In 1936 Alec Simpson brought Hoff – at the age of 33 – to London, and commissioned him to produce a series of illustrations of handsome, virile, sporting men - wearing Simpson clothes - that were to become the representation of Simpson style for a quarter of a century (joined – once Simpson Piccadilly added women's clothes to its stock – by fashionable, elegant and charming women). First used in the direct mail brochures, Hoff's illustrations soon became the mainstay of Simpson advertising. Bill Crawford - the advertising agent of Simpson's - recognized the power of this imagery, and when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 Crawford persuaded Max Hoff to move to London, where he married Margarete Popper in December of the same year and where his two children were born.