Why would someone get a tailor to make a sack suit?
I have no idea, but if it’s what the client wants, that’s what they get. Once I had a client in Geneva ask me for a suit that’s exactly the same as a Brooks’ Brothers suit. So I made it and when I gave it to him he said, ‘Why should I pay your price when I could get this from the shop?’ I looked at him and said ‘I really don’t know!’ And you’re doing movie costuming? What’s interesting about the movies is that they’re period pieces. The first movie I worked on, The Good Shepherd, was set in London over a period that stretched from 1939 to 1964. So we went from thick fabrics with big lapels and baggy trousers to tight fitting, narrow lapels with three buttons. With my work in film, I’ve been to contemporary New York and Paris in the 1950s. It’s great fun. I work closely with the costume designers, looking at all the photographs of the time, source similar fabrics. And then, bit by bit, you build the wardrobe for the actor. In American Gangster, which was set in New York in 1971, I made
