Liam and Sam Fayed, co-founders of the menswear line Bespoken, wouldn’t dare to dress Prince William or Prince Harry.
“I don’t think that’s a battle that we would ever try to fight,” says Liam. “We would cause World War III within the company if we tried anything.”
That’s because the princes are already loyal customers of Turnbull & Asser, the famed 127-year-old Savile Row haberdashery that Liam and Sam’s father, Ali Al-Fayed, has owned since 1986.
The relationship is all the more entwined since Liam and Sam’s billionaire cousin, Dodi Fayed, died in the 1997 car crash in Paris with Princess Diana, while being chased by paparazzi in the Pont de l’Alma underpass.
But while the Fayeds have royal connections aplenty, Sam and Liam are looking to carve a reputation all their own.
“We grew up in the Turnbull world,” says Liam, 26, chatting at Bespoken’s East 57th Street showroom, where their collection of tightly tailored shirts and camo-detailed accessories are dreamed up and displayed. “But we really wanted to create a brand by ourselves.”
The first step? Making NYC their headquarters.
“We felt like doing it in London would be just like, ‘the sons of that brand puttering along.’ And we didn’t want that,” says Sam, who is 27, single and nicknamed “the Afghan Hound” due to his long, curly mane.
“When people come in and buy our product or pick us up or write about us, they believe in us,” says Sam. “They believe in the brand. They’re not writing it because it’s Sam or Liam.”
The brothers can’t deny the Fayed family’s intrigue. Their father owns one of London’s most prestigious tailors. Their uncle, Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Fayed (estimated to be the 1,031st-richest person in the world), owns the Ritz Paris and previously owned Harrods department store.
And then there’s their cousin, Dodi, Mohamed’s eldest son and Diana’s final lover.
Liam and Sam tense up when asked about Dodi and Diana.
“It’s family,” says Sam with a shrug, noting he never met the late princess. “People ask. It’s unavoidable. There’s nothing we can do.”
“We were close with my cousin who passed away, and we were sad when he passed away,” adds Liam. “It’s probably worse because you hear about it all the time and people ask you about it.”
In the Princess Diana biopic starring Naomi Watts opening Friday, Diana’s glamorous, albeit brief, relationship with Dodi makes an appearance (the filmmakers focus mainly on her two-year love affair with Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan). Sam, who didn’t know there was a Diana movie coming out, “probably” won’t see it.
“That’s another side of the family,” Sam says. “We were always in touch, but didn’t really associate a lot with that because we were in America.”
Rather than running through the halls of Harrods as children, the family traded London for Greenwich, Conn., when Sam was five. Growing up, they spent summers in London plunking down in the same Hyde Park flat their family had when they were children, or in NYC working at Turnbull’s store.
While working at the family shop, Liam and Sam realized there was a market for a younger customer that craved the heritage and craftsmanship of a Turnbull product, but with a slimmer cut and hipper edge.
The duo just needed to convince the guys working at Turnbull’s Gloucestershire, England, factory.
“It’s like pulling teeth because they’ve been doing the same thing for 100 years,” explains Sam, who says the first time he visited the factory with a Bespoken shirt pattern, the tailors were flabbergasted by the 6-inch difference between the snug Bespoken garment and the Turnbull one.
“They’re always giving us s- – t,” he says, laughing. “Why are the pockets here? And why do you want this hidden here?”
The brothers launched Bespoken from Liam’s Syracuse University dorm room in 2008, selling their first pieces to Bloomingdale’s while both were still undergrads. Now the line can be found everywhere from Saks Fifth Avenue to Mr. Porter and even Gap with which they collaborated this fall.
Bespoken may boast celeb fans, including Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but to the Fayed brothers, it’s the all-American man they’re hoping to spruce up.
“In general, if guys don’t know what to wear, they wear something six sizes too big,” laments Liam, who has a girlfriend of two years.
“[But American men] are moving towards a more refined look,” adds Sam.
No doubt the brothers will help them get there — one slim-fitting shirt at a time.