Hollywood: As Long as You’re Up Get Me a Grant

“In a very good year,” Bob Hope once said, “I had my choice between a Rolls-Royce, a new house in Beverly Hills, or a suit from Sy Devore.”

Sy is a tailor. To call him Hollywood’s No. 1 tailor would be to insult him by suggesting that there could possibly be a No. 2 Hollywood tailor. He gets about $50 a stitch, because his label, in Hollywood, signifies incomparable status. When a star gets into the 10%-of-the-gross category, he is ready for Sy Devore.

No Sequins. Sy is custom itself. He drapes David Niven aloofly and John Wayne toughly. He is the author of Bob Hope’s tweeds. If Donald O’Connor wants to look like George M. Cohan, which for some reason he does, Sy cuts him a checkered vest. But he won’t do just anything. He designed Liberace’s first gold lame suit, but when the big Lib began demanding sequins for it, Sy sent him to a costume house.

Elvis Presley used to walk in, sweep $1,000 worth of clothes off the rack, and walk out (Sy democratically keeps racks for people who make less than $100,000 a year). Sy finally convinced Presley that he ought to stand still for fittings. Elvis stood—until Sy told the world that Elvis wore no underwear. Elvis sulked for a while, but he came back, wearing underwear.

Sy’s standards vary with his clientele. For people like Jerry Lewis, he will cut orange slacks and velvet-collared, cognac-colored dinner jackets; but soon after Peter Lawford took office as presidential brother-in-law, Sy began dressing him in striped suits and two-button coats, trying to raise Lawford to the standards of John Kennedy. “Kennedy is the best dressed President since Washington,” says Sy. “Washington was so immaculate. Every time I see a picture of him, I’m astounded.” Sy tries gamely to dress Pierre Salinger like Washington too.

Lewis and Dean Martin are Sy’s prime customers. Jerry orders about $75,000 worth of clothes a year. He says he is allergic to dry-cleaning solvent, so he wears a suit three times and gives it away to needy performers. Years ago, Sammy Davis Jr. and Tony Curtis used to walk around in Sy Devore suits that were hand-me-downs from Lewis. When Martin and Lewis split up, everyone in Hollywood was saying, “Who gets custody of Sy Devore?”

No Bulges. Actually Sy is not as expensive as the jokes about him suggest. He charges only about $350 for custom suits. The vicuna suits crowd $450. If he had his druthers, he would sculpt all his fabled clients into what he calls the Sy Devore All-American Look. Jackets, cut a good inch and a half shorter than the average, have square shoulders and single buttons. There is no handkerchief pocket—Sy hates bulges. Trousers have frontier pockets (like dungarees), no hip pockets, no cuffs, no belt (or a half belt in cloth), and are three inches trimmer than a standard size at the knee. Sy recommends leather boots to go with all this. The overall impression is a kind of subdued ostentation, part banker, part bookie, part ivy, part jivy. Everything is lined with paisley silk. Even the lint is lined.

Sy himself dresses humbly, because a good tailor knows his place. He wears black silk-tweed jackets with silver buttons, and black mohair jeans with white double-stitched frontier pockets. He has always resisted his impulse to drive a $40,000 automobile. He scrapes around in a Lincoln Continental instead, and lives in an unostentatious $250,000 house.

But Sy, for all this, is a frustrated man: he has yet to sell Gary Grant so much as an unmonogrammed handkerchief. “He,” sighs Sy, “is the only one I want to dress.”