The only thing more New York than the Chrysler Building is a well-dressed New Yorker. Think of some of the city’s icons—Frank Sinatra, Fran Lebowtiz, Marc Jacobs—people who are as much part of the city’s landscape as the famous skyscraper.
Jacobs, who is Vogue’s first-ever guest editor, attended the 2024 CFDA Awards last month in a dusky aubergine suit, its concave pagoda shoulders sharply pointing upwards. “It has to be Saint Laurent?” A friend texted. “Maybe it’s really good vintage?” replied another. But it was neither. The label on Jacobs’s suit read “Fitzgerald”—as did the one in which he accepted his WSJ Fashion Innovator Award that same week, and the ones he wore in 2023 and 2024 at the Met Gala.
The tailor behind the Fitzgerald label is Ralph Fitzgerald, a 30-year-old London import who earned his chops on Savile Row, most famously at Huntsman. In 2023 he opened his own atelier on the 49th floor of the Chrysler. “Marc came over to Huntsman one Saturday morning for an alteration when I was working there,” said Fitzgerald, “I didn’t know he was coming, but we got it done and he ordered a few more garments.” After that, Fitzgerald swiftly became Jacobs’s go-to tailor, and has been cutting him a mean shoulder and a loose, elongated silhouette since.
Fitzgerald never intended to become a tailor; he wanted to work in fashion or art in some capacity. “I wasn’t interested in going to university, and, frankly, I didn’t have the money for it,” he explained. He found his way to Douglas Hayward, the storied Mount Street suit maker via his mother, who used to work for an “American millionaire” that had his tailoring done there. Fitzgerald apprenticed there for two years, unpaid, (“but it was worth every penny!”), finding a passion for the business, and, particularly for dealing with people, as he also worked at the storefront. Fiztgerald would come across some of Hayward’s famous clientele, which at some point included Michael Caine, who used the tailor as an inspiration for his role in the 1966 film Alfie, and the designer Ralph Lauren, whose Purple Label line Hayward also advised on. That Fitzgerald now outfits Jacobs in the same way his first boss did Lauren is a fashionable coincidence.
And it is none other than Jacobs who Fitzgerald credits for giving him the impetus to break out on his own. After his time at Douglas Hayward, Fitzgerald moved on to Kilgour on Savile Row, subsequently departing to Huntsman, which in turn sent him to New York to open the stateside satellite operation. “I was 22 and practically the only on the team who could just pick up and leave,” said Fitzgerald, who was then single. That was 2017.
When Jacobs introduced Fitzgerald to a potential client who had a short turnaround he took the commission under his own name, jumpstarting his business. It was a matter of New York serendipity that Fitzgerald landed a space at the Chrysler Building. He’s been working from there ever since.
Today, Fitzgerald’s customer base is about 50% women, a distinct change from his time at Huntsman. “With men there is less of a range,” he said. “With women, the idea of what each client wants to look like or wear is very individual and it’s always different, it’s exciting.” For him, nailing a cut is more psychological than a matter of mere skill. “What people want and how they want to look, it’s for me to figure out,” he said, “sometimes they’ll say they want a soft shoulder, but that’s not actually it. It’s my job to have the language and get there before them. The first fitting is mine to lose, but then the cow is out of the barn and you have to get it right.”
Another thing that’s different working solo is the freedom he has to draw, and cut, outside the lines. Take Jacobs’s pagoda shoulder suit. “It simply would have been harder to do then because it’s just not classic,” said Fitzgerald. A runway obsessive, he now spends some of his time experimenting with other silhouettes. “I mean, something like [Martin] Margiela at Hermès, you can’t find an archive like that anywhere, and that’s what inspires me.”
Fitzgerald likes to use rare or vintage fabrics, though he isn’t limited by his preference (“I have all those same cloth booklets every tailor has!”). He offers a flat rate for his garments—$6,000 a suit and $4,800 per jacket. This helps build loyalty. “It’s not a good experience when you look at a price on someone’s website and then show up and the rate increases,” he said. Fitzgerald may lose money in some and have a better margin in others, but, as he says, it’s what works best and makes people want to come back.
“I was just very hungry for it, so I went for it,” he said of starting his business, speaking like a true New Yorker. “This city is magic, the way word of mouth works here, the way people are happy to show up and tell their friends about you.” He continued: “I couldn’t have done this anywhere else.”
