Family Keeps a Garment Center Tradition Alive

GARMENT DISTRICT, NY

“COVID really did it,” said Anthony Giliberto of Giliberto Designs about the changing custom clothing business in New York City. His company is one of the last remaining clothing factories in New York’s Garment District. That famous area south of Times Square was once a thriving hub of the global fashion industry, but it has declined. Yet Giliberto Designs has stayed in business and evolved as the district changed. 

Giliberto moved away from producing custom suits for Wall Street types and business executives.  Jordan Belfort, depicted in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, was a client before  he went to prison for stock-market manipulation. Now Giliberto creates suits for actors in the theater and movies. They made the clothes for George Clooney and other actors in the new Broadway play Good Night, and Good Luck. Giliberto also made the costumes for Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, who star in the new production of Othello. 

Giliberto made the costumes for the Broadway production of Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal.

But Anthony remains nostalgic for the days when suits were a staple in the professional wardrobe. “When you dress in a suit people immediately view you differently, especially if it fits right. Success is being well dressed and confident,” he said. That’s what his custom suit business used to be about. 

In recent decades, as companies moved operations overseas to countries such as Vietnam, China, and Bangladesh, the garment district manufacturing shrunk. Then the pandemic brought on a more informal style of suit making and the demand for formal attire waned. Anthony admits that he hardly makes anything for himself anymore. “I used to go 100%, now it’s more like 60-70%. I bought these pants, I could have made them, but it’s not worth the labor anymore,” he said.

Giliberto Designs was started by Anthony’s father in 1979, and he’s been working there ever since alongside his brother, Russ Giliberto. Their father Rosario emigrated from Sicily in 1955 and began working in Brooklyn as a tailor before starting a business of his own. The workplace is a true factory, with dozens of machines around the place, including a machine made specifically for pocket construction and another for buttonholes. “There’s one employee, she’s 80, she does these by hand, even better than the machine,” Anthony said.

There is a low hum of machinery and some scraps of cloth and thread on the floor.  In the cutting area you’ll find paper patterns for every client hung up by the wall, and across from that room is the fitting area and consultation room where clients can look at swatches of fabric and decide which of the thousands of options they prefer.

Along with Clooney and Washington in their current Broadway roles, Giliberto clients have included actors in the  “3 Summers of Lincoln,” Martin Scorcese’s “The Irishman,” and “The Great Gatsby.”  

Anthony is pessimistic about the prospect of jobs coming back to the Garment District and answered a resounding “no” when asked if they might. “It’s a different world now, eventually it’ll be all machines doing this,” he said.

But some hope exists for a revival. Emily Berthollet runs a design studio out of her home in the Garment District. She calls it Berthollet NYC. Her company specializes in pattern creation and formulating the instructions that tell a factory how to make a garment. She is more optimistic and hopes one day to own her own factory, “I’ve heard stories about how the Garment District used to be much more lively, and I would love to help contribute to that being the case again one day,” she said.

Perhaps a  younger generation will revive and create a future for this industry. Anthony said that if he could have done one thing differently he might have hired younger people. He said, “Hire younger. But not a lot of young people today want to do this kind of work.” 

But Anthony is sure of one thing regardless of changing times and fashions. He said,“Nothing can substitute quality, give a person quality, takes you a long way.”

The company displays their work on  Facebook and Instagram under @gilibertodesigns.