Inside the World of Bella Glanville, One of Britain’s Only Fully Bespoke Female Tailors
Isabel Glanville creates fully bespoke womenswear, drafting every pattern from scratch, shaping every garment through a series of fittings, and completing every stage by hand. For many of her clients, it is the first time in their lives they feel something is made with them, rather than simply made around them.
“So many people are surprised when I tell them I am the only tailor making true bespoke exclusively for women, because they assume it must already exist.”
The truth is that made to measure options are plentiful, but true bespoke work for women is startlingly rare. Most women have never worn trousers shaped along the specific curve of their body or a jacket designed to fit them so perfectly. The first fitting is often a moment of revelation: they see the garment constructed in calico, the raw structure of the piece, and begin to understand what is possible when a tailor builds from the body outward rather than starting with a system that was never meant for them.
Bella’s own understanding of this began on Savile Row, where she trained for eight years at some of the most established houses. She learned the precision and discipline required in traditional tailoring and she absorbed the heritage of a craft that has shaped British style for centuries. Yet during those years she also observed how little the system accounted for the natural variations of a woman’s body.
“I always felt that something was not quite right when I had pieces made for myself because the foundation was still based on menswear.”
That realisation, quiet at first, grew into a conviction that women deserved something equal to the standard she saw delivered to male clients but grounded in patterns and processes designed for women from the outset. Over time that conviction became her work.
Her deep connection to the legal profession developed almost naturally. Bella’s brother is a barrister, and through him she understood the realities of spending long days in tailoring that is expected to project authority while rarely considering comfort. “It is even harder for women,” she told us, a truth we hear often from our own community. The weight, the fit, the lack of movement, the sense of always adjusting and compensating. The tension between the demands of tradition and the needs of women’s bodies is exactly where Bella’s work sits.
Her studio in Kings Cross reflects this ethos. It is peaceful, beautifully arranged and intentionally intimate. She wants women to feel calm here, to feel cared for, to feel that the process is not rushed or transactional but a collaboration that honours their time and their presence. This welcome and ease is central to the experience she builds. When we asked about the emotional responses she receives, she shared moments that stayed with her.
“I have had clients cry during fittings because they finally felt something that truly fit.”
Bella’s work began with trousers before expanding into full suits, a natural shift in her career upon starting her own atelier. The principles are the same; the pattern comes first, the fittings follow. Jackets require more time and more precision, but the reward is tangible. A beautifully cut jacket lifts the body and supports it, making the wearer feel confident and comfortable. Bella described her own wardrobe with affection, from relaxed suits that offer comfort without sacrificing polish to sharper silhouettes she wears for evenings and formal events. She knows the difference a good suit can make to the way you inhabit a room.
“The demand is there, women just need to know where to go.”
Her presence on Savile Row continues through a series of pop ups, including her residency from the 8th-13th of December at number 19 Savile Row. When she installed her sign that read ‘Bespoke for Women’, passersby stopped simply because they had never seen those words together.
Many walked in without even knowing such a service existed. Tailors she once worked with now send their female clients to her, cloth merchants help her select and source fabrics for shoots and special projects, and the community has embraced her not as an exception but as someone expanding the tradition in a direction it has long needed to go.
There is also a growing cultural shift that supports her work. More women want pieces that last, garments with longevity, integrity and craftsmanship, they want to move away from disposable fashion and toward something that feels intentional. The challenge is no longer convincing women that bespoke is valuable but helping them find the tailors who can truly offer it. “The demand is there,” she said. “Women just need to know where to go.”
Bella’s path into tailoring began even earlier than Savile Row. She told us about attending after school sewing clubs near her home, already drawn to making and constructing. When she finished school she knew immediately she did not want to go to university. She wanted to work with her hands. “I thought, what can I do where I can sew all the time?,” she said. That question led her to a tailor around the corner, then to a college course, then to an internship and finally an apprenticeship. She has been tailoring since she was nineteen and still speaks about the work with a sense of genuine love.
Something that really resonated with us and aligns entirely with what we do at Ivy & Normanton, is Bella’s clarity of mission. She is preserving a centuries old craft while reshaping its foundations so women can claim their place within it. Her work is technical and artistic, but it is also deeply nuanced.
It is a mission that stands with us at Ivy & Normanton. We believe in creating spaces and garments that recognise the realities women face in professions shaped by tradition. Supporting Bella feels like supporting the evolution of those traditions and we’re so pleased to work on this feature with her! What Bella offers is more than a bespoke tailoring service. It’s an opportunity for women to have the experience of being considered with real attention and care. And that, we believe, is something every woman deserves.