Ever wondered how they make the historic attire worn by judges and barristers? Rachel Rothwell goes behind the scenes with the world's oldest tailor

Stepping into the dark and serene Ede & Ravenscroft shop in London's legal quarter, you have the sense of entering another world. Leaving behind the noise of the traffic and the obstacle course of quick-footed lawyers on the pavements of Chancery Lane, the staid, wood-panelled interior, lined with neatly pressed expensive suits, is eerily quiet.

This is a place steeped in history; founded in the late 1600s (it is the oldest tailors in the world), dressing judges and lawyers has been a lucrative line of business for centuries. The firm has been based at 93 and 94 Chancery Lane since 1868.

At the very back of the store is a staircase leading down into the bowels of what is, it transpires, much more than a shop front, but the hub of a thriving business which is home to teams of specialist, highly trained staff working on wigs and ceremonial dress. The building itself is a mixture of old and new, with an ancient boardroom and other historic features connected by a labyrinth of incongruously modern corridors and stairs.

The firm that was to become Ede & Ravenscroft was founded by a respected tailoring family, which hit the big time in 1689 when it landed a deal to provide robes for the coronation of William and Mary (the firm has since been tailor to a further 11 coronations).

With the royal seal of approval behind it, it soon branched out to begin catering for judges and the legal profession. By this time, the business was not only gowns, but also wigs.

The fashion for wigs originated in France, after Henry III took to wearing one to hide his premature baldness, but was enthusiastically adopted by Charles II in 1660 as the ultimate in chic style. Judges originally wore a cap rather than a wig, but by the 1680s they had succumbed to the wig craze – and, of course, have never given it up.

Wigging out

Down in the Ede & Ravenscroft wig room, the radio is playing a bouncy tune while four women of various ages are studiously applying needles to wigs on stands, using a technique created by the firm back in 1822.

Until then, wigs were nasty, smelly things made of black horsehair. They required constant powdering and ointment to keep the bugs at bay and indeed the black pouch or 'dress bag' still worn today by judges and QCs on ceremonial occasions was originally used to catch dripping ointment collected by pipes in the wig, to prevent expensive robes from being damaged.

But in 1822, Humphrey Ravenscroft, grandson of the original founder of the firm, had a brainwave. He devised a wig made of white horsehair, which did not need to be powdered or curled: the 'forensic wig' still used today.

Sandra Bartlett, Ede & Ravenscroft's head wigmaker – who has been at the firm for decades, having joined straight from school after passing a sewing test – proudly shows off the traditional tools she uses to create the forensic wig; the most immediately striking of which are the wooden 'heads'.

Lined up on three shelves are about 40 or so wooden heads, of differing sizes, around which a new wig is built. When new, the heads are entirely blank, but most of these are 20 years old, and the wig-making process – which involves sticking braces in the blocks which leave holes at just the points where the eyes and cheeks would be – gives them a sinister, skull-like quality. Actor John Hannah was once given a tour of the room for his role in BBC drama New Street Law; he was so taken with the quirky heads that he asked to take one home.

Once the right sized block has been selected, the wigmakers place a ribbon around it and, with netting, this forms the basic framework for the wig. While there are only four full-time time members of staff on the Chancery Lane wig team, Ede & Ravenscroft has 80 or so outworkers who perform other tasks such as weaving the horsehair.

The hair is woven to form long pieces of thread which have short, straight hairs about three centimetres long sticking out all along them, which will eventually form the curls of the wig. The short hairs are the wrapped around sticks and boiled, creating curls, which are then carefully sewn onto the netting. The staff work with sharp, six-inch needles and wear large thimbles – but even these do not prevent frequent pricks to the finger, which they lament is an occupational hazard.

Once the woven horsehair is all on, Bartlett takes on the role of anti-hairdresser and meticulously combs out all the curl in a process called 'frizzing'. She then uses her own tools to put a more uniform curl back in, and the wig is sprayed with water and pressed. She then turns to an array of metal objects which look suspiciously like instruments of torture, but are in fact irons that she heats in a flame from a gas burner, and uses to press down the curls. Some of the implements she uses are 100 years old.

From start to finish, including weaving the hair, a straightforward barrister wig will take four to six weeks to make (and costs around £550), while at the top end of the scale, a 'full bottomed' wig, used by the judiciary on ceremonial occasions, will take eight weeks – and will make a £3,600 dent in the pocket (the pocket of court users or taxpayers, that is).

But while many in the profession may prefer to ditch the wig – law lord Baroness Hale once questioned why judges dress up as if they are 'old men' – Bartlett clearly sees the beauty in what she creates. Explaining why, as a fresh-faced 16-year-old, she chose to work with wigs rather than gowns, she says: "Wigs are more interesting because they are all made by hand; and they are just so nice when they are finished."

Cloaked in tradition

Wigs are only one part of the Ede & Ravenscroft offering, of course; the tailor also creates the intricate gowns that underpin the pomp and ceremony of the beginning of the legal year, as well as more day-to-day legal dress. Hanging randomly throughout the building are various ceremonial gowns – a luxurious burgundy velvet number with spotted white fur trim is a particularly eye-catching example.

While more women have entered the profession, the style of the robes, which generally hang straight down from the shoulder, mean there has been no need to adapt them for the female physique; so much of the formal legal costume worn today has remained unchanged for centuries.

With such a long history to the firm, staff at Ede & Ravenscroft are well briefed on the meaning behind the various quirks of legal dress, and will usually explain them to judges and lawyers as they come for a fitting.

Judges get changed in a special 'bar room', the walls of which are covered in portraits of lawyers from times past, with an old barber's mirror in the corner dating back to the time when a client's hair would be cut so that the wig would fit better.

Being the experts, staff at Ede & Ravenscroft can also disillusion new barristers of any commonly held misunderstandings relating to the Bar's attire. The black gown was adopted in 1685 when the whole Bar went into mourning after the death of King Charles II.

But the 'fee bag' at the back of the gown was not, as many believe, a pocket for solicitors to deposit money so that the barrister would not have to handle cash. According to the tailors' firm, it actually originates from the mourning hood that was worn in the late 1600s; an evolutionary leftover.

As well as wigs and gowns, Ede & Ravenscroft also produces a traditional accessory: colour-coded bags for holding a barrister's wig and gown which, etiquette dictates, may only be ordered by those of a certain status within the legal system. The rarest is a green bag, which is only for judges, followed by the red bag, which is for junior barristers, but should only be ordered by a QC. The QC may present the bag, embroidered with the junior's initials, at the end of a case, with a piece of parchment on which the QC can write a special message.

But does the tailor rigorously enforce the rule? Apparently not. With demand for legal dress so high, it is not practical for the firm to check the status of everyone ordering the bags. Sometimes tradition does have to bend with the times, after all.

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