Every Indian city has its legendary suit-maker. Now meet the new legends

For all their colonial excesses, the British left India an enduring legacy: a tradition of fine men’s tailoring. Among its heirs are Syed Bawkher & Co in Chennai, Barkat Ali & Brothers in Kolkata, and Vaish at Rivoli in Delhi—outfitters that rank among the finest in Asia.

These are establishments that enjoy formidable reputations. Syed Bawkher counts Richard Gere and AR Rahman among its patrons, while Barkat Ali famously stitched Nehru jackets for MF Husain. However, what these ateliers also share is little to no presence on Instagram and a very IYKYK profile. That space is now the playground of a new wave of first-generation entrepreneur-tailors building their brands in full public view.

The most visible among them, at least on social media, is Jeet Khatri, who founded Tenassi in south Mumbai in 2021. Khatri has the restless energy of a man who wants to be in twenty places at once and a Great Gatsbian sense of style. “1920s Jazz-age New York—that era really resonates with us,” says Khatri, dressed in an off-white jacket with sharply peaked lapels that frame his angular, luxuriantly bearded face. Khatri’s social media feed, and that of his colleague and influencer Jeet Tailor, is peppered with photographs of the two in three-piece suits, overcoats, and cummerbunds. The vibe is deliberately dandy and faintly louche.

They might come across as men of leisure online, but Khatri, who belongs to an affluent business family, speaks with an endearing, almost cinematic candour about the bumpy road he’s travelled from Beawar, in Rajasthan, to Peddar Road.

“I’ve always loved fine things,” he says, “but when I came to Mumbai in 2014 for further studies, I decided I wanted to create fine clothes for men.” The next half-decade would see Khatri stumble through a series of misadventures before he met Abdul Malik.

Malik, a third-generation tailor who once ran his own ateliers in Mumbai, became the spine around which Tenassi was built and launched just before the Covid-19 pandemic. “You know the book Dressing the Man by Alan Flusser? I’ve read it six times,” says Khatri. “But over the years I’ve realised Malik bhai practises everything in that book without ever having read it.”

Today, Tenassi receives commissions from industrialists, corporates, and actors as much for its bespoke precision as for its theatrical flair. But Khatri is most animated when he talks about the renewed interest his younger clients are showing in the sartorial. “I mean, five years ago even 30-year-olds wore baggy jeans and oversized T-shirts. Now they’re dressing like men,” he says.

For Angad Malhotra, founder of Delhi’s Mr Fox, the way to attract this client base is balance. “I wanted to find a middle ground between the traditional cuts that legacy tailoring establishments offered in Delhi and the silhouettes the younger generation were going for,” says the 38-year-old former aviation executive. He says that while he was always on-trend growing up, bespoke tailoring was never part of the picture until he spotted a gap in the market. 

Mr Fox’s house cut combines British structure with Neapolitan ease—a cinched waist, softer shoulders, and just enough room to move—for a clientele largely made up of CEOs and ambassadors. Malhotra accepted only suit commissions for over a year after launching in 2015 but over time broadened his repertoire to include Nehru jackets, achkans, and worker jackets. While tailored clothing still accounts for about 65 per cent of his business, Malhotra says men have been moving towards separates and casual silhouettes after the pandemic, though he expects a return to more structured suits within the next few years. “Fashion always responds to uncertainty,” he says. “In difficult times, silhouettes tend to become sharper and more restrained because people want to project stability and safety rather than flamboyance.”

Social media is overflowing with styling tips for men looking to bring a certain polish to their wardrobe by way of tailoring. It also helps businesses like Tenassi get discovered. But for Anil Gulati, a veteran of India’s luxury-fabric trade and former head of Dormeuil India, the rise of Instagram-era tailors a double-edged sword. “They’re talented, no doubt,” he says. “But most of them build something out of something else, copying how celebrities dress abroad or what they see online. How many of them can actually cut a suit?”

Aditya Jain would be the first to raise his hand for that one. A third-generation Delhi native, Jain, 30, grew up around fabrics in Chandni Chowk, where his father still trades textiles. He dreamt of becoming a tailor while in school, studied fashion merchandising at Pearl Academy, trained in Milan and at the Savile Row Academy in London, and later apprenticed under master tailor Andrew Ramroop in Trinidad. Returning to India in 2019, he founded the Indian Tailoring Company in Connaught Place, reviving a 1938 atelier once known as Roy Exclusive.

When Jain started out, he cut, stitched, and finished every suit himself. “I wanted to understand the craft end to end,” he says. Today, he still takes every measurement and pattern, training a small team of younger karigars. His house style blends British structure with Italian fluidity and the softer, fuller lines of Korean tailoring, a hybrid adapted for the way Indian men actually move and dress. Some of Jain’s clients, he admits, can be exacting to the point of obsession. One of them, a wealthy painter from Sholapur, records himself wearing each new delivery, frame by frame, pointing out the tiniest irregularities. Jain takes it in his stride. “That’s the kind of scrutiny I enjoy,” he says. “If someone notices a half-inch deviation, that means they really care about what they’re wearing.”