniforms for one family and in the end we had orders for suits for two brothers, one or two of their friends, their father - and their mother. The same has happened with a Field Marshall and we fitted out the whole family.'

Demand for City suits has grown so much in recent years that the company now employs a salesman dedicated to servicing that particular market.

Geoffrey Golding has lost count of the number of uniforms he has supplied for Lords Lieutenant, Sheriffs and their deputies over the years and in various counties but while discretion is paramount it is safe to say that G D Golding's work is seen regularly in the very best of circles.

Above the bundles of cloth samples of flannel from the West Country, Worsteds from Huddersfield, Scottish Tweeds and Irish Thornproofs, the wall of Goldings' showroom is covered with pictures and endorsements from some of the highest ranking members of military and civil life in this country and beyond.

To any business, these would be pure gold.

Courtesy of Hertfordshire Life Magazine (June 2002)