An English company with a distinguished naval and military heritage can hardly do better than count Admiral Lord Nelson and Field Marshal The Duke of Wellington amongst its most celebrated customers.
Given the fortunes of the company’s archive over two centuries – which will be discussed in a subsequent article – it is gratifying that there is enough documentary evidence for Gieves & Hawkes to lay claim to having supplied Nelson and Wellington respectively.

As far as the Duke of Wellington is concerned, the relevant Hawkes customer ledger covering the years 1832 to 1849, thus post Waterloo, has several lengthy entries where it is clear that he was purchasing accoutrements for himself as well as for the regiments of which he was colonel-in-chief.
The association with Lord Nelson is rather more difficult to establish as very little original material survives in the company’s records apart from, notably, a dispatch signed by him in 1794.
This is due to much of relevance having been lost during the blitz in September 1940 – to be covered in a subsequent article, as mentioned above.
There are also, of course, the company histories handed down by successive members of the Gieves family.
But the Gieves connection with Nelson, although in some sense conjectural, is nevertheless entirely probable.
The company which eventually became known as Gieves was the end result of acquisitions or mergers during the period from 1785 to 1887 when the first James Gieve, and also the first member of the Gieve family to have entered the business, became sole owner.
The original naval tailoring business of Mel Meredith in Portsmouth, established in 1785, was probably the one which supplied Nelson and, indeed, the company record also relates that Hardy took rooms above Meredith’s shop which might lend extra credence to this.
The business was inherited by Meredith’s son, Augustus, in 1814 on the death of his father and was then taken over in 1839 by Joseph Galt, another naval tailor in the town.
It was this Joseph Galt with whom the first James Gieve went into partnership in 1852, thereafter becoming sole owner in 1887.
This business was later acquired, in 1904, by a Charles Matthews who already owned two other Portsmouth naval tailors, Messrs. Seagrove and Messrs. Fraser & Davis.
The company after the Matthews takeover was called Gieve, Matthews & Seagrove and was eventually styled Gieve’s Ltd by about 1912.

Thus it appears that the present day Gieves is at least the amalgamation of no less than four original Portsmouth naval tailors.
So one could say that there is a strong likelihood that the Gieves antecedents did in fact supply Nelson and other notable naval officers in the Napoleonic Wars.

Images :
Nelson’s signature on a naval despatch, dated the 28th. of October, 1794
Pages from a Hawkes customer ledger showing entries for the Duke of Wellington