Bloomberg Businessweek: August 2020

 

Not Dead Yet
At the top of the made‑to‑measure market, suitmakers are finding creative ways to survive—and, sometimes, thrive.
By David Coggins

The onset of a global pandemic has hastened the most dire predictions for the suit. After all, the power brokers and their power suits can no longer power‑lunch. Instead, they’re working from home in Greenwich, Conn., the Hamptons, or wherever they’ve moored their yacht. Even among nonexecutives, the tailored suit’s currency as job interview or wedding day requirement has disappeared, seemingly overnight.

Plus, a suit requires expertise to make—and Italy, where more sartorial knowledge exists than anywhere else, was forced to shutter some of its finest clothing factories and ateliers early in the outbreak.

Now that these craftsmen have reopened, the day‑to‑day measuring, fitting, and consulting work they do is back on as well. So how are they managing this while face‑to‑face interaction is still curtailed? And when trunk shows, where tailors from London and Italy visit their clients abroad for sales and fittings, have been canceled?

The storied Florence tailor Liverano & Liverano had to slow production but found a silver lining. “We had a lot of time to focus on strengthening other aspects of the business,” says creative director Takahiro Osaki. “We built a new website and saw record growth in online sales.”

Jake Mueser’s shop is open in New York’s West Village on a very limited basis; to conduct fittings over Zoom, he sends a sample jacket to a client in the correct size. “At first, I was very skeptical we could do that effectively,” he says. It turns out to have been a great success. “By having the client try on the garment and take a few basic measurements, we can work with our pattern maker to achieve the desired fit.”

Paolo Martorano, who also makes bespoke suits in New York, sanitizes his showroom before each client visit, and he accepts only one appointment a day. But the results have been good. “We’ve been able to maintain enough business to keep our entire staff—from our master tailor on down,” Martorano says. He’s even hired two tailors who’d lost positions elsewhere.

In many ways we were in a golden age of tailoring in New York before Covid‑19, which makes this conundrum all the more frustrating for everyone involved. It had never been easier to get a bespoke two‑piece: Manhattan has many expert suitmakers, and the leading houses on Savile Row and in Italy would set up trunk shows here twice a year, eliminating the need to hop a plane for a new purchase. Other New York retailers such as the Armoury would host less well‑known masters who otherwise had never been able to visit.

Lately, tailoring hasn’t always meant a suit, either. Customers have been commissioning clothing on their own terms, according to Michael Hill, creative director of British menswear brand Drake’s. Most “are looking for something that they really want to wear,” he says. “It’s a far more joyous thing, rather than a corporate uniform.”

The result is something handmade but not dressy. “Customers are ordering fewer classic white and blue shirts,” especially during the pandemic, says Varvara Jain, who owns the Amsterdam‑based shirt brand 100Hands with her husband, Akshat. The most popular, she says, “are denims, indigos, and jerseys.” Mueser has seen an increase in orders for boldly patterned sport coats and colorful trousers in cotton twills and linen. “These are more playful, less conservative designs,” he says.

Even James Bond, once a symbol of Savile Row tailoring, is embracing unstructured suits and softer materials. In the forthcoming film No Time to Die, he wears a casual pinwale corduroy suit by designer Massimo Alba of Milan. “A significant portion of professionals now feel the need to represent themselves in a freer, more informal manner,” Alba says. “But the suit will remain one of the most iconic codes for elegance.”

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