Breaking the boundaries of taste and time, Martin Greenfield sewed suits for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, gangster Meyer Lansky, Leonardo DiCaprio and LeBron James. People expert in the art of projecting power – including writers and fashion designers – considered him the best men’s tailor in the country.
For years, none of them knew where his expertise got here from: being beaten at Auschwitz.
As a teen, Mr. Greenfield was Maximilian Grünfeld, a scrawny Jewish prisoner whose job was to wash the clothes of Nazi concentration camp guards. One day in the laundry room, he by accident ripped off the collar of a guard’s shirt. In response, the man whipped Max before throwing the clothes back at the boy.
After an inmate taught Max how to sew, he straightened his collar, but then decided to keep the shirt, tucking it under the striped shirt of his prison uniform.
Clothing modified his life. Other prisoners thought this meant Max enjoyed special privileges. The guards allowed him to roam around Auschwitz, and when he worked in the hospital kitchen, they assumed he had the right to take extra food with him.
Max ripped one other guard’s uniform. This time it was intentional. He created a secret wardrobe that may help him survive the Holocaust.
“The day I first put this shirt on” – Mr. Greenfield he wrote seventy years later, “that was the day I learned that clothes have power.”
He never forgot a lesson. “Two torn Nazi shirts helped with that,” he continued Jew construct the most famous and successful custom suit company in America.”
Greenfield died Wednesday at a hospital in Manhasset, New York, on Long Island, his son Tod said. He was 95 years old.
The misfortunes and triumphs of Mr. Greenfield’s life exemplify the classic story of immigration to America. He faced agony abroad and then misery in his adopted home. With his workaholic energy, he built a business and made a reputation for himself, earning a fortune and respect. Towards the end of his life, he finally got here to terms with the tragedies of his youth that he tried to leave behind.
His hopes and efforts culminated in his company, Martin Greenfield Clothiers. It has achieved the incredible feat of thriving by doing the opposite of the rest of its industry.
There was local clothing production declining for many years in the late Nineteen Seventies, when Mr. Greenfield arrange shop in the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, in a four-story constructing that had housed clothiers since at least 1917. He refused to produce abroad and never modified his standards.
As a result, Greenfield Clothiers was able to offer services that New York designers and wealthy suiters couldn’t find anywhere else. It is now the last surviving unionized garment factory in New York, Tod Greenfield said in an interview for this obituary last March.
There, about 50 garment employees, each with special expertise, put together one suit in about 10 hours. They operate the machines manually, which allows them to adjust every crimp and fold of the fabric; to perfectly match the patterns to the jacket pockets; and make the fabric seams invisible.
The traditionalism of workshop techniques is embodied in the centuries-old buttonhole machines which are still in use today. A yr ago this month, a rusty dial on one of the machines indicated that roughly 1,074,000,000 buttonholes had been cut.
The old factory became a friendly place for political, artistic and sports patriarchs. The acknowledgments section of Mr. Greenfield’s 2014 memoir, “The Measure of a Man: From Auschwitz Survivor to President’s Tailor,” lists people “with whom we have had the honor of working”: Gerald R. Ford, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump , Joseph R. Biden, Colin Powell, Ed Koch, Michael R. Bloomberg, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Martin Scorsese, Denzel Washington, Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony – amongst many, many others.
Greenfield’s hand-tailored suit became a low-frequency status signal, primarily in New York. Former police commissioners Raymond Kelly and William J. Bratton were patrons of Greenfield.
Greenfield’s proximity to power provided him with plenty of jokes and anecdotes. Making a suit for the 7-foot-4 Shaquille O’Neal, he wrote in his memoir, “required enough suit material to make a small tent.” When asked by The New York Post in 2016 about Mr. Lansky’s tastes, Mr. Greenfield he reminded Exactly to order of this gangster: 40-short, navy blue, single-breasted suits.
But he knew when to be discreet. “I met him once at a hotel,” Mr. Greenfield said of Mr. Lansky. “He was a very nice guy to me and I knew he was in charge. That’s all I’m saying!”
Initially, Greenfield Clothiers’ important business was the production of ready-made suits for shops resembling Neiman Marcus and for brands resembling Brooks Brothers and Donna Karan. Greenfield worked directly with designers, including Ms. Karan, who told The Times that he taught her clothing terminology resembling “drop,” “gorge” and “button position.” She added: “His genius is in interpreting my vision.”
The business modified direction after Mr. Greenfield agreed to make Twenties-style costumes for the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” (2010-2014). His shop produced over 600 suits for 173 characters.
More film and television projects followed, including: for the Showtime series “Billions” (2016-2023); and the movies “The Great Gatsby” (2013), “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) and “Joker” (2019). The latter featured perhaps Greenfield’s most recognizable look: the daring red suit and matching orange vest worn by Joaquin (*95*), who played the title character, Batman’s nemesis.
As an indication of his longevity, Mr. Greenfield dressed the early twentieth century comedian Eddie Cantor in addition to the actor who played him many years later in “Boardwalk Empire.”
Maximilian Grünfeld was born on August 9, 1928 in the village of Pavlovo, which was then in Czechoslovakia and is now in western Ukraine. His family was wealthy: his father, Joseph, was an industrial engineer; his mother, Tzyvia (Berger) Grünfeld, took care of the house.
When Max was about 12 years old, the German army occupied the towns around Pavlov, and he was sent to live with relatives in Budapest. Feeling he was not wanted, he ran away on the night of his arrival and spent about three years living in a brothel – the women there took him in sympathetically – and earning a living as a junior automobile mechanic.
However, after suffering a hand injury that made his work difficult, he returned to Pavlov. Soon, the Nazis forced him and his family onto a train to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, he was separated from his mother; his sisters Rivka and Simcha; and his brother Sruel Baer. He stayed along with his father just for a short while. They all died in the Holocaust.
He witnessed many horrors. While constructing a brick wall once, he worked with one other boy who was by accident used for shooting practice and killed.
After a harrowing death march from Auschwitz followed by a freezing train ride to Buchenwald, Max was finally freed in the spring of 1945. General Eisenhower himself toured the camp, unaware that a teenage prisoner there would someday grow to be his tailor. In his memoirs, Greenfield recalled that he thought Eisenhower, an unusual 5-foot-10, was 10 feet tall.
He immigrated to the United States in 1947 and arrived in New York as a refugee with no family, no English skills and $10 in his pocket. Within just a few weeks, he modified his name to Martin Greenfield – in an attempt to sound “all-American,” as he wrote – and a childhood friend, also a refugee, got him a job with the GGG draper in Brooklyn.
He started off as a “floor boy,” carrying unfinished clothes from one worker to one other. He studied every job in the factory: hemming, hemming, lining, sewing, pressing, hand basting, blind working under the arms, and ending.
“If the Nazis taught me anything, it is that a worker with the necessary skills is less likely to be rejected,” he wrote.
Over time, Mr. Greenfield became a confidant of GGG founder and chairman William P. Goldman, who introduced him to the company’s clients, including some of the leading tuxedo wearers of postwar America. He had the opportunity to grow to be friends with Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
In 1977, 30 years after starting his business, he bought the factory and modified the name to GGG after his name.
Decades later, he began to discuss his Holocaust experiences more broadly, culminating in the publication of his memoirs. Around the same time, he was hailed as America’s best tailor GQ, Vanity fair AND CNN.
In recent years, he turned the business over to his son, Tod, and one other son, Jay.
In addition to them, Mr. Greenfield is survived by his wife, Arlene (Bergen) Greenfield, and 4 grandchildren. He lived in North Hills, a village in Nassau County on the north shore of Long Island.
On his first day at Auschwitz, Max’s father, Joseph, told him he had a greater likelihood of survival in the event that they separated, Greenfield wrote in his memoirs. The next day, the camp guards asked which prisoners had skills. Joseph grabbed Max’s wrist, lifted the boy’s hand in the air, and announced, “A4406,” Max’s tattooed prisoner number. “He’s a mechanic. Very skilled.”
Two German soldiers dragged Max away. He never saw his father again.
Before they parted, Joseph said to Max, “If you live, you live for us.”
The rest of Mr. Greenfield’s life was an attempt to follow this commandment, his son Tod said, “And that’s what he did.”
