The Profile of a Chabad Tailor

by John Leland – New York Times

You spend 80 hours making a custom suit, crafting every stitch by hand, measuring and fitting five times — a beautiful thing — and then the customer goes and drapes it over the back of a metal chair.

This is the sort of thing that tests the sartorial sang-froid of Yosel Tiefenbrun, the bespoke tailor and nonpracticing Chabad rabbi of East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Mr. Tiefenbrun, 30, came to Brooklyn via London’s Savile Row and Singapore, where he helped lead a congregation of expatriates. In a borough that has embraced artisanal, handcrafted everything, he is hoping that bespoke suits, made to order, are the next Instagram-ready fetish item. “It’s definitely making a comeback,” he said.

“The majority of my clientele are in their 30s — Ultra-Orthodox Jews, C.E.O.s, jazz musicians. It’s like the appreciation we see now for finer things in food and whisky and cigars. People want to know where it’s from, what it’s made of.”

Read more at the New York Times