You’ve Dropped the Weight. Is It Worth Tailoring Your Suits?
It began with the birth of my son in June 2023. Five days of hospital food during my wife’s recovery, the scale suggested, had led me to shed the same number of pounds. In the weeks that followed, a dramatic drop-off in restaurant visits and better eating at home turned an accidental weight loss into an intentional one that topped out at around 25 pounds.
All good—until that fall, when I realized that my custom-made tweeds and flannel trousers were falling off me. Fortunately, much of my tailored wardrobe came from a Boston-area clothier that still offers complimentary alterations on its garments for life: a quaint policy that I severely tested over the next half year as I brought in dozens of trousers, jackets, and suits to be cut down, staggering them in batches so as not to completely gum up its tailor’s shop.
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During the same period, I also shuttled a number of my bespoke suits back to their Manhattan-based maker, Paolo Martorano, who slimmed them accordingly. He has since grown accustomed to shrinking customers, telling me this winter that the proliferation of drugs like Ozempic has put a strain on his tailors, who are now tasked with increasingly difficult and time-intensive alterations owing to the dramatic results these new weight-loss medications achieve.
When I ask him how much poundage marks the difference between standard alterations, such as taking in a jacket’s sides, and a recut—in which a garment is essentially deconstructed and updated—he shocks me by saying just 20, a marker I’d passed in my own experience. “When you cross 20 pounds, things start to become very difficult in both directions,” he explains.
But here’s where it pays to remember that no two individuals’ weight loss is alike. At six foot one, I had gone from 195 pounds to 170—noticeably leaner with a few inches off my waist, but not so dramatic as going from beer belly to no belly. The latter type of metamorphosis creates issues that can’t be easily altered, for instance, shortening a now too-long coat that no longer drapes over a gut. Such problems are particularly acute when the change is triggered pharmaceutically: A substantial reduction of fat without an increase in muscle mass can leave the shoulders, another highly difficult area to touch, woefully oversize.
And even if a client were to commit to a recut—which Martorano says might run north of $1,000 in labor—there’s no guarantee that their bespoke duds will end up fitting as they originally were intended. “The balance and proportions are never going to be the same, no matter how competent the person doing the alterations is,” he cautions, advising the newly slender to give it a hard think. “Is it really worth it? Because it’s never going to look the same.”
Building a tailored wardrobe requires a substantial outlay of time and treasure, and the thought that it all could be for naught—even for so beneficial a reason as a trimmer figure—is a chilling scenario for any clotheshorse. But there are positive ways to frame a sartorial restart, as costly as it may prove.
Larry Curran, a New York–based brand consultant and stylist, experienced this predicament firsthand when he dropped 45 pounds during the pandemic. While that meant extensive renovations to a closet full of Prada suits, he also commissioned reinforcements by Parisian tailoring brand Husbands. Curran encourages those beginning afresh to think about their favorites in their former wardrobe and what they’d learned from trial and error in order to build a new assortment that reflects the sum of their preferences and taste.
“This is like your second shot at a first time,” he says of relaunching one’s style journey. “I don’t know how many situations you could apply that to in your life, but maybe your closet is one of them.”
Before rushing back to the tailor’s with a rejuvenated sense of purpose, however, consider what your physicality might look like in the long term.
“It’s very easy to be excited with your new body, but it might be advantageous to take a bit of time and understand that weight loss is not the final part of this,” warns Curran, whose own reduction in weight and a subsequent period of strength training resulted in some items needing adjustment twice. “Be honest with yourself: Do you think you’re going to be more active or start lifting weights? If you start a fitness regimen after your weight loss, your body is going to change again.”
The dramatic shedding of pounds across the U.S.—which in 2023 witnessed its first drop in the national obesity rate in 10 years—has cost tailors like Martorano new orders as existing customers pursue alterations instead. But Martorano has also begun seeing a fresh category of client: high-net-worth individuals who’d previously splashed out on cars, watches, and travel but are now spending big on clothes for the first time in their lives, thanks to a physical transformation.
“I can think of at least 10 customers in the last year who came to us because they finally feel confident enough to go to a tailor,” he says of this clientele.
As for myself, I’ve managed to stay in roughly the same shape a year after the last of my jackets were trimmed down and trousers taken in. Yes, I stay active; yes, I eat (reasonably) well. But it helps that I have the greatest motivating factor of them all: There’s no way I’m bringing my wardrobe back to the tailor’s again.
Eric Twardzik is a writer with a deep reverence for things that get better with age, from tweed jackets to single-malt Scotch. He has contributed to titles including GQ, Esquire, and Condé Nast Traveler and serves as deputy editor of Wm Brown magazine. He lives in New England with his family and owns too many ties.
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