City · United States
New York
New York has little custom tailoring of its own, but more foreign tailors visit for trunk shows there than anywhere, so you can order without travelling.
New York has a small domestic bespoke trade and an enormous appetite for European tailoring. More houses hold trunk shows here than in any other city, which makes it the easiest place in the world to commission from Naples, Paris, London or Tokyo without travelling.
The trunk-show capital
A trunk show is a house travelling to its customers: a cutter arrives with cloth books and order forms, takes measurements in a hotel suite or a borrowed showroom, and returns some months later for fittings. New York receives more of these than anywhere else, from Neapolitan, Roman, Parisian, London, Japanese and Korean houses, several of them multiple times a year.
The trade-off is worth understanding before committing. You get access to cutters you would otherwise have to fly to see. You also get a compressed schedule: fittings happen when the house is in town, so a commission that would take four months at home may take a year, and a fitting that reveals a problem may cost you six months rather than a fortnight.
What is still made here
American tailoring has contracted to a small number of firms. Martin Greenfield's Brooklyn factory, Oxxford in Chicago and a handful of independent bespoke tailors, several of them descended from the Italian immigrant trade that once filled the Lower East Side, are what remain of an industry that employed tens of thousands.
The city's other role is retail. Madison Avenue and a few blocks around it hold the American flagships of most of the European houses, which makes New York a good place to see a great deal of finished work in one afternoon.
Images
Bespoke tailors in New York
All bespoke tailors →
Brands based here in New York
All brands →
Houses that travel to New York
These houses hold trunk shows here: fittings and orders taken away from their own workshop. Confirm dates with the house; they move.
| House | Roughly | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Anderson & Sheppard | — | — |
| Anna Matuozzo | — | — |
| Ascot Chang | — | — |
| B&Tailor | — | — |
| Camps de Luca | — | — |
| Cesare Attolini | — | — |
| Cifonelli | — | — |
| D'Avino | — | — |
| Edward Sexton | — | — |
| Gaziano & Girling | — | — |
| George Cleverley | — | — |
| Henry Poole & Co | — | — |
| Huntsman | — | — |
| Liverano & Liverano | — | — |
| Luca Avitabile | — | — |
| Musella Dembech | — | — |
| Orazio Luciano | — | — |
| Richard Anderson | — | — |
| Rubinacci | — | — |
| Sartoria Ciardi | — | — |
| Sartoria Dalcuore | — | — |
| Sartoria Formosa | — | — |
| Sartoria Solito | — | — |
| Simone Abbarchi | — | — |
| Steven Hitchcock | — | — |
| Thom Sweeney | — | — |
| Whitcomb & Shaftesbury | — | — |
| Yohei Fukuda | — | — |
The local idiom
Practical notes
Picture credits 4
- 400 Madison Avenue Mar 2021 15: Photograph · Epicgenius · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
- 286 madison avenue 2024 jeh: Photograph · Jim.henderson · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: soft shoulder, full canvas chest, american, moderately structured. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
- Brooks Brothers 938 Broadway: Photograph · Beyond My Ken · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0