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

Outfits utilized to make the person. These times, it’s a mask.

Brooklyn-primarily based tailor Yosel Tiefenbrun is accustomed to whipping up $8,000 bespoke men’s satisfies that can involve some 80 hrs of get the job done to manner. But these times, the Crown Heights-primarily based sewing celebrity is switching gears: cranking out bespoke masks that provide for up to $three hundred apiece.

“We have to retain safe and sound, but if you’re heading to have on [a mask], you might as very well have on it in design,” Tiefenbrun, thirty, tells The Write-up. “You want to glance superior in it.”

Tiefenbrun, a bespectacled Orthodox Jew with a haute hipster edge, is joining the ranks of upscale designers cashing in on the new have to have for protecting equipment as their most glitzy endeavors take a back again seat thanks to the coronavirus.

When a majority of Tiefenbrun’s orders are for the $fifty versions of the face covering, Tiefenbrun also provides up a deluxe $three hundred alternative, hand-stitched and custom made-intended using distinctive patterns that involve a Skype session to design.

Tiefenbrun, a New York native who was raised in London, grew to become a rabbi in Singapore — but a next calling came soon after he studied at the Savile Row Academy. He went on to grow to be a celebrated tailor back again in New York Metropolis, and was the topic of a gushing GQ profile this past September. 3 and a 50 percent several years soon after launching his namesake business, he went from staying at the best of his game with a staff of 6 staffers at his East Williamsburg atelier to coming to a halt when the pandemic struck.

“We ended up having our peak as we ended up heading into this time,” he states. “We went two months very considerably without having accommodate gross sales . . . We stated, ‘OK, we can wait, and retain it shut.’ ”

As the lockdown stretched on, he and his team pivoted to operate — built fashionable.

“Now we have complete prolonged times, setting up early, ending late. I experience like I’m setting up a new business. It’s a distinctive ballgame.”

The father of two who life in Crown Heights is primarily grateful for the new opportunity, having survived a circumstance of COVID-19 in March that remaining him “out of commission for a 7 days.”

“Once I received my antibody exam, that’s when I resolved to try to retain my business alive,” he states, referring to the exams which could point out a human being has fought the virus, but aren’t yet a proven immunity passport.

Now, his company’s motto, “Cloth for each event,” never rang so correct. In the past ten or so times because getting orders for masks, he’s been buried in requests.

“They ended up raining in — messages remaining, correct and middle on social media,” states Tiefenbrun. Final 7 days, a single purchase came in for thirty masks — 50 percent male, 50 percent woman, all seersucker.

Yet another priceless function of his new specialty? It’s a best in good shape for the bearded and bespectacled. The masks are specifically intended so they ease stress on the beard. They also contour on the nose to minimize fogging up eyeglasses.

And while his shirts can go for up to about $600, the reasonably reasonably priced masks are finally providing his admirers the possibility to have an accessible piece of garments from his East Williamsburg atelier.

“Yosel’s get the job done is so creative, but it’s as well fancy for me,” states Moshe Frank, an entrepreneur in Crown Heights, who’s loving his green hand-stitched mask. “This is the very first reasonably priced piece I could have.”

Even though he has not saved up for a Tiefenbrun accommodate yet, Bentzy Plotkin, a 32-year-outdated film producer from Crown Heights loves his $fifty green and blue seersucker mask, which doesn’t fog up his eyeglasses. “I want to make guaranteed he stays in business so when I do very well I can acquire a accommodate,” he states.

His clients say they also never mind the hefty cost tag on the mask because they’re not exactly heading out on the town these times.

“People utilized to say footwear are the most critical factor,” Frank states. “Now a mask is what you spend your money on.”