Dougie Millings

Douglas Arnold Millings, tailor: born Manchester 30 July 1913; married 1941 Lilian Freedman (one son, one daughter); died Hillingdon, Middlesex 20 September 2001.

Dougie Millings redefined the way British rock stars dressed in the Sixties. His ingenuity as a bespoke tailor, together with his easy charm and ability to remain unfazed by the rich and feted, gave him a magnetic appeal for the most famous names in rock, pop and Hollywood.

Born in Manchester in 1913, the son of a civil servant, Millings learnt the complexities of bespoke tailoring at Leith Academy in Edinburgh before completing his tailoring apprenticeship at Jenners department store in Edinburgh. He then moved to Leeds, before arriving in London in the 1930s. By day, he worked as a tailor's cutter at Hector Powe in Regent Street. By night, he boosted his earnings by performing as a crooner.

Millings served as a dispatch rider with the London and Scottish Regiment during the Second World War. While stationed in England, he broke his back in a collision with another motorbike but, despite being told he would never walk again, confounded medical predictions by making a complete recovery.

By 1952, Millings was running the tailoring department of Austins, a menswear shop on Shaftesbury Avenue. Six years later, he decided to branch out on his own, sharing a small first floor cutters' showroom at 63 Old Compton Street in the heart of Soho. The showroom was ideally located – close to the Two I's coffee house where Tommy Steele and a coterie of young British talent were discovered.

This was an era when the band's image was controlled not by an entourage of stylists, advisers and personal shoppers, but by the band, the manager and the tailor. Tito Burns, who discovered Dusty Springfield and was then manager of Cliff Richard, brought Richard to Millings premises to order an off-white stage suit.

Richard was Millings's first rock'n'roll artist client. Thereafter, the floodgates opened: Millings was responsible for making Billy Fury's gold lamé suit, the original plaid jackets worn by Bill Hayley and the Comets in 1958, Roy Orbison's black suits with concealed zip fastening, Marty Wilde's sharp tailored suits and Wee Willy Harris's red and pink suit – Harris later dyed his hair to match.

In 1962 Brian Epstein brought Gerry and the Pacemakers to meet Millings. A month or so later, he brought the Beatles. By December, Millings had produced the first set of collarless Beatles suits in beige, light blue, black and navy blue. From 1963 until their Sgt Pepper album, Millings was responsible for making hundreds of Beatles suits worn in public and private – these were often a product of collaborations with Paul McCartney who would sketch lapel shapes and discuss the direction the band's image would take.

Millings made all the outfits for the Beatles' American and British tours, television appearances and Royal Command Performances, and was also responsible for the morning suits the Beatles wore to visit Buckingham Palace in 1965 when they were invested MBE. Millings received credits for creating the Beatles costumes for A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965), and played a cameo role in the former.

By 1963, Dougie Millings had outgrown his original premises and opened a three-storey shop in Great Poulteney Street. "There was a grand piano in the basement," his son Gordon Millings recalls. "Paul McCartney and Buddy Greco used to tinkle on it when they came for a fitting." Millings also created wardrobes for the Rolling Stones, the Everly Brothers, the Four Tops, the Temptations, the Kinks, and The Who. "Keith Moon died in one of my suits," Dougie Millings told GQ magazine in 2000. "In fact, he hadn't paid for it."

By the late Sixties, Millings's client list was a Who's Who of Hollywood – Warren Beatty, James Dean and Steve McQueen became customers. When Sammy Davis Jnr came to London in the mid-Sixties, he asked Millings to make him some street suits. Millings arrived at the Mayfair at 11 in the morning – a little early for the Rat Pack's ultimate party animal. Gordon Millings recalls:

He went into Sammy Davis's bedroom, tapped him on the shoulder to wake him and tell him he'd delivered the suits. Sammy told him to open the drawer. It was full of cash. "Just help yourself," said Sammy. "Take what you want." He was a very trusting guy.

Paul McCartney asked Millings to create the suits for his band Wings in 1972. Ten years later, bespoke tailoring had lost its hip connotations and Millings's shop closed in 1983. Millings continued in business, but his clientele had switched from pop and film stars to the movers and shakers of the financial world, with the occasional Conservative MP – William Hague commissioned Millings to make his morning suit.

Linda Watson