NEW YORK -- Norman Block, whose Dunhill Tailored Clothes makes hand-sewn men's suits to sell for up to $1,500, says the day is coming when there will be no tailors left in the world to make such garments.
Fortunately, he says, the design and workmanship quality of ready-made clothing has improved dramatically in recent years, so much so that Norman and his brother, Leon, have built up a big additional business in ready-made and made-to-order suits, jackets, shirts and ties. Prices of Dunhill ready-made suits start at $450. A made-to-order suit also is machine-made but has lot of hand-sewn finishing.
But Block said that no matter how good machine-made clothes get they never will quite equal the best custom-made suits and knowledgeable people will be able to tell that such and such business tycoon or celebrity is wearing a suit from off the rack instead of one made for him from the floor up.
There may be as few as 15 tailoring firms left in the western world capable of making a hand-sewn suit to sell for upwards of $1,000. London's famed Saville Row still has the most but New York, Paris, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and a few other cities also have them. They all depend on English fabrics, mostly all-wool worsteds with a few mixtures of wool and modern synthetic yarns.
English custom tailoring continues to dominate the design of the garments, probably to a greater degree than ever. This is because of the decline of the hand-sewing art, even more noticeable in the male garment world than the centers of feminine fashion. Also, the ease of modern travel has tended to diminish the number of fashion centers that try to compete with Saville Row.
There are good designers of men's clothing in a number of countries but they tend to devote their efforts to designing casual clothing or suits to be mass-produced by machine. So American custom tailors uniformly follow Saville Row tradition for quality and design excellence.
Norman Block, who is not a tailor himself but is a designer, said that soon after his father established the business in New York before World War II, he and his brother Leon, made many trips to England and bought suits from the best London tailors in order to study their design and operating methods.
'Leon became more interested in that particular side of the business than I and has done more of it,' Norman said.
Norman said some of their customers take the decline of the tailoring arts (along with the impact of inflation) so seriously that they will order as many as ten $1,400 hand-sewn suits at once as a hedge against the future. But only once in its half-century history has Dunhill found an order big enough to justify sending tailors from its own premises to those of the customer. That was some years when the late Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, ordered $40,000 worth of garments at a clip.
Which brings up the question of who are the customers and why do they buy?
'The upper crust,' Norman answered promptly, 'and they know exactly what they are buying and can evaluate the fabrics and workmanship and styling precisely for the most part, although, of course, there are a few who buy only for status and don't know.'
The buyers are rich business and professional men, socialites, politicans, entertainers and other celebrities. 'We have virtually all the Rockefeller males in our customer list,' he said. But there's an irony in that, 'we can't sell David Rockefeller of the Chase Manhattan Bank a hand-sewn suit, he happens to have a figure that can be perfectly filled in a ready-made suit from off the rack, so he sensibly takes advantage of the fact.'
