Video by: Shalini Sharma and Jonathan Tortora
Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal — they’re all dapper, powerful men. And they can all attribute their handsome, immaculately tailored suits to the master tailor himself, New York City’s Martin Greenfield.
“Every stitch in our suit is handmade,” Greenfield told The Daily. “The most important thing taught to me is quality with intrinsic value. And that is the key to everything in life.”
A Holocaust survivor, the 83-year-old Greenfield immigrated to the United States in September 1947, after his uncles in America contacted him through a displaced persons camp. “In those days they only had troop ships,” Greenfield said. “So they sent me a ticket and I came over on the Ernie Pyle.”
He went first to Baltimore, where his uncles were living, and immediately found a job at a furniture company, but longed to go out on his own. A month later, he was working as a floor boy for $35 a week at GGG Clothes in Brooklyn. He’s worked in the same four-story building, which he now owns, since.
“I learned the job from the bottom up. And then six months later I became an assistant supervisor,” he said. He eventually bought GGG Clothes in 1977 and changed the name to Martin Greenfield Clothiers.
Greenfield’s office, where he does not have a computer at his desk, is plastered with mementos and thank-you letters from his most famous clients. Two framed letters from former President Clinton. An autographed photo of Shaq. Various photos of dictators and heads of state. Asked about the cuff links he was wearing — bearing the NYPD badge — he said that Ray Kelly, the current New York City police commissioner, had given them to him. His cuff links drawer sounds like a who’s who of the American power structure, past and present: Clinton, Reagan, Colin Powell and Eisenhower, whose armies liberated Greenfield from the Ohrdruf concentration camp in 1945. “I can never wear my own cuff links!” Greenfield laughed.
These days, Greenfield Clothiers handcrafts about 60 suits a day for everyone from the “Boardwalk Empire” cast to snappy men’s designers like Rag & Bone and Band of Outsiders. He employs 135 fully unionized workers, who have health care, retirement benefits and pensions. And Greenfield still sees a properly tailored suit as a way for a man to make his best impression on the world: “You go to Broadway, people used to wear tuxedos. Today, you see people come in sneakers, which at a Broadway show shocks me.”
If Greenfield sounds like he’s hearkening back to the halcyon days, when men wore suits no matter what the occasion, he is. (Greenfield is designing the suits for the lead actors in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” after all.) But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t situated his business, which he now runs with his two sons, Jay and Todd, to succeed in the 21st century. Martin Greenfield Clothiers is now selling its suits on Gilt Groupe, the popular clothing website. But he’s keeping it local. Anyone who buys a Greenfield suit on Gilt comes in to get measured, gets a tour of the factory and gets a complimentary lunch at the nearby pizza hotspot, Roberta’s.
Greenfield remains invested in the factory’s day-to-day operations — he walks gingerly through the four-story factory and talks with employees sewing jackets, which is exactly where he wants to be. “I still spend all my time in the shop. I used to travel all over the country and measure millions of people — I don’t know how many in my lifetime — but I quit a couple of years ago and now I’m just spending my time doing exactly what I like the most.”
Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal — they’re all dapper, powerful men. And they can all attribute their handsome, immaculately tailored suits to the master tailor himself, New York City’s Martin Greenfield.
“Every stitch in our suit is handmade,” Greenfield told The Daily. “The most important thing taught to me is quality with intrinsic value. And that is the key to everything in life.”
A Holocaust survivor, the 83-year-old Greenfield immigrated to the United States in September 1947, after his uncles in America contacted him through a displaced persons camp. “In those days they only had troop ships,” Greenfield said. “So they sent me a ticket and I came over on the Ernie Pyle.”
He went first to Baltimore, where his uncles were living, and immediately found a job at a furniture company, but longed to go out on his own. A month later, he was working as a floor boy for $35 a week at GGG Clothes in Brooklyn. He’s worked in the same four-story building, which he now owns, since.
“I learned the job from the bottom up. And then six months later I became an assistant supervisor,” he said. He eventually bought GGG Clothes in 1977 and changed the name to Martin Greenfield Clothiers.
Greenfield’s office, where he does not have a computer at his desk, is plastered with mementos and thank-you letters from his most famous clients. Two framed letters from former President Clinton. An autographed photo of Shaq. Various photos of dictators and heads of state. Asked about the cuff links he was wearing — bearing the NYPD badge — he said that Ray Kelly, the current New York City police commissioner, had given them to him. His cuff links drawer sounds like a who’s who of the American power structure, past and present: Clinton, Reagan, Colin Powell and Eisenhower, whose armies liberated Greenfield from the Ohrdruf concentration camp in 1945. “I can never wear my own cuff links!” Greenfield laughed.
These days, Greenfield Clothiers handcrafts about 60 suits a day for everyone from the “Boardwalk Empire” cast to snappy men’s designers like Rag & Bone and Band of Outsiders. He employs 135 fully unionized workers, who have health care, retirement benefits and pensions. And Greenfield still sees a properly tailored suit as a way for a man to make his best impression on the world: “You go to Broadway, people used to wear tuxedos. Today, you see people come in sneakers, which at a Broadway show shocks me.”
If Greenfield sounds like he’s hearkening back to the halcyon days, when men wore suits no matter what the occasion, he is. (Greenfield is designing the suits for the lead actors in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” after all.) But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t situated his business, which he now runs with his two sons, Jay and Todd, to succeed in the 21st century. Martin Greenfield Clothiers is now selling its suits on Gilt Groupe, the popular clothing website. But he’s keeping it local. Anyone who buys a Greenfield suit on Gilt comes in to get measured, gets a tour of the factory and gets a complimentary lunch at the nearby pizza hotspot, Roberta’s.
Greenfield remains invested in the factory’s day-to-day operations — he walks gingerly through the four-story factory and talks with employees sewing jackets, which is exactly where he wants to be. “I still spend all my time in the shop. I used to travel all over the country and measure millions of people — I don’t know how many in my lifetime — but I quit a couple of years ago and now I’m just spending my time doing exactly what I like the most.”
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