the young suitor

IN THE confusing language of late 20th-century fashionspeak, Ozwald Boateng is very, very hot. And also very, very cool. He makes vibrant suits for men who want to sizzle while they chill out. His clothes are divinely tailored; his streetwise fans say that they're wicked, man. He was photographed in Vanity Fair magazine last month, sitting on top of a red Royal Mail post box, as the emblem of what's trendy and happening in the world's hippest city which, apparently, is London. Boateng thinks otherwise.

He thinks that the world's coolest city is Hong Kong. Clever Ozwald.

So here he is, all 1.9 metres of him, not quite folded up into a chair in his room at The Regent, marvelling at that hotel's attention to dry-cleaning details. 'They've covered the buttons,' he cries, glancing down at his waistcoat, which is mauve and orange. 'I love Hong Kong, man. It's a happening city.' He looks like an elegant knife - or, indeed, a blade, as they used to say in Regency novels - in his sharp, dazzling outfit. He knows the effect clothes can have, especially his and especially on him.

He's wearing one of what he calls his 'suits with juice' of which he has brought over seven. 'They cause traffic jams,' he says with relish. 'When I wear them on special occasions, the air stops.' And down at the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, where he is photographed, even if the air doesn't quite halt, the passers-by do. You can see them - locals and tourists - slowing down to take in the amazing spectacle which is Boateng lining up his profile against the Hong Kong skyline. He laughs a good deal, he loves hearing gossip ('No! No! I don't believe it!' he shouts, thriving on the story of Elton John's non-concert), he likes passing it on. He says he didn't really enjoy the Vanity Fair shoot because it was freezing and it took forever and he wasn't sure whether it was such a good idea to climb up on a postbox. But he's an amiable sort, very hail-fellow-well-met, so he did it anyway.

When Mr Wang visiting from Shanghai stops to say hello and to see if he can have his picture taken too, Boateng is all willing affability. The pair line up together. Mr Wang is considerably shorter than Boateng. He smiles up at him, a little bemused; Ozwald grins down at Mr Wang. The effect is similar to one of the more tasteful Benetton commercials. 'Wow, that was great!' cries Boateng, as he lopes back to the hotel. 'Great! I tell you, this town has something happening!' HE SAYS he found a photograph of himself the other day wearing a purple mohair double-breasted suit, an electric blue shirt and a red two-tone tie. Which wasn't bad going for a five-year-old. 'I looked at it and thought 'You've got to be kidding!' ' (This is a favourite Boateng expression, enunciated with much fervour.) 'There was my sister in her Afro with this '70s thing going on, and me in this suit. So it showed that I always cared about what I wore.' Although Boateng's parents came from Ghana, he was born in London in 1967. His father, a headmaster, declared that gentlemen wore suits and so his son grew up believing in the power of the cloth. 'That's why I went into making suits. I wanted to be stylish with my friends but not go home and offend my dad. This is where I've come from. This is what I know.' It was a girlfriend who encouraged him to take up tailoring. He was 16, half-heartedly fiddling about on a computer course, and she needed someone to help her with an end-of-term fashion show. 'And for some crazy reason, I knew what to do. After the show, people wanted to buy and I thought 'This is wild!' and before I knew it I had a little business going. Not a humongous business, but I was a fashion designer.' He did squeeze in a year studying fashion at Southgate Technical College but, on the whole, he seems to have managed this phase of his career simply flying by the seats of his well-tailored pants. 'I'm a gambler. And at this point I had slight arrogance. Everything worked. I had a lot of publicity, I was in The Face, I was The Young One. It was very, very cool.' Then someone told him that he should check out Savile Row, London's bastion of the world's best tailors. So Boateng put on his Structured Classic - a grey, waisted, flannel suit - and went for a stroll. He arrived at Tommy Nutter's showroom. At the time Nutter, who has since died, was possibly the most famous inhabitant of the Row and had dressed everyone in the known universe, including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. While the deeply impressed Boateng was staring at the window display (Prince of Wales check suit, bright hankie waving jauntily from breast pocket), Nutter himself appeared to look over the sharp dude on his doorstep.

Boateng does a funny imitation of the greeting ritual between the two tailors, as they sized each other up, both nodding with approval as they noted little sartorial details. Nutter then invited the stranger in to have a look behind the scenes. 'And I thought 'This is what I want to be doing',' remembers Boateng. 'I wanted to take the concept and develop it. So I found out the best person on the Row to learn each part of tailoring - cutting, putting in the sleeve, the lining, all that. I must have been trained by 50 people in five years. It's really complex and it takes amazing discipline.' Is he disciplined? 'No. I have a short attention span but I wanted to do it. I'm someone who has great drive. And I love the pomp and snobbery of Savile Row. It has wit. They gave me enormous amounts of stick, they made it hard. But it's part of the deal that you've got to do your time.' And what about racism? Boateng shrugs, unconcerned. 'I probably have experienced racism but I've never been aware of it. You tell me someone's staring at me and I'll miss it, I won't see it. I'm too busy up here in my head with all my little wheeler-dealerings.' At 25, he decided to open his own shop. He came up with an elaborate five-year business plan which only required money to take off beautifully. Unfortunately, he had no money - not even a credit card. His career trajectory hit a slight wobble as he dabbled a little in property and hired out a billboard and dreamt of get-rich-quick schemes. His girlfriend - now his wife - Pascale, a French model, kept telling him that he mustn't get sidetracked. So, eventually, he focussed his sights on presenting a catwalk show in Paris in the summer of 1994.