Custom-fit demand rises, but fewer tailors are left to do the work

Back in his one-man Manhattan shop, Kil Bae is sewing through a backlog built on the modern return-to-personal-fit mood: a new customer stops by with a vintage Tommy Hilfiger jacket and wants it taken in. The modeling agent says the jacket was purchased at a thrift store, and Bae begins by carefully examining the cotton garment before pinning and making adjustments. For Bae, 85 Custom Tailor is no longer the kind of business that survives only on exceptional cases; it is where demand is showing up more often than a few years ago, with customers paying for custom resizing to refresh secondhand finds and make off-the-rack clothing fit their bodies.

Bae, 63, has trained for decades and describes his work as a craft that depends on bodies that do not match a template. “I recommend this job to young people because this one cannot be AI’d,” Bae said, adding that artificial intelligence is automating pattern making but “so far can’t replicate a tailor’s handiwork.” He pointed to what he sees as a key difference between algorithmic outputs and the adjustments needed in real time: “Different bodies. Different shape. They cannot copy like this.” The tailor said he does not frame the job as a novelty—he frames it as a skill that has to be learned and practiced and that, for now, still resists being fully replaced.

At the same time, Bae said that the profession is losing experienced workers without enough younger entrants to take their place. He described custom garment work as a shrinking breed in the United States, where professional sewers, dressmakers and tailors are aging out while demand for their services finds fresh drivers. One is the spread of thrift and resale, where shoppers buy garments secondhand and then commission alterations for a custom fit or personal flair. Another driver, Bae said, is the growing number of people seeking adjusted waistbands and tapered sleeves as weight-loss drugs become more widely used; he specifically cited Zepbound and Wegovy in describing why resizing requests are landing at his shop more frequently.

Labor data underlines the concern. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there were fewer than 17,000 tailors, custom sewers and dressmakers working in business establishments nationwide, about a 30% decline from a decade earlier. The bureau also reported that the median age for all sewers, dressmakers and tailors was 54 last year, putting it 12 years above the median age for the entire employed population. The income and physical demands of the work, along with the time-intensive bending over detailed tasks, have helped discourage teenagers and young adults from moving into the craft, fashion-industry experts said.

Several experts tied the recruitment problem to how training is structured and what workplaces are willing to pay. Scott Carnz, provost of LIM College, said, “Most of fashion training is really aimed at mass production, not spending time in a shop handmaking a garment.” Carnz added that “The work is also tedious,” a description that aligns with why young workers might choose other career paths. Cory Stahle, an economist with the research arm of jobs site Indeed, said online job postings for tailors, dressmakers and sewers have stayed fairly stable but the category competes with other roles: between February 2020 and the end of the same month this year, advertised openings decreased by roughly 2%, while postings for marketing and software roles declined by nearly 30%.

The shortage has also been filled for generations by immigrant labor, with the garment industry relying on skilled workers from abroad. An analysis by the Migration Policy Institute found that about 40% of tailors, dressmakers and sewers were foreign-born, according to Julia Gelatt, associate director of the nonpartisan think tank’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program. Gelatt said the biggest shares came from Mexico, South Korea, Vietnam and China. As that workforce ages, the push to develop “a new generation of master tailors” has grown more visible among retailers and schools.

One example is a program Nordstrom and the Fashion Institute of Technology launched to build a pipeline for advanced sewing and alteration skills. The fashion institute partnered with Nordstrom to create a nine-week course taught at FIT, and Michael Harrell, an instructor and Broadway costume builder, described the training gap in the American context: “Customarily, tailoring has never been part of the American skill set.” FIT said the inaugural cohort drew 200 applications for 15 students, with students starting in October and receiving certificates in February. The hands-on training was designed to prepare participants to work at Nordstrom, which employs 1,500 people to provide tailoring and alterations ranging from hemming jeans to repairing rips and reworking evening gowns.

Nordstrom’s hiring outcomes also reflect how employers are treating the trade as workforce-critical. Jacqueline Jenkins, executive director of the school’s Center for Continuing and Professional Studies, said 10 members of the first class were hired or were in the process of being hired, and Nordstrom’s director of alterations, Marco Esquivel, said the company and industry have to ensure the craft continues. “We owe it to the broader industry to ensure that this is an art form that exists for years and years to come and continues to serve customers both within our walls as well as outside,” Esquivel said.

Outside the retail pipeline, other brands have also expanded tailoring services in response to demand. Brooks Brothers, the luxury brand that has made custom men’s clothes since the 1800s, tested a similar service for women at five stores last year, the company said. This year, it expanded bespoke women’s tailoring to 40 more stores, with prices starting at $165 for shirts and $1,398 for suits. For Bae, the business case looks immediate in daily conversations with customers who are willing to pay for adjustments they might not have requested earlier.

In Bae’s shop, that shift plays out in the kind of customer he described returning to, and in the reluctance among young people to enter tailoring as a long-term job. When a customer with the vintage Tommy Hilfiger jacket arrived for alterations, Bae asked repeatedly if the customer was certain about proceeding, but Jonathan Reis, 33, said he was sure and planned to wear the jacket often. Reis said he believed he “fell victim to buying cheap stuff” and then realized it “just falls apart or shrinks or it just doesn’t last long,” a statement that captures why repairs and fit work can become part of a longer-term clothing habit rather than a short-lived fix.

Bae said his own attempt to persuade family members to learn the trade did not succeed the way he hoped. He has a son a year older than Reis, and Bae tried to persuade his son to go into tailoring; Bae said his son had worked with computers before opening a bagel shop. Bae said, “Young people. They just want to find a job in computers,” and he called that “too boring” while describing tailoring as creatively engaging: “I think this is very interesting. Every time, I am drawing in my head. I am like an artist.” For now, Bae said he intends to keep working as long as he can, describing how he trains his hands and eyes on the details and how he has the equipment for different materials, including machines for heavy fabrics like denim and leather and an overlock machine that trims and finishes edges in one step.