Clothes used to make the man. These days, it’s a mask.
Brooklyn-based New Yorker Yosel Tiefenbrun is accustomed to whipping up US$8,000 bespoke men’s suits that can require some 80 hours of work to fashion. But these days, the Crown Heights-based tailor is switching gears: cranking out bespoke masks that sell for up to US$300 (AU$459) apiece.
“We have to keep safe, but if you’re going to wear [a mask], you might as well wear it in style,” Tiefenbrun, 30, tells The New York Post. “You want to look good in it.”
Tiefenbrun, a bespectacled Orthodox Jew with a haute hipster edge, is joining the ranks of upscale designers cashing in on the new need for protective gear as their most glitzy endeavours take a back seat due to the coronavirus.
While a majority of Tiefenbrun’s orders are for the AU$76 versions of the face covering, Tiefenbrun also offers up a deluxe AU$459 option, hand-stitched and custom-designed using exclusive patterns that require a Skype session to design.
Tiefenbrun, a New York native who was raised in London, became a rabbi in Singapore – but a second calling came after he studied at the Savile Row Academy. He went on to become a celebrated tailor back in New York City, and was the subject of a gushing GQ profile this past September. Three and a half years after launching his namesake business, he went from being at the top of his game with a team of six staffers at his East Williamsburg atelier to being forced to halt all production when the pandemic struck.
Read the article by Doree Lewak on Big Rigs.