Robert Hoare joined Watts & Co., the London-based vestment maker his family has owned since 1874, at the urging of his father.
“He said, ‘Look you’ve got to do it. No one else can do this. You have to do it for one year, and after the year is over, you’re free to do whatever you want,’” Hoare said.
Hoare recalls walking into his first day on the job, where he was greeted by his aunt — a mug of sherry in one hand and cigarette in the other. Managing the business with a typewriter, she swiftly rebuffed Hoare’s suggestion that the company should consider using e-commerce. This was in 2010.
“Those were the days,” laughs Hoare, a descendant of prolific British architect George Gilbert Scott and Watts cofounder George Gilbert Scott Jr.
Known for high-quality materials and craftmanship, Watts has long enjoyed its reputation as a premier maker of liturgical garments and textile church furnishings, a status reinforced by its client relationship with the British Royals.
But when Hoare stepped in, he saw the opportunity to modernize the family firm.
“I ended up staying longer than a year,” he said.
Under Hoare’s leadership as CEO since 2016, Watts has dispensed with the sherry, typewriters, and other vestiges of a former era, charting a future amid changing trends and customer demand. He represents the fifth generation of family leadership and ownership, alongside his sister and co-owner, Marie-Severine de Caraman Chimay.
From a workroom and showroom located behind Westminster Abbey, Watts produces a range of bespoke and made-to-order vestments and liturgical fabrics for customers across the globe. In recent years, the staff has grown significantly, from a seven-person micro-enterprise to a team of about 35 craft workers, Hoare said. The staff skews young, with Central Saint Martins — a leading fashion and design school in London — serving as a main talent feeder. Others have studied at the Royal School of Needlework, a hand embroidery school based at Hampton Court Palace.
“They are very creative,” Hoare said of his staff. “They are passionate about color, pattern, and texture. The only arguments that happen in the office have to do with shades of color. We’ve got a very dynamic, very young team here.”
Following a significant shakeup in the industry, Watts appears to be coming out ahead. This summer, Watts announced its acquisition of former neighbor and competitor J. Wippell & Co. The 235-year-old, London-based manufacturer of clerical clothing, church furnishings, and academic gowns ceased operation late last year, citing the effects of the COVID pandemic.
Under the deal, Watts gained access to Wippell’s intellectual property, patterns, cloths, and fabrics. Watts now plans to relaunch the brand as an online-only business, gradually rolling out wares such as clerical shirts, cassocks, surplices, stocks, and choir robes.
Catering to Wippell’s devoted American customer base, Watts plans to add a U.S.-based warehouse and sales team. It is also working to expedite order fulfillment within the United States, with the goal of two-day delivery for many of its offerings.
“Wippell is obviously a very well-known brand in the U.S., and when we exhibited at General Convention and we had the Wippell sign up, everyone was super excited,” Hoare said. “We had lots and lots of people coming to us saying they were so happy that the Wippell brand was being continued.”
Describing the company’s evolution in the past 15 years as a “total transformation,” Hoare acknowledges it hasn’t been a straight path getting to this point.
The very week he became CEO of the company, a flood threatened to take the business under. On June 23, 2016 — the same day as the Brexit referendum — the Thames River overflowed its banks. Flood waters destroyed the Watts inventory, forcing the business to cease operations for a full year.
“We had over two feet of water,” Hoare said. “When I arrived in the morning, there was a 16th-century chasuble that we were looking at the previous evening and it was floating on the surface.”
“Our creative director … he had 35 years of his life’s work disappear underwater,” Hoare added. “His entire bookcase and all the designs he’s ever done in 35 years — his entire life’s work — the week he was retiring, disappeared underwater.”
In the wake of the devastation, Watts received half the compensation it believes it was owed, after its insurer of 150 years claimed the business was under-insured, Hoare said. The company was on the edge of bankruptcy.
“We didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any stock. We were like an empty shell,” Hoare said.
As its newly appointed leader, Hoare was determined not to let the family business fail.
“Luckily for us, our customers were so kind,” he said. “They had been loyal customers for years. A lot of people placed orders and said, ‘We’re happy to wait.’ So, I think the loyalty of our suppliers and loyalty of our customers really saved us.”
In the niche world of ecclesiastical fashion, the company’s timeless designs, paired with an ability to innovate, has helped win and retain customers, Hoare said.
Today’s consumers, in a rejection of fast fashion, want higher-quality garments that will last a lifetime without becoming passé, Hoare said.
“Contemporary vestments are not really in at the moment,” he said. “So, we’re often replicating things of the past, but in a modern way and in a very beautiful way.”
Watts has plenty of history to draw from when creating new designs; many of its patterns date back 150 years. Influenced by Medieval and Renaissance-era ecclesiastical art, the company’s founders drew out patterns that were used hundreds of years earlier by clergy from across Europe.
The company made a name for itself by designing a set of copes for Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887, the first vestments worn in Westminster Abbey since the Reformation. Watts continued to work with the Royal family throughout the 20th century, producing a new set of copes for every coronation except George V’s.
Modern audiences have seen the company’s work during recent high-profile royal events, including the Archbishop of Canterbury’s cope at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011 and the ceremonial gowns of the High Steward and High Bailiff for the coronation of King Charles III.
Whether commissioned by the king or a cleric, these vestments are held to the highest standard, Hoare said.
“We obsess about quality, we obsess about aesthetics, and we obsess about customer service,” he said. “Nothing leaves this place without it being thoroughly quality-checked. It has to be very, very beautiful.”
Business in recent years has picked up thanks to two movements within the church: a growing demand for women’s clericals and the revival of the traditional Latin Mass.
When Hoare first joined the company, it was standard practice when making women’s clothing to take men’s patterns and adjust the measurements. Looking to meet the demand for well-tailored clothing among women clergy, the company is now overhauling its existing patterns and recreating them from scratch, with the goal of launching a new womenswear collection next year.
“We’ll have really beautiful tailoring customization and the best fabrics,” Hoare said. “We’re really, really excited. We’re going to offer very personal service, and you’re going to be able to choose from some beautiful fabrics.”
While an overall decline in clergy points to a shrinking market for vestment-makers like Watts, Hoare said that decline is offset in part by the growing movement of conscious consumerism.
“Even though there’s a general view that [the Episcopal Church] is sort of a church in decline, what we’re seeing is clergy, especially younger clergy, want quality,” he said. “They want things that are sustainably sourced, which obviously our fabrics are, and they want proper quality. They’re not interested in the sort of cheap polyester plastic that you can get on Amazon. They want things which will last their whole life or their whole time in ministry.”
Meanwhile, Watts has won new customers, thanks to the rise in popularly of the Latin rite and a growing appreciation for beautiful vestments among Roman Catholics. The polyester that enjoyed its liturgical heyday in the 1970s and ’80s is out, Hoare said. Premium textiles are in.
“We’re seeing a big move, especially for younger priests, towards quality, beautiful aesthetics, and the beautifying of the liturgy,” Hoare said. “And we’re seeing that not just in the U.S., but across Europe as well. The next generation of Catholic priests wants proper vestments.”
The company couldn’t have orchestrated a better advertisement than this past summer’s National Eucharistic Congress, where thousands of Catholics gathered in procession through the streets of downtown Indianapolis, attracting the attention of national media. Among the throng were cardinals clad in golden Gothic Revival-style chasubles, featuring exclusive Davenport fabric and Y orphreys made from Watts’s Gothic Trellis braid. In the center of Lucas Oil Stadium, where 60,000 people congregated for daily Mass, was an altar frontal designed by Watts. That image made the front page of The New York Times.
“I mean, it was pretty extraordinary,” Hoare said. “All the cardinals present wore Watts vestments, and the altar frontal on the main stage in the stadium was made by Watts. It was a Watts extravaganza.”
Amid church decline, Hoare sees that expression of devotion as a harbinger of things to come. In response to geopolitical uncertainty, massive technological advancements, and climate change, Hoare forecasts many will begin to seek the transcendent through liturgy and the sacraments.
“I wonder with this change if there’s not going to be a move back towards spirituality,” he said. “Because there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to be very, very lost because of such change. If you look at history in times of great technological change, there’s always a move back towards spirituality.”
