Hollywood forced me to think and dream bigger.
Hanging out with celebrities boosted my confidence. Stars were just people—nice people, even. Moreover, the menswear conference confirmed that I was on my way to being a master tailor. The industry professionals I met were competent but not superior. My competitive nature let me know I could play with the best—and even beat them. My ego-boosting trip proved timely. As it turned out, Mr. Goldman had bigger plans for my future than I could have ever dreamed.
“We’re headed to London, Martino,” he said. “Pack your suitcase and bring Arlene.”
Mr. Goldman traveled in style and comfort. He never carried money on him save for a single silver dollar. Standing in the hotel lobby, I asked him why he didn’t carry cash.
“I don’t need to. You don’t either,” he said. “I just sign for it. If you have any expenses, don’t pay for anything. Just tell them you’re with Mr. Goldman.”
“I don’t have to pay them?”
“No. You’re with me. That’s all you need.” Mr. Goldman noticed my confusion. “Let me show you,” he said. “Go to that desk clerk and tell him to give you one thousand pounds.”
“What? I’m not telling him that. You tell him.”
“No, I want you to. Just say Mr. Goldman is your boss.”
The experiment made me feel like a stickup artist. When I asked the clerk for the money, not surprisingly, he refused. I then did as Mr. Goldman instructed and told them he was my boss.
“Do you have a check or something?” the clerk asked.
“No, my boss is Mr. Goldman.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t do business like this in England,” he said in an annoyed tone.
Mr. Goldman stepped in. “I’m Mr. Goldman. What’s the problem?”
“Sir, I cannot just advance your colleague here one thousand pounds.”
“Why not? You know Mr. Collette, the famous businessman, don’t you?”
“Of course, sir.”
“He’s my cousin. Call him.”
The clerk shot us a skeptical but slightly worried look. While speaking to Mr. Collette on the phone, his expression changed to extreme embarrassment and mortified regret.
“Mr. Goldman, sir, I am so terribly sorry for my mistake. . . . I . . . I . . . I apologize for the misunderstanding, sir.”
“Give Martino here the money he requested,” said Mr. Goldman.
“Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir. Right away.”
Mr. Collette gave us his Rolls-Royce and a driver for the entire week.
Mr. Goldman understood the importance of appearances. He was a master at projecting power and panache. We were suit men. Our business was all about flair and perceived authority. Dress important and you become important. A man who signed for things made an unspoken statement of credit and wealth. Showing up in a Rolls-Royce signaled to prospects they, too, could join the ranks of the elite—or at least look the part—by wearing Mr. Goldman’s clothes. Our Rolls took us from haberdashery to haberdashery. Mr. Goldman pitched. I measured. He closed. I learned.
No lesson was too small for Mr. Goldman to impart. When he found out I didn’t drink alcohol, Mr. Goldman took it upon himself to set me straight. “If you’re going to be in this business, Martino, you have to learn to drink Scotch,” he said. He took me to a bar and taught me how to knock back and hold my liquor. I hated the stuff but loved that he took the time to teach me.
Still, even with all Mr. Goldman’s one-on-one mentoring, I doubted whether I had it in me to ever become a “front man” in our trade. Mr. Goldman made it look effortless. But he didn’t have a foreign accent. Moreover, he had a fancy education and formal sales and rhetorical training. I didn’t. I decided it was best to run my measuring tape, not my mouth.
Despite my insecurity about my language and education, though, I knew my value as GGG’s virtuoso tailor. By the late 1960s, I had grown frustrated and felt underappreciated. While the company’s wealth rose, mine remained flat. Mr. Goldman had told me that if we grew GGG’s sales to a hundred thousand units annually, my pockets would be full of cash. After traveling with him to Boston to see Malcolm Kenneth, an outerwear manufacturer, we inked a deal to make their lightweight gabardine coats that pushed us to 110,000 units. I waited two weeks. Nothing. My paycheck stayed the same.
I confronted him. “We are at 110,000 units now. My pockets are empty,” I said in a frustrated tone. “I thought you said my pockets would be fat with money if we hit a hundred thousand units. Did you forget that?” The pained look in his eyes let me know my words worried and embarrassed him. The next Monday, he pulled me into his office.
“Martino, you were right,” he said. “You’re the closest thing I have to a son. I need you to know that. You are vital to GGG’s success. From now on, every year, you will receive a substantial annual bonus. There’s something else. You’re an executive now. That means you represent GGG. So, I’m buying you a new Cadillac with GGG plates. Every three years we’ll trade it in and get you a new one in whatever color you want. End of story.”
In 1972 Mr. Goldman had a heart attack. I raced to the hospital in a panic. I couldn’t lose him.
The nurses made me sit in the waiting room. A few seats over sat a man with a face strikingly similar to Mr. Goldman’s, three fat cigars sticking out of his shirt pocket. “Excuse me,” I said. “Are you here with the Goldman family?”
“Yes, but my father won’t see me,” he said. I tried not to let on that I never knew Mr. Goldman had a son. “He disowned me,” the man said, tearing up. “But I would like to see him. I really would. But he won’t see me.” Although I didn’t know the story or what had happened between them, my heart hurt for this man I had just met.
I waited until he left before asking the nurse if I could go back and see Mr. Goldman. She escorted me into his room. He was lucid and looked good for having just suffered a heart attack. After a few minutes of small talk, I broached the subject. “Mr. Goldman, you lied to me. You said I was the closest thing you had to a son. But in the waiting room I just met a man who said he is your son. Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie. He’s dead to me.”
I later learned the estrangement had been caused by a fight involving stocks and money. I didn’t know the details. I didn’t need to. The whole thing tore at my heart. The ease with which American families discarded relationships appalled me. It was one of the few facets of American life that disappointed me. People here had no damn clue how blessed they were to live in freedom with their families. That any family could willfully and casually sever bonds between parent and child sickened me. It was an arrogant, ungrateful affront to God and orphans.
Sadly, over the next few years, the Goldman family’s internal tensions intensified. I sensed that serious trouble lay ahead. A high-powered clothing man who had signed deals with Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent to produce their labels approached me with an offer to join him in a new company. He offered me a one-third stake in the company if I would set up and run a new factory he would build to my specification. The opportunity excited me, but the thought of abandoning Mr. Goldman left me feeling queasy and disloyal. I dreaded telling him.
“Mr. Goldman, I lost my father when I was a boy in the camps. You are like my father. It’s hard for me to tell you the story, but now is my opportunity to go into business. To go out on my own. I need your advice. If you were my age and in my place, what would you do? You’ve never steered me wrong. I trust you completely.”
“I am not the best man to ask. I’m an old man—and you’re my business! If you don’t want to be here, I want to close up the factory. There’s no use keeping GGG open if you go.” His words stabbed me like a dagger. “Martino, listen to me. If I give you 5 percent of my corporation, you will own it all one day.”
“Sir, that’s very gracious of you, but I couldn’t accept something like that. Besides, your brothers are younger. I’m close to you, not them.”
“Fine. Then let me invest in you. How much do you need in order to stay?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“We’ll write it up and get it signed immediately.”
Several months later, Mr. Goldman told me he needed to speak with me privately. He said to meet him at a nearby park. When I arrived, he had already arrived and was sitting on a bench. “I want this to remain between us,” said Mr. Goldman. “I want you to take over the whole business and run GGG.”
“You’re my guy. You will do a much better job than Sam. You get along with the workers better. You know my business better than anyone.” The idea excited me. He was right. I could do a better job. I wanted to innovate and make changes. “You will earn sixty thousand dollars a year, plus your car and all the rest.”
“Who would tell Sam I’m the new boss?”
“You would.”
“I cannot do that, Mr. Goldman. You hired him. He’s my boss. I can’t do that.”
“Well, if you can’t do that then I can’t pay you that kind of a salary.”
“What if you let Sam go and I take less money.”
“That doesn’t work, Martino. I will keep him on but start shifting things to you.”
In 1977, exactly thirty years after I arrived in America and found work as a floor boy, I bought the GGG factory at 239 Varet Street in Brooklyn for $100,000. The facility and equipment were mine; the GGG brand was not. I would build a new brand from scratch, step by step, picking the people and systems I wanted. I called it Martin Greenfield Clothiers.
We started with six people. I wanted a business where I touched every suit and served as an architect of the human form. Originally, I envisioned a smaller operation that would turn out a hundred suits a week. My boutique-scale vision died hard and fast. The phone started ringing off the hook. A men’s store in Philadelphia named Diamonds wanted us to hand tailor their suits. Then Neiman Marcus called. They wanted me to do trunk shows and handle their made-to-measure clients. The suits would have Neiman Marcus on the joker tag but would be hand tailored by us.
My newfound creativity and managerial freedom allowed me to set up smarter systems and do things right. I refused to compromise. We would use only the highest-quality materials and methods. My suits would feature my hand-shaped full-canvas fronts, Italian and English woolens and cashmeres, handmade horn buttons affixed with a smart button stance, endless hand pressing to mold the jacket’s form, hand-stitched and functional buttonholes, and collars with a gorge done right to ensure a snug fit around the shirt collar. And above all, only over my dead body would any suit made by Martin Greenfield ever feature fused or glued interlining.
A suit jacket has three layers of fabric: inside, outside, and an interior canvas layer. In a handmade suit, the interior layer floats freely between the inside and the outside. That’s what gives a jacket verve. Cheap suits fuse or—heaven forbid—glue the middle layer to the front layer. The result is a disgusting mess of a suit. When I’m walking down the sidewalk and see a fused or glued jacket, I cross the street so I don’t have to look at it. It’s a rumpled, misshapen sartorial atrocity. That doesn’t happen with properly constructed free-floating canvas. Not the way I do them. My suits drape the body.
In addition to setting soaring manufacturing standards, I also insisted that Martin Greenfield Clothiers’ private clients receive a personalized customer experience. It made good business sense, but it made even better tailoring sense. One of the many advantages of a custom suit over a ready-made suit is that I am able to correct for a customer’s physical imperfections or irregularities. Uneven arms? I correct for them by modifying the sleeves. Longer-than-normal torso? I change the drop and button stance. Drooping shoulder? I reconstruct the shoulders and make them symmetrical.
I also insisted that we understand each customer’s way of life and professional work. For example, when we dressed a Walter Cronkite, Conan O’Brien, or Stone Phillips, we wouldn’t use the same fabrics that we’d use for a professional athlete like LeBron James, Patrick Ewing, or Shaquille O’Neal. Television cameras hate certain patterns and sheens, whereas athletic, muscular bodies hate tight seams. I was determined to make sure that the corporate culture of Martin Greenfield Clothiers put a premium on personalized customer communication.
Despite my confidence in my tailoring and systems, I was still insecure about my ability to sell directly to customers. It was a skill I had never had to learn—and wasn’t sure I could. Then, in 1978, I got a call from the legendary Stanley Marcus, owner of Neiman Marcus. He wanted me to meet him at his Dallas store for a tuxedo trunk show. “Do up a dozen tuxedos. Give me your very best cuts and looks. I’m flying you down here for a VIP trunk show,” he said.
I hadn’t liked Mr. Marcus the first time I met him. Worse, I thought he was a Communist. That first encounter was at a men’s fashion convention in Manhattan during my GGG days. “Take every penny out of the man’s pocket when he shops with you,” he had told me. The words made me wince. It reminded me of something the Russian Communists I fled from might say. But then I listened to the rest of Mr. Marcus’s spiel:
When you dress a man, you have to make sure you dress him 100 percent. You have to sell him everything he needs to dress properly. A scarf, a hat, gloves, pocket square—everything. Why? Because if you forget to sell him a pocket square, he’s going to run to another store and buy one. That salesperson is going to say, “Do you have a jacket to put it in?” When the customer says, yes, I bought it from Neiman Marcus, the salesman will say, “I can sell you a suit just as good for less.” And then you just lost a customer for life—and all because you failed to sell him a stupid pocket square.
A natural-born seller, Mr. Marcus knew what he was talking about. He hadn’t built one of fashion’s most successful stores by accident. As he liked to say, “I have the simplest taste; I’m always satisfied with the best.”
And now Mr. Marcus was calling me to do a Friday night trunk show for him. I made up my twelve sharpest tuxedos and flew to Dallas. Mr. Marcus arranged for a white stretch limousine to bring me to his downtown store, where I was greeted by a big sign out front—“Welcome, Martin Greenfield!”—and chilled champagne at the door. The event was to be a black-tie affair. After greeting me, Mr. Marcus told me to hurry up and change and then come find him before the show started.
That’s when he dropped the bomb on me. “I want to switch it up a little tonight,” he said. “I will make a few remarks and introduce you, but I want you to get on the stage and sell them.” My stomach churned.
“Mr. Marcus, I don’t talk. I’m a tailor. You’re the salesman. I just know how to make the clothes, not sell them.”
“No, I want you to go up there, take a tux jacket, and walk them through all the craftsmanship and tailoring you put into making a suit jacket.”
“Mr. Marcus, sir, I don’t want to embarrass you. I don’t think this is a good idea. I just. . . .”
“Nonsense. You’ll do great. Just talk about the quality and details you pour into everything you make. That’s all you have to do. Your work speaks for itself. Just show them what you do.”
I was so nervous I thought I was going to vomit on the tuxedos. I got in front of the wealthy crowd and went through each section of the jacket, stitch by stitch. I talked about the lining, the seam work, the fabrics—everything. While I was droning on about the workmanship in each coat, Mr. Marcus stood up and interrupted me mid-sentence. “Hey, Martin, I thought you said you couldn’t talk? Now stop talking. You already have three guys sitting next to me who are ready to get measured and buy tuxedos. Hurry it up, will you?”
The crowd burst out laughing. I did too.
The three men who wanted tuxedos turned out to be Mr. Marcus’s brother, cousin, and son. They may have genuinely wanted the suits, but Mr. Marcus no doubt encouraged them to take the lead so others would follow.
The next day, Mr. Marcus flew me to his Houston store for one-on-one sessions with a few of his top clients. The first man they brought in had his wife with him. She picked out eight tuxedos. “God created the world in seven days,” I said. “What do you need eight tuxedos for? I will make you seven and we will talk about suits.”
The Neiman Marcus people weren’t very happy with me for that. But I wanted clients to know they could entrust their wardrobe and style to me. Just because someone is rich doesn’t mean he’s content to pay more or get a bad deal. In my experience it’s just the reverse: the richer a man is, the more cautious he is about overpaying or being taken advantage of.
Neiman Marcus rounded out my three-city tour with a stop in Florida. From then on, Mr. Marcus had me on the trunk-show circuit handling Neiman Marcus’s private-label handmade suits. The relationship with Neiman’s was made all the more special by the friendship I developed with the legendary Derrill “The Doctor” Osborn, Neiman’s vice president of men’s tailored clothing. Derrill’s vivacious personal style and penchant for handcrafted quality made him an industry standout others followed. So, naturally, the suits we made for Neiman’s caught the eye of Derrill’s former employer, Saks Fifth Avenue, who called us to do their private label. Then Barneys New York called, followed by Brooks Brothers, who wanted us to make its Golden Fleece collection. I didn’t mind not having my brand name on the inside of the jacket. My signature was the quality that was hand sewn into the suit itself. That’s why all the biggest American suit stores came knocking and still do. They know that in the nearly seventy years I’ve been in the business, we’ve never once cut corners on quality. We never will.
Despite our rapid expansion and success, I knew I’d need help I could trust to make sure Martin Greenfield Clothiers grew to scale successfully. So I brought both my sons on board. My eldest son, Jay, played tennis at Tufts and graduated magna cum laude. After entering dental school, he took a leave of absence and never returned to graduate, preferring to join his well-dressed father at the factory in 1981. Jay brought business leadership skills along with a strong will and determination to succeed. He quickly became the most knowledgeable piece goods expert in our industry and was instrumental in implementing computerization of our pattern making and design. His vision has helped guide us through the many changes necessary to succeed in our ever-evolving industry.
My other son, Tod, is a creative genius. It took a few years more, but Jay and I eventually wooed him away from his career as a stagehand to join us in 1985. Blessed with superb analytic powers, Tod unscrambled the art of tailoring and made it the science of tailoring. He is the only person I’ve encountered who can not only copy the tailoring techniques but understand and explain them.
When other companies closed up during hard economic times, I had two energetic, educated secret weapons no one else had. I’m proud to work as a trio with Jay and Tod to create a label that means success. Bringing my sons into the company was one of the smartest business decisions I’ve ever made. One of the most meaningful, too.
Sometimes, early in the mornings or just before we turn off the factory lights at day’s end, I look across the old creaky wooden factory floors, over all the bolts of fabric, around the spools of thread. I spot my sons without their seeing me. I live for those moments. They remind me of all the glances I cast across the Nazi separating room all those years ago in my futile quest to find my father. To know that my boys will never experience that frantic feeling, to have them always near me, to experience the joy of watching them grow in their roles as fathers, husbands, and businessmen, to savor every day in spite of the busyness of modern life—it’s my everything.
Producing stock for major retailers was one thing. But when top designers started asking me to help bring their sketches to life, I knew we had reached a new level of success.
Designers are dreamers. Tailors are makers. I never wanted to be a designer, only a maker. Design is a skill I deeply respect, but I have always found greater excitement in the challenge of building and constructing the suit, in turning the designer’s sketches into reality.
The design possibilities for men’s suits are far more limited than in women’s haute couture. To be sure, men’s suit styles evolve, but the changes are not nearly as radical as in womenswear. Even so, a quarter inch can completely alter how a man’s suit fits and feels.
Between “leisure suits” and Nehru jackets, working with designers has sometimes been a nightmare. Inelegant designs that defy the laws of physics are a waste of time and fabric. I’m all for innovation and experimentation, but only in ways that enhance, not debase, the wearer’s silhouette and style. As the late, great Coco Chanel put it, “Fashion passes, style remains.” I stand with style.
Fortunately for me, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of America’s greatest designers. When the chemistry is right between a designer and a suit maker, the results can be pure magic.
That was certainly the case in my decade-long collaboration with the legendary Donna Karan. In the 1980s and ’90s, Donna helped shatter the menswear glass ceiling for female designers. She won multiple Coty American Fashion Critics’ Awards, as well as numerous Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) prizes in womenswear, including their Lifetime Achievement Award. But it was Donna’s 1992 CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Award and the smashing sales success of her men’s Couture line, featuring her signature crepe suits, that made it clear menswear was no longer solely the realm of male designers.
My first encounter with Donna was in 1989. We received a call at the factory telling us to expect a delivery from Donna Karan. A young man walked in carrying an Armani suit. He said Mrs. Karan’s husband, Stephan Weiss (now deceased), liked the suit. She wondered if I might make him one like it.
“I am not going to copy an Armani suit for Donna Karan,” I told him. “I need to speak with Mrs. Karan. Get her on the phone.” Startled, he did as I asked. “Mrs. Karan? Martin Greenfield. How are you?”
“Good. And you?”
“I’m great. Listen, why do you want your husband to have an Armani-style suit? If he likes Armani, let him buy Armani. Why not give him a Donna Karan men’s suit with a Donna Karan look? Let’s create something different together. It should be your style, your look.”
She liked that. I brought my in-house designer to the meeting. “Give me your best model and your best fabrics,” I said. Donna has an exacting eye for texture and fabrics. She knows what she likes and what works. I appreciated and respected her tenacity and confidence.
“Martin, I’m really liking wool crepe,” Donna said. “Blue or black, but definitely crepe.”
“Great, let’s go with the crepe.”
A lot of drawing, a lot of tweaking, and before you knew it, we had hammered out a design. We made up a design sample and returned to Donna’s office to go over it. After a few changes—Donna gives incredible attention to even the smallest detail—we had a strong sample. “I’m telling you, this suit is going to sell,” I said.
“Let’s hope so,” she said with a smile.
Donna gave Freddy Pressman at Barneys New York a first-year exclusive on the Donna Karan Couture men’s suits. We couldn’t make them fast enough to keep up with demand. For years, we made ten thousand suits a year for Donna’s line. We also hit the trunk-show circuit together. She was a powerhouse. I saw her score a million-dollar day in a single trunk show at Bergdorf Goodman.
In 1992, Donna was nominated for CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year, the “Oscars” for designers. Before the awards ceremony, Donna, Giorgio Armani, and I chatted. Giorgio, who prefers to speak in Italian but spoke in English for our benefit, motioned for Donna to lean in to hear what he had to say. “The man next to you makes the best crepe suits in the world,” he said, loud enough to make sure I heard him and with his characteristic graciousness. “I wish I could make them the way Martin makes them.”
That evening, Giorgio presented the Menswear Designer of the Year Award to Donna. I was so proud of her. Our industry can be brutal, but she never waivered. Hard work and heart seldom lose. When Donna took to the stage to deliver her acceptance speech, her eyes found mine. “My father in heaven sent me Martin Greenfield. Thank you, Martin.”
Donna’s words touched my heart and soul in a way only a child who has lost a father can appreciate. You see, her father, Gabby Faske—also a New York tailor—died tragically in a car crash when Donna was just three years old. There’s an unspoken connection only the fatherless can feel. To hear her recognize that tender tether from the dais that night was a blessing I treasure still.
Another award-winning American design talent I had the privilege of helping was the youngest-ever inductee into the Fashion Hall of Fame, Alexander Julian.
Alex came to us in the early 1980s wanting to bring his passion for bigger suits, fabric design, and bold colors to life. In 1981, he launched his preppy “Colours by Alexander Julian” line and was the first American designer to design his own cloth. His textile designs, inspired by Monet, are so exquisite you could frame and hang them in a museum. And that’s exactly what the Smithsonian National Design Museum did as part of its permanent collection.
In addition to his bold approach to color and textiles, when I think of Alex I think of one word: “shoulders.” He helped shift the style of men’s suits in the 1980s into exaggerated shoulders. The aggressive move caught me off guard the first time he asked me to do it. “Here’s what I want: I need you to put a size 46 shoulder on a size 40 suit,” Alex told me.
“Say that again,” I said.
“46 shoulder on a 40 jacket.” My expression must have conveyed my bewilderment. “I know it’s different,” he said. “That’s why I want to do it.”
“I understand. I’ll give you exactly what you want.”
I delivered the 40 suit with the 46 shoulders as promised. Alex was exaggerating his shoulder widths to make a statement. Once he made his point, he could step back a bit with a more moderate, yet still larger, shoulder design.
“Now that you got what you asked for, how about we do something more commercial?” I said, seeing a future in the trend. And we did. Alex’s provocative move paid off. He pushed the needle in the direction of bigger shoulders, an evolution that became one of the decade’s design hallmarks.
Alex’s sudden rise took many by surprise. Before turning thirty, he won his first Coty Award—then considered one of fashion’s most prestigious honors. He went on to win four more. In his 1983 Coty Award acceptance speech, Alex paid homage to our partnership. “I’d like to you to meet my maker,” he said. “Martin, please stand.”
I was touched that he called me his “maker” instead of his “tailor.” That’s what I consider myself, someone who makes beauty out of cloth.
Alex took advantage of his momentum to nudge the fashion industry in America’s direction, and by the middle of the decade he moved his production from Italy to the United States. He was also the first fashion designer to work on professional athletic uniforms, creating a unique teal and purple argyle pattern for the Charlotte Hornets. Before the team’s recent rebranding, Alex’s design produced a staggering $200 million in Hornets merchandising. How much of that did Alex get? Zero. A true blue Carolinian, Alex had famously volunteered his services to then-owner George Shinn for free, with one proviso: Shinn had to ship five pounds of Carolina barbecue—or as Alex calls it, “Carolina caviar”—to his place in Connecticut.
I experienced Alex’s generosity several times. When he designed the racing uniforms for the legendary Mario Andretti, Alex invited Tod and me to the Meadowlands as guests of Newman-Hass Racing. We were there to measure Mario for suits before the race. Joining Mario, Tod, and me to watch the race was fellow gearhead and Hollywood icon Paul Newman. A short time later, Paul came to Brooklyn to tour our factory and be measured. Paul was the consummate gentleman. He walked the wooden floors and took time to speak personally to my craftspeople. Through the decades we’ve had countless stars in the factory, but it always stood out to me when a celebrity took time to speak to a stitcher or take interest in a presser. Dressing powerful people has taught me that the greatest men take interest in the smallest people.
That was Paul. We became very close. When he came to me, he was a casual guy who wore old-fashioned sweat suits. But then I dressed him up and he loved his clothes. Once he called me frustrated about the movie industry. He vented and said he was finished with the film business. “I’m tossing my suits in a bonfire, Martin. I’m done and never looking back,” he said.
“You are going to still need those suits, Paul. Trust me. I know you’re frustrated right now. But life has a way of changing. You will return to the movies. Wait and see.”
Sure enough, even after the smashing success of his charitable Newman’s Own food company, Paul continued acting and was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2002 role in Road to Perdition. Each time I spoke with him, he thanked me for talking him out of setting his clothes on fire. “That would have been one hell of an expensive bonfire,” he quipped.
It’s unlikely I would ever have met or dressed Mario or Paul had Alex not made the introductions. Great friendships are like great tailoring: the stronger the stitch, the longer it lasts.
One of the great joys of my career has been helping and mentoring young designers. It’s one of my passions. Some people have warned me not to do it for fear that an unscrupulous designer might steal my trade secrets. Life is too short to horde your gifts. Knowledge shared extends and illuminates the arc of design history. So when young upstart designers like Calvin Klein, the late Perry Ellis, and Isaac Mizrahi came on the scene, I lent a supportive hand.
I knew Calvin before he was “Calvin.” I always believed he would be great. But Calvin faced that early cash crunch that stymies many a young designer. He cared about technique and tailoring. He’d bring me designs and we’d make him samples. Calvin wouldn’t just look at the outside of a sample. He’d ask questions, make me explain why and how a seam or vent had been made. In short, he was curious, creative, and teachable—three of the most important qualities for any aspiring fashion designer.
After Calvin solidified his financing, he called me up and proposed a partnership. It was right around the time I’d begun working with Donna Karan, and I told him I’d already pledged my time to Donna’s Couture line and was worried that taking on both her and his lines at the same time might stretch us too thin and threaten the quality of our work. The perfect gentleman, Calvin appreciated my honesty and understood completely. His massive success never surprised me.
One person I wish had lived to see his own success was Perry Ellis. We worked with Perry in 1982 to help him create his Perry Ellis Signature collection. He always listened, never insisted, and was comfortable in his own skin. Perry Ellis Signature did well until the designer’s deteriorating health prevented him from participating in its promotion. A kind, intuitive man with a good heart, Perry left us too soon.
Another young designer I had fun helping in the ’80s was Isaac Mizrahi, a good Jewish boy from Brooklyn whom I naturally wanted to help. With his energy and zany sense of humor, Isaac was fun to be around. His background was more in womenswear, though, so we worked closely with him on producing his Mizrahi New York men’s collection. He’s gone on to do commercial deals with large retailers like Target.
The fashion press often asks me whether I’m optimistic about the direction today’s top young designers are steering menswear. I answer with a resounding “Yes!” The brightest design lights have begun a fearless march back to quality, sumptuous fabrics, and hand-tailored designs. It’s classic scarcity. The less frequently customers experience something superior, the more they crave it. Humans spend more hours hooked to machines each day than they do sleeping. This reality has created a ravenous demand for garments made the way only human hands can. Smart young menswear design houses know this and are blending new-school designs with old-school hand-tailored quality.
Two new brands that have cracked the code on quality are Scott Sternberg’s Band of Outsiders and Marcus Wainwright and David Neville’s rag & bone. Scott won the 2009 CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Award. Marcus and David took the prize in 2010.
Scott launched his Los Angeles–based Band of Outsiders in 2004. The next year he visited me in Brooklyn and met Tod, Jay, and my patternmaker, Mario. Scott understood something many emerging designers miss, the power of timeless American classics. He brought a new-school zest to classics like schoolboy blazers and slim suits with narrow lapels, natural shoulders, high armholes, and handcrafted detailing. His background in photography and cinema trained his eye to appreciate subtle beauty. Smart.
The other thing that struck me about Scott was his humble yet certain sense about where a design should go and what it should achieve. He never apologized for his lack of formal design training. Better still, he never tried to fake it—something I can sniff out as fast you can say gorge, button stance, or besom.
In one of his early emails to Jay, Scott included some basic suit sketches of a smart-looking sample we were working on with him. Here’s part of what he had to say:
i hope this finds you well. it was a pleasure to meet you, your brother, dad, mario, etc. and i’m excited to work together moving forward. . . . attached are some flat sketches with notes. . . . after this fitting, i would want the final suit made in the correct fabric (on the way from italy), and two blazers made from the vintage woolens i mentioned. . . . i’m not a technical designer, so if you see something on the flat [sketches] that seems odd, don’t think i’m trying to convey anything more than a small detail. more about the general idea for now. slim! slim! slim!
No pretense, a sure vision, and a commitment to details that matter and quality that endures. I know designers who couldn’t write a missive that clear and confident if they had a lifetime to do it. In my book the kid was a winner. The industry and Band of Outsiders’ growing customer base agree.
In a business that demands credit for the most minor of innovations, Scott did the opposite. He insisted we include a hangtag on each suit stating it was hand tailored at the hundred-year-old factory of Martin Greenfield Clothiers—a classy move and stroke of branding genius.
The same can be said for my rag & bone boys, Marcus and David—two brilliant Brits I love working with. They got in touch in late 2006. In September of the next year, they invited us to attend their 2008 spring collection show. The rest is history.
Few things excite me more than young designers who are serious and passionate about craftsmanship. That’s Marcus and David. They love what they do, and it shows in the way they do their homework, remain true to their English design impulses, and always mind the details and do the work.
In addition to handling rag & bone’s made-to-measure clientele like Jimmy Fallon, the boys have us take care of fitting their own suits. It’s the ultimate compliment from designer to tailor. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun. A few years back, we were fitting Marcus’s and David’s tuxedos for the 2009 Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, more commonly known as the Met Ball. They loved their hand-tailored tuxes so much that they asked us to make the actress Lake Bell a matching tux to wear to the event as well.
Marcus and David’s commitment to keep jobs and production here in America speaks volumes about the brand they’re building and the men they are. Even though they’re English, they both married American girls and live here in the States. They strive to look after the home team and take corporate stewardship seriously.
When they took top honors in 2010 for CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year, we couldn’t have been happier for them. I expect major continued success from my rag & bone boys.
The tango between designers and makers is an intricate partnership combining whimsy and hard work. Through the decades I’ve been blessed to dance with many of the best. Together, we choreographed styles and trends that clothed the world’s most glamorous and powerful men.
Fashion. It’s the dance that never ends.