Altbes Atelier, the Couture Tailor Who Comes to Marylebone

Thirty couture panels for the Dress Codes exhibition at Kensington Palace were put together in a small workroom on Moreton Street in Pimlico. The same workroom will take up a pair of jeans, from £25.

On 30 June 2026 the United States Embassy marked 250 years of American independence with more than 4,000 guests at the Ambassador's residence in Regent's Park. The official tailor on site was Altbes Atelier. While Tim McGraw played, Zlata Ksen's team made on-site adjustments to suits and gowns a short walk from Marylebone's northern edge.

The atelier itself is not in Marylebone. Altbes Atelier is at 37 Moreton Street in Pimlico, SW1V, a 3-minute walk from Pimlico station on the Victoria line. What brings it into these pages is that the work travels. Home and hotel fittings with collection and delivery mean the alterations Marylebone residents tend to put off can be pinned in their own sitting room.

Where Zlata Ksen learned her trade

Backstage at London Fashion Week in 2024, the designer Mowalola sent her Crash show out in leather and fabric garments that Altbes Atelier had custom made. Credits like that explain a great deal.

Zlata Ksen trained formally at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, then worked for design houses in New York and London. In her own account, the skills were sharpened on the runways of New York Fashion Week and London Fashion Week, and on Savile Row. Altbes Atelier began as a mother-and-daughter business, co-founded by Zlata and her mother, and she runs it today as founder and director.

Her client list is long. Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Zegna, Gucci, the London Palladium and Lewis Hamilton all appear on it. Kensington Palace commissioned the team to put together every one of those 30 couture panels for Dress Codes in 2025. Jennie of BLACKPINK wore a leather jacket and skirt the atelier made from scratch, and Frankie Bridge's campaign for Next was altered on set.

The atelier calls itself award-winning, and in 2026 it was a finalist in the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Business Awards. Prizes are not why we rate the place. A tailor trained on runway deadlines does not get flustered by a wedding next Saturday, and Zlata Ksen has built the business around exactly those moments.

Leather, fur and the moth hole in a good jumper

A moth hole in a good wool jumper is usually treated as the end of the jumper. It need not be.

Altbes Atelier's own before-and-after photographs make the case. A hole in a light grey knitted sleeve disappears into a reweave, and a brown virgin wool scarf with real moth damage comes back closed. Moth hole repair by hand starts from £10 on the published list, which is a good deal less than replacing the jumper.

Invisible mending and darning share a bench with the harder work. Leather is repaired and altered here, and real and faux fur coats are mended. The atelier also takes on stretch, knit, beaded, waterproof and technical fabrics, which are the pieces a general alterations counter is most likely to decline. Its own phrase for this is craft where others turn away, and the examples on its site back that up.

Complex reconstruction is where the design training shows most. Garments are unpicked and rebuilt, and an old favourite can be copied pattern for pattern. Vintage clothing is restored rather than patched. In the gallery, a feather and beaded cocktail dress made in the workshop hangs beside a fur coat restored and altered for a client.

For leather alterations, a waist adjustment on leather trousers or a leather skirt starts from £50. A hole in a real fur coat starts from £25. Final quotes follow a fitting at the atelier, which is free.

The same hands will take up your jeans

A beaded wedding dress hem starts at £200 at Altbes Atelier. A pair of jeans shortened by machine starts at £25. Both go across the same workroom, and the second is not treated as the lesser job.

Most of the alterations Marylebone households need are ordinary ones, and the price list shows the thinking. Jeans can be shortened by machine, or with the original hem kept and reattached for £50 so the worn, faded edge survives. Trousers take a blind hem from £30. Skirts and straight dresses are shortened from £30 too.

Suiting is done for men and women alike, with jacket sleeves shortened from the shoulder from £120 and trouser legs tapered from £30. Curtains and soft furnishings are repaired or made from scratch, which few couture workrooms bother to offer.

November brings its own job. Ski trousers come down from the top of the wardrobe, and a pair bought a size long drags through slush in the lift queue.

Ski trouser shortening is on the atelier's list by name, and Zlata Ksen also shortens and tailors ski jackets. Waterproof cloth needs a tailor who understands how the fabric and its seams behave, and she works in those fabrics as a matter of course. Leave it until the week before the flight and it simply becomes an expedited job.

Bridal alterations and red carpet fittings

Altbes Atelier's bridal alterations cover the bodice and the length, a bustle for the train, and straps and bust cups, on beaded and lace gowns as well as plain ones. Custom veils get hand embroidery or hand beading. Couture wedding dresses are made from sketch to final fitting, from £1,500 on the published list.

Nothing is cut or restitched before the first fitting. Brides are asked to bring the gown, the undergarments they will wear and the wedding shoes, because the hem is set against the shoes.

Beaded and lace gowns get particular care. The beads are often taken off along a seam and sewn back afterwards, so the seam stays clean and the pattern still reads correctly across it. Wedding dress alterations on the list start from £90 for the bodice and £120 for the length. A full redesign or remodel starts from £350.

For the alterations Marylebone brides need in the last few weeks, the atelier will come to a home or hotel for the fitting and then finish the work in the workshop. Bridesmaids and mothers of the bride are covered as well, with custom dresses from £500 and £800.

One quiet detail on the bridal page deserves a mention. Leftover fabric and trims from a wedding dress can be made into a christening gown.

Occasion work outside weddings is the other half of this. Altbes Atelier offers red carpet and photoshoot fittings, along with on-set alterations for productions and pop-ups, the kind of last-minute work that has to hold under a photographer's flash. Black tie is handled for men and women, from dinner suits and evening jackets to dresses and occasion separates.

Home and hotel fittings in Marylebone

Marylebone residents and hotel guests can use Altbes Atelier without going to Pimlico. A tailor comes to a home or hotel anywhere in London for an on-site fitting with collection and drop-off, for £75, and a plain garment drop-off costs £25. Cancel with less than 24 hours' notice and the fee is lost.

That service is the honest reason Altbes Atelier belongs on a Marylebone site. A guest at one of the hotels in our Marylebone hotels compared can have a dinner jacket fitted in the room. A resident on Devonshire Place can hand over the jeans and the bridesmaid's dress in one visit, which takes the trip across town out of the alterations Marylebone families keep meaning to arrange.

Speed costs extra. It is clearly priced, which matters for the last-minute alterations Marylebone hotel guests tend to need. Same-day and next-day work carries a 50% expedited charge on top of the alteration. Anything under a week carries 30%.

The atelier opens Monday to Friday from 9am to 7pm and on Saturday from 12pm to 7pm. Sunday is closed, though private Sunday appointments can be arranged for an additional fee.

Some people prefer to see the workroom. Marylebone sits in W1U and W1G and Pimlico in SW1V, both in the City of Westminster. From Oxford Circus, at the West End edge of the district, the Victoria line runs straight to Pimlico, and the atelier puts the journey from Marylebone at about 20 minutes.

A wardrobe concierge and Learn to Sew classes

The Altbes Wardrobe Concierge turns the alterations Marylebone households need through the year into one standing arrangement. Altbes Privé costs £295 a month. It includes 3 home or residence fittings a month within Central London, expedited work at no extra charge and priority emergency tailoring. Collection and delivery are included, as are a monthly personal shopping session and an annual wardrobe health check. Altbes Élite is by invitation and priced on consultation, with a dedicated wardrobe concierge and a tailor on site for special events.

Learn to Sew runs the other way, for anyone who would rather manage the simpler alterations Marylebone wardrobes need themselves. Private lessons cost £50 an hour and group tuition £30 an hour, for complete beginners and people returning to it. Fashion students come for tutoring outside university hours. Others arrive with a single project, or a vintage garment to rework.

Bookings go through altbes.com or by phone and WhatsApp on 07985 575350, and [email protected] answers email.

With the alterations Marylebone residents send out in a normal year, the deciding question is how much each piece matters. Jeans that need taking up and ski trousers before the season are ordinary jobs, and Altbes Atelier does them properly, from £25. A beaded wedding dress or a fur coat is a different kind of job. So is a cashmere jumper with moth holes. The same workroom handles those with couture training behind it.

The address is in Pimlico, but the fittings come to W1. Book the £75 home or hotel visit and put every garment that needs attention on one rail. One tailor can deal with all of it.