Dougie Hayward, tailor who dressed stars of the 1960s, dies aged 73

It was the height of the 1960s and London had it all. The most glamorous actors, the hippest pop stars, the most famous photographers – even the coolest villains. Yet apart from sharing the most swinging city on Earth, this new breed of classless celebrities had something else in common.

The reason the likes of Michael Caine, Terence Stamp and Tony Bennett looked so good was in no small part down to one man: Dougie Hayward. It was a debt of gratitude they were willing to honour with lifelong friendships. For operating out of his shop in Mayfair's Mount Street, just off Savile Row, Hayward presided for nearly four decades over one of the capital city's most enduring sartorial institutions.

On Saturday night, in a London hospice close to the flat above the West End shop where he continued to work and live until the ravages of illness became too much, Hayward lost his long battle against neurological disease. He was 73.

A lifelong womaniser and bon vivant who provided the real-life inspiration for his friend Caine's most iconic screen role – the serial philanderer Alfie Elkins – not to mention the model for John Le Carre's Harry Pendel, aka The Tailor of Panama – Hayward received the last rites from a Roman Catholic priest before his death. According to his daughter and business partner Polly, the lifelong agnostic was greatly soothed by the ceremony and passed peacefully.

"Typical jammy bastard – gets forgiven all his sins right at the end," she said yesterday. For Hayward's life was indeed charmed.

Born to a working-class family in pre-gentrified west London, Hayward's father cleaned boilers for the BBC while his mother toiled in a bullet factory. He never forget his background retaining a love for football and beer that belied his veneer.

Hayward's was the archetypal 60s success story. He left school at 15, apprenticed to a tailor who visited the flats in Cadogan Square where his uncle was a caretaker. He later said he only took the job because he knew his family would never be able to judge whether he was any good.

As fate would have it, he very good indeed. But he struggled to get a job as a cutter and even Oxford Street would not countenance him as a salesman because, in their view, his Cockney accent precluded him from meeting well-heeled customers.

It was a social division he was never to accept and in 1967 he opened his Mount Street shop, which continues to trade.

"He was very, very funny," recalled his daughter yesterday. "He was not scared of society and he refused to be penned in. Luckily for him he was in the right place at the tight time. He just couldn't have happened before the 1960s," she said.

"He started out being very fashionable but he maintained it. He made friends with people before they were famous. He made them look good and continued to make them look good. He said to me once that you should never notice the suit but you should notice the man – it should make you look younger and thinner. It shouldn't be about fashion. He was amazing at doing that."

The friendships that Hayward made in the 1960s, like his clothes, endured. Until recently lunched every Thursday with the photographer Terry O'Neill, hair expert Philip Kingsley, the owner of Tramp Johnny Gold and, of course, Michael Cane, who together formed the infamous Mayfair Orphans Club.

"We were great mates for 40 or 50 years. This is a big loss. He was greatly loved – he loved women and they loved him. He loved good food and good music and he had so many good friends and the most incredible client list. They didn't go to him just for his brilliant tailoring but for his incredible personality," O'Neill said yesterday.

His shop attracted the most photographed men of the day. Peter Sellers, Terence Stamp, Rex Harrison and Sir John Gielgud became early visitors to the famous sofa where they would put the world to rights over coffee, complaining about the pressures of fame and, of course, their complex love lives. Not that Hayward always relished such outpourings.

"I suppose women talk to their hairdresser and men talk to their tailor. If you give them the chance all their worries will come flying out. But you have got to stop it. You're not trying to be an analyst and also sometimes they say too much," he said in one of his last interviews.

But it wasn't only men who were devotees of someone the actor James Coburn once described as "the Rodin of Tweed". There was Sharon Tate, Bianca Jagger, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow and Jean Shrimpton.

His friendship with the young Patrick Litchfield, the Queen's cousin, with whom he founded the dining club Burkes, elevated him to the highest levels of society and into the company of yet another famous woman. Before his death, Litchfield recalled that Hayward was a regular visitor to Mustique, where he would accompany Princess Margaret on faultless renditions of Cole Porter songs.

His influence reached beyond the 1960s. He made a young Michael Parkinson his first suit – the first of 48 – though the chat show host remembers him as much more than a simple tailor.

"He ran the best salon in London. Anybody who's anybody was there. It soon became apparent in the 1970s that everyone that was in town to do the show would visit there. I met Alec Guinness there and Tony Bennett. He had this great ability to treat everybody the same."