NYC tailor’s $300 bespoke masks are flying off the shelves

Dresses used to make the person. These times, it’s a mask.

Brooklyn-based tailor Yosel Tiefenbrun is accustomed to whipping up $8,000 bespoke men’s fits that can demand some 80 hrs of function to fashion. But these times, the Crown Heights-based sewing celebrity is switching gears: cranking out bespoke masks that sell for up to $300 apiece.

“We have to keep safe, but if you’re heading to use [a mask], you may well as well use it in fashion,” Tiefenbrun, thirty, tells The Article. “You want to glimpse superior in it.”

Tiefenbrun, a bespectacled Orthodox Jew with a haute hipster edge, is signing up for the ranks of upscale designers cashing in on the new need to have for protective equipment as their most glitzy endeavors acquire a back seat due to the coronavirus.

Although a bulk of Tiefenbrun’s orders are for the $fifty variations of the confront covering, Tiefenbrun also offers up a deluxe $300 option, hand-stitched and personalized-intended utilizing distinctive patterns that demand a Skype session to layout.

Tiefenbrun, a New York indigenous who was elevated in London, grew to become a rabbi in Singapore — but a 2nd contacting arrived after he studied at the Savile Row Academy. He went on to turn into a celebrated tailor back in New York City, and was the topic of a gushing GQ profile this earlier September. Three and a 50 percent yrs after launching his namesake business, he went from staying at the top rated of his video game with a group of 6 staffers at his East Williamsburg atelier to coming to a halt when the pandemic struck.

“We were owning our peak as we were heading into this time,” he states. “We went two months very a great deal without having accommodate income . . . We explained, ‘OK, we can hold out, and keep it shut.’ ”

As the lockdown stretched on, he and his staff pivoted to functionality — built fashionable.

“Now we have entire extensive times, starting early, ending late. I experience like I’m starting a new business. It is a unique ballgame.”

The father of two who lives in Crown Heights is in particular grateful for the new opportunity, owning survived a circumstance of COVID-19 in March that still left him “out of fee for a week.”

“Once I obtained my antibody check, that’s when I determined to check out to keep my business alive,” he states, referring to the assessments which could point out a person has fought the virus, but are not nevertheless a confirmed immunity passport.

Now, his company’s motto, “Cloth for each individual occasion,” by no means rang so genuine. In the earlier ten or so times considering the fact that taking orders for masks, he’s been buried in requests.

“They were raining in — messages still left, suitable and middle on social media,” states Tiefenbrun. Past week, one particular buy arrived in for thirty masks — 50 percent male, 50 percent feminine, all seersucker.

Yet another priceless feature of his new specialty? It is a excellent in shape for the bearded and bespectacled. The masks are particularly intended so they ease force on the beard. They also contour on the nose to lessen fogging up glasses.

And though his shirts can go for up to about $600, the reasonably inexpensive masks are lastly giving his admirers the possibility to possess an obtainable piece of clothes from his East Williamsburg atelier.

“Yosel’s function is so inventive, but it’s far too extravagant for me,” states Moshe Frank, an entrepreneur in Crown Heights, who’s loving his eco-friendly hand-stitched mask. “This is the first inexpensive piece I could possess.”

Even although he has not saved up for a Tiefenbrun accommodate nevertheless, Bentzy Plotkin, a 32-year-old movie producer from Crown Heights loves his $fifty eco-friendly and blue seersucker mask, which doesn’t fog up his glasses. “I want to make certain he stays in business so when I do well I can invest in a accommodate,” he states.

His consumers say they also don’t head the significant price tag tag on the mask considering the fact that they’re not just heading out on the city these times.

“People used to say shoes are the most significant issue,” Frank states. “Now a mask is what you shell out your money on.”