J.H. Cutler has been making bespoke clothing in Sydney since 1884. The lineage runs through five generations and the whole length of this city’s modern history. Beginning with Joseph Handel Cutler, who opened his rooms on George Street with nothing but inherited skill and a certainty about his own capabilities; continuing with Leslie, who purchased a permanent address on Bligh Street, but declined twice the purchase price when offered it, because a house of this kind is not a proposition to be traded; followed by Bruce, who held the business through war, recession and the disruption of mass manufacturing without compromising the work; and then John, who left school at fifteen to learn the craft, trained in London, and built a reputation that placed J.H. Cutler in the company of Savile Row’s finest. The thread connecting all four generations was not simply longevity, but a seriousness and depth of understanding about the craft that the business has carried from one generation to the next, and the only reason a tailoring house founded in the nineteenth century is still here, still making things by hand, still relevant.
The house now occupies a suite in Simpson House on Pitt Street — a heritage-listed building from 1912, once the first office of Australasian Films and the anchor of Sydney’s early cinema precinct. The recently restored ghost of a Rex Simpson Menswear sign looks down over the city toward the harbour from the building’s northern wall. Two doors away, in 1896, the first cinematograph film ever screened in Sydney played to its audience. J.H. Cutler has been part of this city’s story long enough to find itself, unexpectedly, in the company of its own history.
The work practised here is bespoke — a word borrowed so widely it has almost lost meaning, but which carries a precise one in this house. Each garment begins with a pattern drafted for one person’s body, constructed by hand across multiple fittings, in a process that is as much about understanding the client as it is about cutting and making their garments. Some of the many stages of this process are described in Our Craft.
The house is now led by Sam Hazelton, the first owner outside the Cutler family in its history. Sam came to J.H. Cutler during his studies, trained under John Cutler OAM for twelve years, and acquired the business when John retired in 2022. He has since assembled a team whose formation spans the tailoring traditions of Korea, Savile Row, and a sartorial school in Milan, people who came to this work, as Sam did, for the same quality of reason. Their stories are told on The Team page. An abridged account of the house’s history, the decisions and the people who shaped it across five generations, can be found on the Heritage page. For those seeking more depth; Making The Cut is the book written by David Dowsey, and published in 2014, about J.H. Cutler through four generations of the Cutler family, with Sam introduced toward its close.
Welcome to J.H. Cutler’s scheduling page. Please follow the prompts to arrange an appointment with John Cutler or Sam Hazelton.
