A man and his partner own a yard goods store. The man is teaching his son the business. Each day he teaches him something else. One day the lesson was about ethics. He illustrated the lesson with the following example: A woman comes into the shop and selects $100 worth of goods. She gives the merchant what she thinks is a $100 dollar bill. Because the bill was new, a second bill had stuck to it. Here is where the ethics come in. Do you tell your partner about the extra $100?

One day when I was new in the business, Andy Warhol came into the shop. He was quite slight of build. He wanted a sports jacket. He walked to the end of the rack and saw a coat he really liked. It was a size 46XL. We did not have that particular jacket in any other size. He tried the jacket on, and to say it looked ridiculous would be an understatement. It came down below his knees and the sleeves covered his hands. I asked him if he was buying the jacket for someone else. He told me it was not a gift; he would be wearing it himself that evening. I told him it was not close to his size. He said he would take it just as it was. He paid me and left with the jacket over his arm. He did not want a box or a garment bag. And here is where the ethics come in: Was I wrong in not insisting he put it into a box or a garment bag? Today, 45 years later, I think I would handled it differently.

In the 60s, platform tennis was the hot game. A tournament was sponsored by a venerable Scotch whiskey maker. The tournament was called The Vat 69 Gold Cup. Chipp was engaged to make jackets and ties for the officials and for the winners of the tournament. The chairman of the company was so pleased by what we made that he arrived in his Rolls to personally thank my dad. My father, who loved everything British and Scottish, chatted briefly with the gentleman and then invited him up to his 5th floor office.

In two previous blogs I related the stories of the creation of our Kama Sutra lining material and my prowess in making novelty athletic supporters. Unbeknown to my father, I had covered a jock with one of the Kama Sutra images and left it on his desk. When my dad and his guest walked into his office, my father was mortified by what he found on his desk. His jovial guest thought it was very funny, so my dad gave him the supporter.

That weekend the British Embassy hosted a party—attended by some members of Congress, a Supreme Court judge, and other “A” list Betway-types—in honor of the Sanderson Chairman. The function was black tie. When everyone had consumed their share of Vat 69, the guest of honor put the supporter on over his dinner suit trousers. The following Monday, the Rolls arrived at 14 East 44th St. The Chairman said he didn’t care what it would cost. He had to have forty of the supporters to send to those who had attended the DC cocktail party.

About two weeks after we had shipped the supporters, we stated getting phone calls:

“This is the office of Senator So and So. The Senator received a gift of an unusual Athletic supporter. The Senator would like to order a dozen of the supporters.”

We got about 20 calls ordering one to two dozen supporters. And thus something I did as a joke turned into an item that was a fitting gift in a number of situations (bachelor parties, for example). In our present incarnation as Winston Tailors, we no longer have enough traffic to be able to buy the minimum order required to get the Bike supporters at the dealer price. As a practical matter, they exist no more.

Mortimer Levitt, who was the founder and owner of The Custom Shop Shirtmakers, was a Chipp customer. Glen Bernbaum, who ran the chain for Mr. Levitt, was also a Chipp customer. (Mr. Bernbaum went into the restaurant business after leaving the shirt business; he created a very successful restaurant in NYC called “Mortimers”, which was named after Mortimer Levitt.)

My father and Mr. Levitt would sit for hours and talk about the business. Listening to these pros was an education. Mr. Levitt was a brilliant marketer, something that started with the name he chose: The Custom Shop. In fact, they did not make anything custom. He told me that, according to his definition, if the customer chooses the cloth and specifies the details—and then if he takes the measurements, it is custom. By this logic, everything they made was custom.

He felt that selling was like acting. You didn’t have to know that much about the product if you could follow a script. To that end he wrote a script covering all the products being sold by The Custom Shop and required his salesmen to memorize it. Mr. Levitt sold the chain in the mid 1990’s (as I recall, around 1997). Through the years I had many customers ask me if I thought buying custom shirts from The Custom Shop was worth it. My answer has always been that the definition of a good value is if you are pleased with the product you received for the money you spent. It doesn’t really matter that what Mr. Levitt would call custom I would not.

My father had a sign over his desk that said something like the following: If you pay too much money for something, all you’ve simply spent a little extra money. But if you don’t pay enough for something, and you end up with a product that doesn’t do what you want it to do, you have wasted all the money you spent.

When my father graduated from high school he was employed by J.Press in New Haven. One of his customers was a young Yale hockey star named “Spider” Vance.

Cyrus “Spider” Vance was one of the first customers to climb the stairs at 14 East 44th Street to wish my father good luck when Chipp opened its doors. Mr. Vance went on to serve as Secretary of the Army during the Kennedy administration and as Secretary of State in the Carter administration.

One day, when he was Secretary of State, he came in to fit two of the plaid flannel suits that were his trademark. Although I am sure Secret Service was lurking somewhere, he always came up alone. A customer was being fitted at the time, and he recognized Secretary Vance and offered to have our fitter stop mid-work—he had four suits to fit—so that the Secretary could move ahead. Cyrus Vance wouldn’t have it, “No. Please finish. I will wait my turn.”

We have had customers who were very short and customers who were very tall.  But none taller than Wilt Chamberlain.

Wilt “the  stilt” was engaged to appear in a shoe commercial. The commercial was to have men in business suits playing basketball. The tag line was that the shoes were so comfortable that one could play basketball while wearing them.  The 10 men appearing in the commercial were all retired NBA players.  Mr. Chamberlain was the featured star and Chipp was hired to make him a custom suit.

It was of course impossible for Wilt to be unobtrusive anywhere he went, but, still, he was very pleasant at every step in the project.  Not taken with himself in the least. (Through the years we had customers who had reputations within their fields as being very tough; but they were never difficult in our shop. We were their pleasure.)  Our fitter had to stand on a chair to take his measurement and to do the fittings. Before the final fitting our designer tried the jacket on to check the balance.  The jacket reached his ankles.

At the final fitting Mr. Chamberlain stood in the middle of the shop and tried all his basketball moves while wearing the suit. He told us how comfortable the suit was. Unfortunately the shoe company did not do as good a job making the shoes as we did with the suit;  we were told that when they went to shoot the commercial he couldn’t fit into them.

I still laugh when I close my eyes and picture him slightly bent at the waist with his arms spread standing next to our fitter who looked like a Lilliputian. I do not remember the name of the shoe company.

The great majority of Chipp and Winston Tailors customers may be conservative in their clothing style, but their clothing is not boring. As custom tailors, we have the ability to fashion any type of suit a customer would like. We have customers who have us make models that are very fitted and have shoulders that are square or roped, but most of our customers are looking for the classic natural-shoulder model that was once the staple of Brooks Brothers and J Press. (There is no longer enough demand for the old “Ivy League” model for a broad based company to be able to carry it in any depth. That is what has created the niche for Winston Tailors.)

Although Chipp customers were conservative business men who wanted their clothing cut in the classic natural-shoulder model, they often liked very strong patterns. Large patterns, like the Prince of Wales and Ben Venue, could be found in the closets of many a bank president. Bold colors and trousers with embroidered frogs, pheasants, and ducks were seen on the first tees of the most legendary country clubs. Board meetings were attended by our customers wearing suits with green, wine, or blue stripes rather than staid white pin or white chalk stripes. Our customers have always exhibited confidence in wearing what they liked. Some individuals deny themselves the fun of wearing patterns and colors that are different because they think their friends and associates will say, “Wow, look what so and so is wearing.” I feel a tinge of sadness for them.

I joined my father at Chipp in 1961. Back then I would learn things about the business every day. Some things were learned by observation, while other gems were delivered by little lectures. To this day, it is the rare week when I don’t get asked a question about the menswear business I can’t answer.

But it happens, and I continue to learn. More than a few times recently I have thought, “I must have the IQ of a cantaloupe to have been in the business this long and to not know that…”

My father was considered a fashion Innovator. He was really an adapter. Men have been wearing clothes since the age of the caveman, and there is very little that anyone does today that is truly new; Most is all variation and adaption. (The Chinese put fancy brocade linings in their plain garments long before Chipp put tie silk linings into suits and sports jackets.) Ralph Lauren, who has a brilliant sense of both style and color, has never done anything new. Rather, he has very skillfully updated and varied things from the past.

The Bush Jackets that Winston Tailors is now making in silk, Shetland, tropical worsteds, and Harris Tweed (all with optional suede bellows pockets) are obviously an adaption from the classic poplin Bush Jacket. The trick has always been to think trousers or a sports jacket when you see a great looking bed-spread or sofa.

We have always believed that if we can create things that are tastefully different, we will attract those with imagination.

One of the first lessons I learned from my father: very few Chipp customers (and now Winston Tailors and Chipp 2 customers) need anything we make. But if you show them something nice and unique, they will want them.

Chipp opened its doors on April 1, 1945. (My brother insists it was 1947; when I get a few free moments I will research it.) The Brooks Brothers flagship was, and still is, at the corner of 44th and Madison. J Press was on the second floor on the northeast corner of 44th and Madison. The Yale and Harvard clubs were within shouting distance. The Biltmore Hotel, with its famous “Meet me under the clock at the Biltmore”, was around the corner. This was the place to be.

In those days, we rented just the second floor in the brownstone at 14 East 44th Street. A famous watering hole called The Gamecock, which occupied the ground floor, was frequented by the advertising fraternity. (These were the “men in the gray flannel suits.”) Our customer base was primarily the men who Sidney Winston, my father, met when he had traveled the Eastern prep schools for J Press: young boys who had now matured into business leaders, and, in some cases, world leaders. He was the same age as his young prep school customers. As a result, the relationships that developed were very different from relationships that are made when one is older. Many of those customers remained loyal Chipp customers through their entire lives.

The bill of fare was custom clothing and special-order clothing. (Stock clothing on the rack would not be part of Chipp for a few years.) And the key was being where the action was: the infant Chipp’s famous neighbors drew many potential customers onto the street. My father and his partner at the time, Lou Prager, who also earned his spurs at J Press, would go down the narrow flight of stairs to 44th Street and snag the men they recognized. There was no elevator—many famous people trudged up that flight of stairs.

As the business grew, the third and then the fourth floor were rented. In the mid 1960’s (I think it was 1965), we bought the entire building, opening the ground floor storefront. The fifth floor became a true retail specialty operation.

In about 1985, when a lot of New York City properties were being bought by Japanese interests, we sold our building. After a brief incarnation on the second floor of 342 Madison Avenue (we occupied the space at the corner of 43rd Street), we moved to our present address, 11 East 44th Street, right across the street from where we began.

We have come full circle. Again we do custom and made-to-measure (special order) clothing. No clothing on the rack. I am sure my father on high is amused.

We have been privileged to serve a distinguished clientele of conservative business and professional gentlemen and women. Our customers were never “flashy”- even those who were Hollywood based. (Once Liberace saw something in one of our windows and purchased it. The salesman who helped him then excitedly called my father to tell him about the sale. My father was very upset by the news. He said if we had something that appealed to Liberace we were doing something wrong.) Conspicuous by their absence will be customers names with many of the entries in the blog. The only names that will be used will be for customers who have passed to that great custom clothing shop in the next realm. There is no mystery to what we have done since our first days. We listen to what our customers want and do our best to deliver it. The common thread among our customers has been that they are secure in what they want. Some have not changed their model for 50 years. Sprinkled among the entries will be “pearls of wisdom” that have been passed to me through the years- some by my father, many by our customers. Since we are dealing with custom and made-to-measure clothing I give you the first “pearl”- Tailoring is an art not a science. Even in the hands of a skilled craftsman the art is a sophisticated form of trial and error.