Martin Greenfield, an Auschwitz survivor who dressed Sinatra, Shaq and presidents, dies at 95
Defying boundaries of taste and time, Martin Greenfield made suits for President Dwight Eisenhower, gangster Meyer Lansky, Leonardo DiCaprio and LeBron James. Men skilled in the arts of power projection — along with fashion writers and designers — considered him the nation's greatest men's tailor.
For years, none of them knew the origins of his expertise: a beating in Auschwitz.
As a teenager, Greenfield was Maximilian Grünfeld, a skinny Jewish prisoner whose job was to wash the clothes of Nazi guards at the concentration camp. In the laundry room one day, he accidentally ripped the collar of a guard's shirt. The man whipped Max in response, then hurled the garment back at the boy.
After a fellow prisoner taught Max how to sew, he mended the collar, but then decided to keep the shirt, sliding it under the striped shirt of his prison uniform.
The garment transformed his life. Other prisoners thought it signified that Max enjoyed special privileges. Guards allowed him to roam around the grounds of Auschwitz, and when he worked at a hospital kitchen, they assumed that he was authorized to take extra food.
Max ripped another guard's uniform. This time, it was deliberate. He was creating a clandestine wardrobe that would help him survive the Holocaust.
“The day I first wore that shirt,” Greenfield wrote seven decades later, “was the day I learned clothes possess power.”
He never forgot the lesson. “Two ripped Nazi shirts,” he continued, “helped this Jew build America's most famous and successful customsuit company.”
Greenfield died Wednesday at a hospital in Manhasset, New York, on Long Island, his son Tod said. He was 95.
The miseries and triumphs of Greenfield's life exemplified the classic tale of immigration to America. A hand-sewn Greenfield suit became a low-frequency status signal most of all in New York City. Former police commissioners Raymond Kelly and William Bratton have both been Greenfield patrons.
Proximity to power gave Greenfield a stock of quips and anecdotes.
Making a suit for the 7-foot-1 Shaquille O'Neal, he wrote in his memoir, “required enough suit fabric to make a small tent.” When The New York Post in 2016 asked him about Lansky's tastes, Greenfield recalled that mobster's orders exactly: 40-short, navy, singlebreasted suits.
But he knew when to be discreet. “I met him once at the hotel,” Greenfield said of Lansky. “He was a very nice guy to me, and I knew he was in charge. That's all I'm saying!”