These hands tailor suits for film stars – and even fashion designer Marc Jacobs

Ralph Fitzgerald, a raffish Brit in New York City, is the tailor to film stars, executives and Marc Jacobs. Photo: The New York Times

As a 16-year-old apprentice at Douglas Hayward, the fashionable London tailors, Ralph Fitzgerald ran errands and stashed away slivers of knowledge about how to cut a bespoke suit and stitch a buttonhole.

He also had a front-row view during the waning days of a certain British suaveness.