The Case of the King’s Tailor and the Sharp-Dressed Lawyer

The real-life model for the street-smart New York attorney in Tom Wolfe’s novel Bonfire of the Vanities thought he was the victim of suit-napping perpetrated by the new king of England’s favorite tailor.

Ed Hayes ordered the suits in question a year and half ago, when Anderson & Sheppard was making one of its regular sales trips to New York from its fabled shop in London. He picked out the material: gray for one, blue for the other, both with white pinstripes. And he was fitted as he had often been over more than four decades as a customer.

The two latest Anderson & Sheppard masterpieces were made in England and then shipped to Hayes’ home in New York. The sleeves were just a touch short and altering them was not as simple as it would have been on just any suit. Anderson & Sheppard adjusts not from the end of the sleeve but from the shoulders.

Read more at The Daily Beast.