A rainbow tie-dyed sport coat hangs near tufted-leather club chairs. An Art Deco bar cart with crystal decanters sits next to a rack of dark jackets. Usually, when one sits down with a rabbi, the meeting takes place in a book-lined synagogue office. But not when the rabbi is Yosel Tiefenbrun, who holds court at his stylish East Williamsburg men’s-wear atelier, Tiefenbrun.
Tiefenbrun grew up in Stamford Hill, London, “the heart of Hasidic fashion,” as he describes it. The oldest of 10 and the son of a prominent rabbi, Tiefenbrun was naturally drawn to clothing from a young age. The insular communities of Hasidic Jewry may not be renowned for their fashion sense, but they are filled with suits. For Tiefenbrun, men’s wear was always more than a uniform.
“I would change when I got back from shul [synagogue],” he says. “The shoes had shoe trees, and I would put the suit back in its bag. It wasn’t just about the clothing; it was how I took care of it, too.”
Inspired by another Jewish designer—a boy from the Bronx whose name had been changed from Lifshitz to Lauren to break into the industry—Tiefenbrun wanted to follow in his path. But how? “Obviously I didn’t know where to go,” he says. It would be an unusual route.
Tiefenbrun is a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, which is known for its global outreach. After receiving his smicha (rabbinic ordination), he went on his shlichus (an emissary trip) to Singapore to help build up the local Jewish community. It was there, while he was “full-time rabbi-ing,” that he took sewing courses and, after meeting the editor of Harper’s Bazaar Singapore at a Bat Mitzvah, gained an internship at the magazine.
Returning to London, he took a course at the Savile Row Academy, a school at the heart of the city’s bespoke-tailoring community. While there, he secured an apprenticeship under the academy’s founder, Andrew Ramroop, the first Black tailor on the Row, who has long taken an interest in helping under-represented groups enter the world of tailoring.
So, after honing his skills in cloth-cutting and fitting, Tiefenbrun moved to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, the global capital of Chabad Jewry, and traded in his shiurs (religious lessons) for shears. He now spends the bulk of his days flipping through cashmere samples instead of Talmudic tractates. But Tiefenbrun’s mission remains as righteous as ever. “It’s a special thing to empower someone and make them feel good about themselves,” he says proudly.
His calm cadence and God-given eye for aesthetics mean he has a diverse Rolodex of clients, from Hasidim in Lakewood and Borough Park to gentile businessmen from Japan and Vienna. “Some clients call me ‘rabbi,’ Jews and non-Jews [alike],” he says. His speech is full of Yiddishisms and English slang; he’s just as likely to quote Oscar Wilde as he is Psalms. He exists between two worlds but sews them into one garment. “I don’t feel like you have to be making a Hasidic garment to feel that godliness,” he says. “Every person is created in the image of God.”
Each of his suits takes at least 80 hours to complete, with prices inching toward the five figures. The majority of his clients are secular businessmen shopping for formalwear, and while he is discreet about both cost and clientele, his suits have been seen onstage at Lincoln Center and having O.B.E.’s pinned to them at Buckingham Palace.
“It’s a special thing to empower someone and make them feel good about themselves.”
That’s not to say his religious clientele is nonexistent. He has crafted many bekishes (the long, black coats Hasidic men wear on Shabbat and the High Holidays) in beautiful silk brocades, and has created kittels (white robes worn at weddings and seders) out of fine Swiss Alumo cotton, some of the finest fiber money can buy.
Indeed, during the pandemic, when the market for his suits and tuxedos froze up, it was Tiefenbrun’s Hasidic clients—who continued with their celebrations despite lockdown rules—that kept him afloat. “Sent from God, I had some good clients that still needed suits and bekishes,” he says. “They kept me going.”
Since then, however, clients have come flooding back. Tiefenbrun breaks a smile when he recounts how Ralph Lauren himself complimented one of his customers on his Tiefenbrun suit. But worldly ambition has its limits. “My purpose is not to be a tailor,” he says. “We’re all in this world for higher reasons. This is just my direction.”
Lucy Horowitz is the Deputy Research Editor at AIR MAIL