Nick Hart has high ambitions. “This is an opportunity to create the next great British menswear brand, the last one having been Paul Smith,” he says of his new brand, Spencer Hart Palm Springs. “It’s a niche label in the sense that it’s targeted at men who see themselves as independent thinkers – but that’s actually a huge market.”

Hart has some track record. He launched the menswear line for Kenzo, did the same for Timothy Everest’s ready-to wear, co-created the seminal menswear brand Griffin Laundry, devised the younger Aquascutum Ltd line for the British clothing company and began the turnaround for Chester Barrie. Then, 10 years ago, he created Spencer Hart, a bespoke tailoring brand on Savile Row for men who didn’t want Savile Row tailoring.

“I assumed that there were more men like me – who wanted Savile Row quality and craftsmanship but not the compromise that would leave them looking like they had stepped out of a costume drama,” he says. “That was a gap in the market – for bespoke tailoring that looked modern, for a streamlined, pared-down, monochrome suit with one-button fastening and narrow lapel. Palm Springs fills another – for a collection of clean, simple but very precise products that real men, rather than skinny fashion men, really want to wear, and could wear every day, be they Mr Architect or Mr Lawyer. It’s remarkable but that is missing from the market right now.”

The label launches through a flagship store now open in London’s Mayfair, occupying a former bank. The pitch is simple, but no less particular. If the Spencer Hart suit customer would, like Hart, be more likely to look to the likes of Charlie Parker, Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington for their idea of besuited cool – “Steve McQueen and Cary Grant are pretty cool too, I just don’t think that as a source for style they’re particularly modern” – then Palm Springs aims to fill the rest of their wardrobe with the same [some might say] anal attention to detail.

The collection is complete, from denim to shoes, knitwear to underwear to outerwear – at around £300 (€345) – and even a fragrance. But whereas another brand might have one style of polo shirt, Palm Springs has perhaps 10 in different fits and looks (at £75). All of them in black. “There is a lot of monochrome,” Hart concedes, “because that just looks better. That’s why men’s clothes always look better in black-and-white photography. Chances are Ellington’s coat was in pink. But in monochrome it’s gains an element.”

It also points to the focus of the brand.

As Hart learned at Kenzo, where every suit was either black or dark navy to the point where the style became synonymous with the brand, “sometimes the best men’s brands are about doing one thing and doing it really well – and ramming home that message”. Certainly Hart is convinced this is a commercial proposition, conceding that Spencer Hart bespoke tailoring has been run more akin to a couture house. “There’s a purity in that,” he says, “but not much money.”

While Hart says that the launch of the brand requires Mayfair as a setting – for the money still in the area, and “because times are tough in the real world, and this is a product aimed at a customer who doesn’t live in that real world or likes to think he doesn’t” – it also plays to a growing, post-designer demand for less well-known niche labels with more specialist products. “Any brand now needs stimulating product, great retail theatre, not just items that are expensive and well made,” says Hart. “Even big brands need several niche elements to retain appeal.”

Not that Hart assumes niche necessarily means small or local. The Mayfair shop, designed with a updated 50s aesthetic by Shed (best known for phone brand Vertu’s retail look), provides the epicentre; it comes with a custom-making department, appropriately situated in the old bank vaults, in which “extreme purists” can have any product made to order. “Well, extreme purists with a lot of money,” Hart adds.

While the Mayfair shop looks set to become a destination store, Hart plans to take the brand further afield at some speed. A second Spencer Hart Palm Springs will open in London and one in Hollywood, within 18 months. Hart is also considering one in Germany – possibly in Berlin or Hamburg – and is in talks regarding a shop-in-shop partnership in China, set for 2013. The brand is extending too: Floris, which makes the Spencer Hart Palm Springs fragrance, is launching it, together with 10 other grooming products, to wide distribution later this year.

“There’s a big clear-out going on in the menswear market and what will be left will not only have to be very well-run, very professional businesses able to constantly reinvent themselves, they will have to offer something with a distinctive point of view,” says Hart. “I think more and more when it comes to fashion retail, men want to be taken on a journey with some magic to it. A menswear brand now needs to feel like something men want to be part of.”

Spencer Hart Palm Springs, 62-64 Brook Street, London W1; www.spencerhart.com