Martin Greenfield, an American tailoring legend
The holocaust survivor who has dressed Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump.
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The story of Martin Greenfield is that of the American Dream, of a Holocaust survivor who arrived as a penniless refugee and went on to tailor for presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower onwards. Now 89, Greenfield is still a patriarch of New York tailoring who turns up daily at Martin Greenfield Clothiers’ workrooms in Brooklyn, these days managed by his sons Jay, 59 and Tod, 57.Martin Greenfield’s first brush with high US office is an extraordinary story in itself. Born Maximilian Grunfeld in Czechoslovakia, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where all but the 17-year-old boy perished; he was subsequently transferred to Buchenwald. That camp was liberated in April 1945 and soon after visited by then General Eisenhower, and Greenfield was among those who pressed forward and shook the general’s hand.
Greenfield spent the next two years searching Europe for surviving family members. Finding none, at age 19 he boarded a ship for the US and soon found work at GGG Clothing, a long-established Brooklyn clothier. Greenfield worked hard, developed his tailoring skills and in the early ’50s – less than 10 years after that trembling encounter at the Buchenwald camp – was commissioned to make a suit for then-presidential candidate Eisenhower.Indeed, in 1977 Greenfield would buy out GGG Clothing and the East Williamsburg building it occupied – to this day, the headquarters of Martin Greenfield Clothiers. When Robb Report Australia & New Zealand meets Greenfield there, he is wearing a navy waistcoat, a yellow satin silk tie with polka dots and a sky-blue shirt.
He is well-groomed, charming and has a movie star glint in his eyes that, even at 89, is only slightly misty. He moves quietly and deliberately around the factory floor, picking up a sleeve from one pile, inspecting it, lowering it carefully, and continuing on to the next work station. He finds interviews more difficult these days, preferring to let Jay, the older of his two sons, do the talking. However, seeing me on the factory floor, he approaches.
“Tonight there will be a television show about me, across Russia … (he pauses) … and China, Canada, America. Nine hundred million people will see it. Now everyone knows my name: Martin Greenfield.”
It seems to me that he knows the part he has played and he is enjoying the applause before the curtain is lowered. It’s not braggadocio; merely a statement of fact. Jay is proud to be a part of the business. He trained at a dental college before joining his father in 1981. He is laid-back in his attitude and in his clothing, wearing jeans, sneakers, an open shirt and gold necklace. He has a round face with a white beard and very clear blue eyes. Younger brother Tod, likewise far less formal than the father, joined the family business in 1982, having previously trained in theatrical lighting and set design.
Jay explains that it was a tough business in the early ’80s, but the brothers helped Martin Greenfield Clothiers (MGC) to become more agile and try new things. Where it had been renowned for wholesaling suits for other businesses, today it offers a range of ready-to-wear suits, designs ranges for other labels, but perhaps most importantly, has bespoke suit programs as the majority of its output.MGC also works directly with film and television studios to produce character wardrobes. It figures: this is a veritable library of menswear, boasting an accumulated pattern database that dates back to the founding of GGG Clothiers at the turn of the 20th century. As Jay explains: “There is nothing that is designed these days that we haven’t already made in the past.”
With their archives now digitised, Jay has worked with celebrated costume designers like John Dunn, Ellen Mirojnick and Catherine Martin to create outfits for characters in television dramas like Boardwalk Empire, and films including The Wizard of Lies, The Greatest Showman, The Great Gatsby and Wall Street.MGC is one of the last great tailoring workrooms in New York and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Every floor is buzzing with migrant workers – Martin is proud to say that the backbone of his business are the same refugees that he once was. Many are quite old themselves. Everywhere, obvious care and devotion is given to producing approximately 250 new suits a week.
While the rise of made-to-measure programs out of China has forced many western suitmakers to close their doors, MGC’s service carries on proudly and profitably. Jay believes those made-to-measure (or MTM in trade lingo) rivals provide a valuable feeder service for his company.
“We feel MTM is a great way for customers who cannot afford a bespoke suit to get a taste for it. And when they don’t get exactly what they want, the next time they’ll come to us. My father likes to talk about what is our ‘intrinsic value’ and we don’t stray from this. We make our own patterns. Hand-stitch a full canvas. We are a traditional maker of quality clothes.”
Few, if any, can beat the Greenfields’ track record. They have made slim and conservative navy suits for President Barack Obama, broad-shouldered and double-breasted crepe suits for President Bill Clinton. For President Dwight D. Eisenhower it was three-piece suits, and Martin would cheekily sew concealed messages inside, mentioning political issues on which he felt strongly.The timber slat walls of the workroom tell countless more stories: there are photos of presidents, business titans, entertainers and sporting stars – a veritable ‘who’s who’ of 20th and 21st century popular American culture. On Martin’s simple, basic desk, there’s a photo of him shaking hands with General Colin Powell, in a strict, three-button suit. Michael Bloomberg is in similar pose in another frame. Paul Newman looks on from a photo on the wall.
All around, it’s business as usual in the workroom. Trousers are made on the ground floor, jackets on the first. Administration and bespoke suiting is on the third. Bespoke tailoring appointments are normally done consecutively, providing privacy for clients. Those visiting on Saturdays enjoy complimentary bagels and coffee. All the measurements are done by MGC employee Michelle, who then translates them to a CAD pattern and prints them.
From this, the cloth is cut in their cutting room before being basted – temporarily assembled with basting thread – for a first fitting. A tailor, as Jay reiterates, is obviously critical to the process. The same person that makes your suit will alter and finish your suit. They control the total process. Martin’s ethos is that the customer should never feel that they paid for the fit-out; all the money should be in the suit.
It’s an old-fashioned philosophy that’s obviously working. Says Jay: “I know that we can’t make enough suits for the people that ultimately want us to make custom suits. We don’t advertise. We concentrate on what my father calls the ‘intrinsic value’ and we don’t dilute. “Look around you – nothing is fancy here and we don’t open fancy shops in Manhattan,” Jay smiles. “We just make great suits. We get great press and everyone finds us on the internet.”
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How the Most Rare and Valuable Watches Are Traded Among Elite Collectors
Some of the world’s most interesting watches spend decades being traded privately before we learn about them.
Before social media became the lingua franca of the watch world, there were forums. And on those forums, collectors—especially collectors of vintage Rolex—often traded timepieces amongst each other.
The advent of Instagram in the early 2010s, coupled with the explosion in interest in vintage timepieces, drew attention to this corner of the watch world, and with that attention came increased competition for the finest examples. In the case of six- and seven-figure watches, high-end dealers, like James Lamdin, founder and vice president of vintage and pre-owned watches at Analog:Shift, became trusted intermediaries, negotiating sales for pieces not once or twice but often multiple times as they made the rounds of the collector community.
“There are watches out there that may not be massively rare by reference, but are by example,” Lamdin tells Robb Report. “Tropical patina, ghosted bezel, or celebrity provenance—it’s that watch. When those watches go into a collection, usually it’s with the implicit understanding that they’re valuable and people will want them from you and will make you a profit when you sell them.”
The best dealers have built relationships with collectors around the world and often have first right of refusal when those pieces come back to market. But even still, the most coveted models can still slip through their fingers.
Eric Wind, of Wind Vintage in Palm Beach, Fla., has lost and found some of the world’s most storied watches. In 2015, when he was vice president, senior specialist at Christie’s in New York, Wind came across a “super rare” 1957 Audemars Piguet Ref. 5516 perpetual calendar that had languished in rural Florida until the nephew of the original owner consigned it to Christie’s. The first perpetual calendar wristwatch to feature a leap-year indicator, the piece was one of just nine made by Audemars Piguet in the 1950s. Wind considers it “the one in the best condition.”
He showed it to one of Christie’s better-known clients, Patrick Getreid, owner of the OAK Collection, who purchased it in 2015 for $545,000. In 2023, Getreid consigned it to Christie’s in Hong Kong. That’s when Wind decided to give the piece another shot.
“I had registered to bid on it but at the last minute, I got cold feet,” Wind continues. “It was starting kind of high compared with what Getreide had paid for it. I was bidding remotely from Florida, but when no one else is bidding, you’re kind of wondering if you’re a genius or a fool. Is there something everyone else knows that I don’t? The question was about market value. The watch ended up passing and I purchased it via private sale—or private treaty, as it’s known—after the sale. I had two clients who really wanted it. I offered it to both, but one was more ready to pull the trigger and he got it. It never saw the light of day.” That Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar, Wind says, “remains one of my top five watches on the planet.”
As he reflected on the piece’s winding journey, Wind considered his own role in its comings and goings. “It was fun to be part of the lifecycle of that watch, from when it was discovered in rural Florida and consigned to Christie’s, and then sold to a great collector, who sold it again,” he says. “I imagine it will come back to me at some point. I don’t know if it will be two years from now or 40 years.”
Another grail watch that Wind helped shepherd to a client was an exceptional Paul Newman Rolex Daytona Panda reference 2623 with a full set and a tropical dial that was sold by a small Swedish auction house just under a decade ago. “Another dealer got it,” Wind explains. “I was still at Christie’s, and I fell in love with the watch. This dealer who had it for a year then sold it to an Italian dealer, who then sold it to a collector in Asia. I was tracking the watch on Instagram and saw the collector post it. By that time, I had become a dealer.
“I made an offer to the collector to purchase it on behalf of my client,” he adds. “It had been owned by a Swedish boat captain and had been given to him by the family he worked for, the equivalent of the Rockefellers in Sweden. We had to arrange shipment to the U.S. by Malca-Amit armored transport. Whenever these high-value watches move around, you have to deal with armored shipments, customs, proper transportation, and a lot of paperwork. It takes some time but it’s well worth it.”
Both the AP perpetual calendar and Daytona were original and unpolished—“the kind of watches I look for,” Wind says. “It’s funny how watches circle around. Within the high-end watch world, we’re not talking about thousands and thousands of watches. We’re talking about a relatively small amount of great watches.”
Eric Ku, a high-end vintage dealer in Northern California, certainly knows the drill.
About 15 years ago, he was offered a first-of-its-kind 1996 Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “Rainbow” reference 16599 in white gold on a leather strap.
“I’ve been hunting jeweled Rolexes for a really long time, before it was a cool thing,” Ku, cofounder of the online auction site Loupe This, says. “The watch first surfaced to me around 15 years ago. It was offered to me by a dealer in the Middle East and was coming from, allegedly, a member of a royal family. At the time, the pricing was completely different than it is today. After going back and forth, I offered $130,500 and the seller wanted $136,462. I lost the watch. I was gutted. I’d been stalking the watch. But at the time, relative to the market, it didn’t make sense for me. It was a really tough time, might have been around the financial crisis. I felt confident it would come back to me, but it didn’t.
“Then, in 2012, Rolex introduced its new rainbow Daytona,” Ku says. “I had no doubt about the authenticity of the watch I’d lost out on, but seeing the new rainbow Daytona completely validated me and erased any scintilla of a doubt that I had about the watch. Fast forward a couple years: The watch was offered to me again privately, by a different person in the Middle East at a significant multiple of the original offering—let’s say in the mid six-figures. I bought it.”
In 2017, Ku sold the watch to an important collector based overseas, “a person of very high taste and connoisseurship who appreciated the rarity of that watch,” he says. The collector, by Ku’s reckoning, also appreciated the story of its journey. “Dealers and old collectors always like trading war stories,” he says. “What’s the one thing that got away and then it came back? The collector got sold on the story.”
Now, the watch is coming back to market on Nov. 8 at Phillips Geneva, where it’s being offered in a sale dedicated to neo-vintage timepieces (Reloaded: The Rebirth of Mechanical Watchmaking 1980-1999) and is estimated to fetch in excess of $5.93 million.
“It’s probably the sexiest watch of the season,” Ku says.
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Champagne Bollinger Just Released a Limited-Edition, James Bond–Inspired Bubbly
The Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition comes with its own carrying case and glasses.
When it comes to drinks, James Bond may be best associated with a martini—shaken, not stirred, of course. But the secret agent has been known to enjoy a glass or two of bubbly as well.
Champagne Bollinger has long been the Champagne of choice for Bond, and now the house is honouring that relationship with a special-edition bottle that commemorates the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger.
Whether you’re a Bond fan or a Champagne connoisseur, the $5,950 Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition package is meant to appeal to both sensibilities.
The star of the show is the Champagne, of course: Here, Champagne Bollinger is offering a 2007 vintage Magnum, made from hand-picked grapes and aged 17 years in the house’s cellars. Spicy aromas on the nose are contrasted with notes of fruit, brioche, and honey. The Champagne has been packaged in a bespoke Globe-Trotter Air Cabin Case and comes with four Champagne Bollinger 007 glasses in which to enjoy the bubbly. Limited to just 200 individually numbered pieces, it’s a true collector’s item.
Champagne Bollinger has enjoyed a lengthy relationship with the James Bond franchise, dating back to when Roger Moore popped the first bottle in 1973’s Live and Let Die. Since then, the two have become almost inseparable, and Champagne Bollinger is proudly being served at the very first official James Bond bar, which just opened in London. If you can’t snag the limited-edition set for yourself, you can at least imbibe in a glass of the good stuff at the 007 at Burlington Arcade.
That bar and the special Champagne Bollinger package are all part of the festivities celebrating 1964’s Goldfinger. The film and Bond’s ensuing legacy have established him as one of the biggest (fictional) names in the luxury world, with his love of expensive watches, fast cars, and fine spirits.
While it’s unlikely that many of us can channel the special agent when it comes to his escapades and hijinks, we should delight in the fact that we can embrace our inner Bond by sidling up to the 007 bar or throwing back a glass of the Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition. It’s exactly how our favorite M16 agent would want us to honour him.
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Golden Touch
Discretion is the better part of glamour at the glittering Maybourne Beverly Hills.
Los Angeles does not want for star wattage, but for years now, the city’s hotel scene has been a little lacklustre. So news that the beloved Montage hotel has been completely redone under the Maybourne brand (the British powerhouse that operates Claridge’s, The Connaught, and Berkeley Hotels in London, and the recently opened Maybourne Riviera on the Côte d’Azur) should come as a boon to Australians looking for a new Tinseltown bolthole.
Situated within Beverly Hills’ famous Golden Triangle, just north of Wilshire Boulevard and Four Season’s Beverly Wilshire, and one block from the world-renowned luxury retailers, restaurants and celeb-spotting of Rodeo Drive, The Maybourne Beverly Hills offers a chic retreat from the designer flexing at its doorstep; a rare escape in the heart of this storied enclave that flies under the radar like a cap-wearing celeb dodging the paparazzi.
Set amid the manicured, Mediterranean-style Beverly Cañon Gardens plaza, which unfolds from the hotel’s west entrance, the new incarnation of Montage Beverly Hills (55 suites and 20 private residences, each with a balcony or patio with a courtyard or city view) still evokes the grand estates of Old Hollywood while feeling like you’re in a European mainstay.
Revealing a restrained new guestroom and suite design by Bryan O’Sullivan, a blue-chip art collection and some of the most solicitous staff in town, the Maybourne speaks in a laid-back Californian accent but still holds true to the luxury touchpoints of five-star service for which one of the world’s most exclusive neighbourhoods—and hotel brands—is known.
“It’s reassuringly British when it comes to service—it’s a culture of yes,” says Linden Pride, the Australian restaurant and bar owner behind the award-winning Caffe Dante in New York and Bobbie’s, the new speakeasy opening this month below Neil Perry’s new Song Bird restaurant in Sydney’s Double Bay (page 40). Pride should know; he lived at the Maybourne for almost a year while he and his partner, Nathalie Hudson, set up Dante, the stunning new restaurant and bar on the hotel’s ninth-floor rooftop. “Looking out from the roof onto lemon and olive trees, it’s easy to forget that you’re in Southern California, not Europe.”
Opened last year, Dante has quickly become one of the hottest reservations in town, luring in celebrities from Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin to the entire Real Madrid soccer team. Like its sister outposts in New York (besides the Greenwich Village original, a West Village location opened in 2020), the focus here is on non-threatening antipasti and aperitivi in a produce-driven menu of fresh familiar stalwarts, with the addition of wood-fired dishes from a giant pizza oven at the heart of the room. Just as it does in New York, a negroni cart does the rounds, and each afternoon is welcomed with a martini happy hour.
It’s all fittingly Cali-chill. The only drama in the place is a striking ceiling fresco by Los Angeles artist Abel Macias, which dominates the 146-seat room. “Nathalie and I had just been to Europe when we decided to open up here,” Pride recalls, “and the Sistine Chapel blew us away. When we saw the domed ceiling in this room it was a no-brainer.”
Dante joins a string of newcomers in the area, including New York transplants Café Boulud, Marea and Cipriani. Don’t look now, but with arrivals like the Maybourne and Dante, one of the world’s stuffiest cities—yes, Beverly Hills is its own 14.8 km² metropolis—might just be entering a new golden age.
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Hibiki 40 Year Old Resets the Bar for One of Whisky’s Most Exalted Names
The legendary blender reasserts itself in the industry’s uppermost pantheon with its oldest and rarest blended release ever.
Over the last decade, whiskies from Suntory’s famed Hibiki stable have gone from a top-shelf staple to the new byword for luxury in the increasingly rarefied world of Japanese whisky. As stocks of its famed age statement blends drew ever lower, the air of exclusivity around the distillery grew and grew – something that has stuck around even as the brand’s new flagship blend, Harmony, became more readily available once more.
It’s becoming clearer, however, that Hibiki still has a few exceptional tricks up its sleeves. Twenty-one and 30-year-old age statement whiskies have released in the past few years to critical acclaim, confirming that Suntory still has some particularly rarefied output yet to unveil. Now, in the brand’s boldest move yet, a 40-year-old blend is set to hit the market in extremely limited quantities, taking Hibiki’s already lofty benchmarks of rarity and lineage to new heights.
As with Hibiki’s other blends, Suntory’s Chief Blender, Shinji Fukuyo, has spent years perfecting a blend that brings some of Japan’s oldest and finest spirits into perfect harmony – achieving a smoothness and complexity that takes the brand’s hallmark qualities to a new plane. Single malts from Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Chita all feature, having been individually aged for four decades to form a true expression of the place they were made, before making their way into the final blend.
Truly a multi-generational blend, Hibiki 40 Year Old is designed not just as an expression of the skills and expertise passed down through generations of individual distillers, but that of Fukuyo’s forebears, legendary Suntory blenders Shingo and Shinjiro Torii.
The result is a final liquid rich with sweet fresh fruit, light citrus zest, and spice, supported by a luxurious undercurrent of acacia honey and dried fruit. Each crystal bottle is adorned with a mother-of-pearl inlay and decorated with a handcrafted label from Japanese washi artist Eriko Horiki.
While age statement single malts in the four- and five-decade category have become increasingly the vogue in recent years, never before has a blended whisky been attempted with such old stock—a unique challenge for its maker.
“Behind the elegance and bloom that is typical of Hibiki, there is a sense of subduedness,
like that of an old temple, and a wabi-sabi patina due to the long aging process,” says Fukuyo. “I would like people to enjoy the pure and pure aroma that has been sharpened over the years; the tranquility of old temples and storehouses and the nostalgic warm feeling that accompanies them.”
Limited to just 400 bottles, Hibiki 40 Year Old will release on October 4th, with bottles retailing at $75,000.
Australian fans of the brand will have the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the Hibiki 40 Year Old experience, including a taste of the exalted liquid, at an exclusive event at Clare Smyth’s Oncore on October 24th, 2025. Tickets are available for $1,800 per person.
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White Lotus-ing? How Hit Films and TV Shows Are Inspiring Elite Travelers to ‘Set-Jet’ Across the Globe
It’s not just The White Lotus. Prestige TV and blockbuster films set in far-flung destinations are driving bookings like never before.
“As seen on TV” may have lowbrow connotations, but the recent glut of award-winning shows and films set in alluring, far-flung locations is causing an unprecedented run on the world’s best hotels. Call it set-jetting: planning your vacation around a destination featured in a popular series or movie. And while romantic suites and beloved characters have gotten people on planes since the golden age of film, what has changed is how central beautiful venues have become to plots.
“The way that The White Lotus used the destination to tell the story was really unique,” says Misty Belles, an executive at the global travel-adviser network Virtuoso. It also made its settings—the Four Seasons resorts in Maui and Taormina, Sicily—nigh un-bookable. And it’s hardly the only example: “Paris wasn’t hurting for eyes, but Emily in Paris showed the city in a more playful way,” Belles notes. “And people weren’t exactly flocking to Richmond before Ted Lasso.”
Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix
The trend is so strong that a property doesn’t even need to be connected to a show to benefit from its boom. Henley Vazquez, cofounder of the New York–based travel agency Fora, points to Bridgerton’s impact on English estate hotels.
“Heckfield Place [used to be] a hard sell,” she says of the five-star Georgian mansion in Hampshire. “Now, people are dying to go there. It wasn’t featured in Bridgerton, but it’s just that kind of place.”
Others insist on the real deal. Jennifer Schwartz, managing director of Authentic Explorations, works with one family to build trips based on the Game of Thrones universe.
HBO
“They went out of their way in Portugal” to visit Monsanto, the setting for Dragonstone in House of the Dragon, she notes. “It’s definitely a criterion on which they choose where they want to vacation.”
For travelers who want more than simply to follow in their favorite character’s footsteps, London’s Black Tomato takes things several steps further. Since 2023, it has planned high-octane itineraries based on the James Bond franchise and works with the films’ producers, Eon Productions, to make you feel like an MI6 agent. (Some trips even offer lessons with Daniel Craig’s stunt double, Lee Morrison.)
The 007 success has inspired more such trips. “We’ve just recently launched itineraries inspired by Yellowstone and Ripley, focusing on Montana and Wyoming and Italy, respectively,” says cofounder Tom Marchant.
Netflix
Still, it’s important to remember that sharp camerawork—and editing—accounts for a lot of the on-screen magic. Schwartz, of Authentic Explorations, notes that “the White Lotus hotel” in Sicily is “not super accessible, but it’s filmed as if the beach is right there.” In reality, the shore club from the show’s second season is 133 miles away. “People go to the place and they’re like, ‘You have to get in a car to go to the beach? What do you mean?’ ”
So where shouldn’t you go? Netflix’s The Perfect Couple will likely send hordes to Nantucket next summer, and The White Lotus’s third season, set on the Thai island Koh Samui, has already caused a local spike—and it’s not even on the air yet.
Bookings of Virtuoso’s properties in the region are up 38 percent since the show was announced. Luckily, Belles says, the effect doesn’t linger. “We typically see a good two-year impact on a set-jetting destination.”
