In a building full of superlatives, Tim Angel is keen to show me the water
tanks. Two metal drums, both the size of a decent swimming pool, these
provide the water and the necessary pressure to power the sprinkler system.
Costing £250,000, this is a requirement under the building's insurance policy.
It covers five million items of clothing stored on eight miles of clothes
racks. Should the whole lot go up in smoke, the insurers of Angels would
have to write a cheque for £40million.
The company grew out of a stall in Covent Garden that was probably set up in
Napoleonic times - the early records are scanty - and took in for resale
cast-offs from the rich and fashionable of the day. In 1840 Morris Angel set
up in nearby Dudley Street, on the fringes of theatreland.
At that time, Mr Angel explains, actors in the theatre were required to appear
at auditions with the necessary outfit. Morris's son Daniel took the
business into theatrical bespoke tailoring, with many of the outfits hired
and then returned for re-use.
Today Angels can claim to be Europe's, and possibly the world's, biggest
provider of costumes to the TV and film industries. Its clothes have dressed
films such as Dr Zhivago, Star Wars, Titanic and The Last Emperor that have
won Oscars for Best Achievement in Costume Design. It hires them out, or a
team at Hendon runs them up, working closely with the costumes manager on
the film.
Once made and used, the costumes may then be returned to the firm for rehire.
Posters from films the business has supplied range across the walls of the
aircraft hangar-like storeroom in Hendon, North London, where the clothes
are kept. The Oscar winners have a wall of their own.
Daniel begat Morris, who went into the business. Morris begat Daniel, and
Daniel begat - Tim, whose real name is Morris, but he decided he didn't like
it. This harmless family tradition continues with Tim's first-born son
Daniel, who is 32 and also works for the business. As does daughter Emma,
34, who runs the standalone fancy dress shop on Shaftesbury Avenue, and
younger son Jeremy, 26, in charge of the newly revamped website.
There is, as yet, no seventh generation Morris, but Daniel is getting married
next week, and Tim is hopeful. Meanwhile, his own wife, Eleanor, also works
for the business. “We're a nepotistic family,” he concedes drily.
Daniel, “very traditional”, always wanted to join the family firm. His
siblings were less willing recruits, having had brief careers elsewhere and
joined after some persuasion. “I would never, ever, ever hold a gun to any
of my kids' heads,” he says. “I've seen friends who did that. Their children
have always left.”
Mr Angel himself seems to have joined out of a lack of any real alternative.
He did badly at school, not even sitting his A levels. “If I had been a bit
more academic I might have been a lawyer,” he admits. It is, however, a
career path he has never regretted.
Angels had made an easy transition from the theatre to the early film
industry. Mr Angel, when he joined in 1966, was set to packing shelves. “If
I packed a shelf wrongly, all the clothing would be pulled out again. It
didn't matter that I was the boss's son.”
He soon identified the opportunities in TV, especially the BBC, which was
spawning historical drama at an impressive rate. It was the start of colour.
The budgets, by today's standards, were huge. “It wasn't being run by
accountants.” His first TV work was on The Onedin Line. He also worked on
Doctor Who, many of whose costumes are stored in Hendon. “I was partly
responsible for Tom Baker's look. My idea was to give him a scarf - but not
the scarf he wore.”
Two obstacles loomed. Much of the stock was destroyed in a fire, probably
arson. And the 1992 purchase of Angels' main competitor, Bermans, sparked an
investigation by the Office of Fair Trading. He is indignant to this day at
the inconvenience, any suggestion that he controls a monopoly and at the
expense. “We had to pay.” The subsequent inquiry decided that there were
still sufficient independents to allow the deal to go through. It also
valued the UK fancy dress market at £120million, a fact that did not go
unnoticed by Angels, which proceeded with the development of the five-storey
Shaftesbury Avenue store.
Various independents were then acquired. But the biggest deal was in April
this year, when he paid an unspecified six-figure sum for the wardrobe
department of the BBC.
This had languished in a warehouse in north Acton, earmarked for sale or
closure by the cost-conscious Beeb. A million items came across to Hendon in
only 25 days. Most significantly, it gave Angels access to the clothes worn
in the BBC's light entertainment shows such as Morecambe & Wise and The
Two Ronnies. These occupy a designated part of the mezzanine space at
Hendon, in a modern light industrial park close to where the M1 and the
North Circular intersect and between the appropriately if coincidentally
named Garrick Road and Irving Way.
Wander away from Light Entertainment, past a couple of rubber costumes
probably from vintage Doctor Who and you come upon a forest of military
uniforms. The sheer variety is staggering, as is the obscurity of some of
the labelled items. Soviet-style Hungarian caps, Prussian frock coats,
kepis, with or without havelocks, helmets, dozens of unwieldy leather
jackets from Das Boot, Ruritanian-looking dragoons uniforms and enough
redcoats to outfit the entire cast of Zulu - which indeed Angels did.
There is a huge array of period civilian costumes - in this case, taking in
the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, much of this from the BBC. No surprise that
Angels worked on the retro-police dramas Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.
The true rare stuff, the so-called Star Collection, Olivier's costume from
Henry V and its like, were auctioned at Bonhams in 2007, about 400 items in
all, raising almost £1million to be reinvested in the business. It was too
valuable to hire out but had to be kept in a special locked room, and the
insurance was a drain. “It was costing us,” he says. “I'm not a hoarder,
though clothes to me form part of my family history.”
There are, he claims, advantages and disadvantages to being a family business.
They are inherently unstable, especially unto the third generation, because
those sons and daughters may be less than willing to sign up, or less able.
Meanwhile, the number of shareholders whose interests have to be taken into
account multiplies.
On the other hand, he is able to take decisions on the spur of the moment,
such as buying the BBC collection, without having to justify his actions to
anyone. He gets to meet famous people and attend first nights and the
Oscars. And the business feels like another family member.
“It's very sentimental. I can go around this place and pull out a coat we made
the day my grandmother died. It was snowing, that day,” he recalls. “Because
it's been going for so long I would like to pass it on. If someone came
along with a silly offer I would have to consider it. But it's never
happened.”
A couple of years ago, during an audit of clerical garb that was being hired
out from Shaftesbury Avenue, they came across a brown monk's robe with an
odd-looking hood. “Someone put the brown robe on and pulled up the hood.” A
senior manager recognised it for what it was, the cloak worn by Sir Alec
Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first Star Wars film. It had been made by
Bermans and, after the film was shot in Tunisia, returned. Any number of
customers had, unknowingly, partied in it since. The robe was auctioned for
£54,000.
Surveying those eight miles of racks, it is hard not to wonder what other
treasures are concealed among the flared jeans and camouflage trousers.
CV
Born: August 1 1949, London.
Educated: John Lyon School, Harrow.
1966: Joined Angels.
1986: Made chairman.
1992: Acquires main rival Bermans. Governor, British Film Institute,
former chairman, British Academy of Filam and Television Arts.
Family: Married with three children.
