IT'S A MATTER OF TASTE: TWO OF NEW YORK'S NABOBS OF STYLE
by Hrag Vartanian
Like all things New York, style is a fanatical pursuit that defines and evolves at a frantic pace. The city's streets, board rooms and temples of culture are the runways of what's hot, distinguished and timeless in a city where taste is taken very seriously.
MEASURING UP TO THE SAHMANIANS
Turning away from trends and towards a personal sense of quality, integrity and style is very familiar to Mark Sahmanian. As the master tailor of Paris Custom Shirt Makers, Inc. in Manhattan's Korean Gift District, he is the crème de la crème of men's shirt tailors. His elegant classicism attracts CEOs, media personalities and other hand-picked V.I.P.s who fly in from as far away as Sydney and Tokyo to be measured up by the shy tailor whose humble manner and discerning eye make him a gem of the industry.
Originally from Kayseri, he moved to Istanbul very young and there developed a successful shirt making business. He decided to move to the West in order to provide greater opportunity for his children.
"I came for my children because there was no future for them over there. When my son was born they used to call him giavour [non-believer]. I didn't want my children to hear that word," he says.
Thirty-two years ago he arrived in America, not knowing the language or culture and struggling like many newly arrived immigrants. While he retains his love for Turkey, his adopted home in New York City has allowed him to flourish through hard work and dedication--both qualities obvious to his clients that include New York's business elite, as well as some other more recognizable faces, such as, Marlon Brando, Richard Chamberlain, Ronald Reagan, Dustin Hoffman, Albert Finney and Sidney Poitier—whom he considers a good friend.
"If a customer arrives and I don't like them or they make me nervous then I don't accept their business because I sense they will give me a hard time," he says.
Things weren't so easy at first. He opened his workshop five years after arriving in New York. While the first few months were a time of struggle, six months later his reputation was cemented and appointments were plenty.
"I design the shirt for the client, offering my opinion. I work with great discipline. Each shirt is individualized according to their personality and that includes the fabric—the first thing I ask them about is the material," he says. "Whoever comes to me knows and trusts me. They know I will only use the best materials and stay true to my word."
In a business reliant on classical refinement, it is no accident that labels like Tommy Hilfiger and Alfred Dunhill have asked him to design master patterns for mass reproduction.
"When Donna Karan finished school and received an order to work on a movie, she came in to work on my special machines for five days, because they are the best," Sahmanian explains.
Mark Sahmanian's son, Atam, is also intimately involved in the business, making sure to uphold the quality of Paris Custom Shirts.
"I got involved working on the weekends for my father and in the summer I would deliver the shirts. I walked into it, learned the technical side, how to deal with customers and how to read people individually. It's like being a psychiatrist. Each client is unique, some don't want labels sewn into their shirts and some bring in $1000 shirts asking us to reproduce them because they prefer our craftsmanship. One client from Japan demands shirts that will wrinkle as if he has worn them for two weeks—it's his style," Atam explains.
Paris Custom Shirts are well known, Mark Sahmanian explains, and easily identifiable by their collars. With their aversion to advertising, clients flock through word-of-mouth, "My advertisement is my workmanship."
Atam complies, "Shirt making is an art in itself." He should know, considering he has injected his knowledge of taste into other realms of culture.
"I got a call one day years ago from Buckingham Palace and I thought it was a joke," Atam says, "They said they wanted to see me while they were in New York and I agreed, still under the impression that someone was pulling my leg. I asked for a follow-up letter and it arrived two days later. They said they wanted me to represent Prince Charles by dealing the lithographs of his watercolors. I was surprised."
His interest in art began during his childhood in Turkey. In college, he studied art history and one day he traveled to a gallery show in Soho and it hit him, "I bought my first piece of art, a work by the pop singer Donna Summers. In reproduction it didn't appeal to me but when I saw it in person it moved me and I still own it."
He branched out and has handled the works of Picasso, Chagall and has more recently been looking into the work of some artists from Armenia. His prized possession is a 1957 Picasso of the artist's wife Jacqueline. Atam says the portrait reminds him of his mother when she was young.
While Atam's art business is an aside, he continues to work with his father in the Paris Custom Shirt workshop that has changed little in 25 years.
Both Sahmanians have also discovered a love for Armenia and as an act of faith and honor to his mother, the older Sahmanian has helped renovate a church in the country. The young Sahmanian's interest in Armenia was late in coming but after traveling there last year he has already made six trips. It's a newfound pride and passion.
SAHAG'S CUTTING EDGEM
Passion is no stranger to John Sahag. Stylist to the stars, Sahag has a similar pride that began in Beirut, where he was born. It's an identity he has carried around the world, "Looking at the planet I wouldn't want to be anything else. I think we're incredibly blessed despite past sufferings. I'm proud to be Armenian and everyone knows it."
Born Jean Sahag Jamgochian, Sahag's early life was enriched by his couturier father, known as Atam, and his father's friend, a hair-stylist to Lebanese high society.
After the civil war in 1958, Sahag's family moved to Sydney, Australia, where Sahag cemented his passion for life, "All I knew was that I wanted to make shapes with my hands and I began learning the craft at the age of 14."
By the age of 16, Sahag had done his first spread for the Sydney Morning Herald and that's when things came together he says, "When I saw my work printed I realized that's what I wanted to do, I wanted to design and change hair. I learned pretty quickly to develop unique shapes. Anyone who makes shapes with their hand should start young and learn from life. My father always said that life is the best teacher."
Two years later, the flamboyant hair revolutionary decided to make a break for it, "At 18, I went straight to Paris. I told my parents I'd be back in six months and it has been 22 years. They still joke, 'Has it been six months John?' Paris was the capital of the world for me and I had no idea you needed a work permit or anything. I was fearless."
He arrived in his long hair, high boot heels and in the uniform of a kid who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and ingesting a daily dose of seventies pop culture. He found a job through family and friends and helped revamp a dying hair salon into a hip center of hair fashion. He lived in a basement apartment with an 80-year-old Gurdjieff-like Armenian guru who spoke almost a dozen languages. His existence was bohemian and he lovingly describes the period as, "some of the best years of my life."
With nothing but a dream to work at what he loved, his thrust into the center of fashion seems almost magical. At the age of 19, he was offered his first contract and soon he was working with photographers like Gian Paolo Barbieri and Helmut Newton—with whom he did his first cover for the German magazine Stern. English Vogue, American Vogue, French Vogue, Italian Vogue, French Elle and others followed.
He was working for Jean-Marc Maniatis, traveling endlessly and doing all the collections in New York, Paris and Milan. He says, "Fashion is very hard work. You're painting a picture with four or five people, including a photographer, make-up artist, model, and an editor."
In Paris, he thought he found his place but then he arrived in New York City and realized something else, "I came to New York to visit, it was in the fall of 1978. I'd never seen a city with that energy. I dropped off my bags, went for a walk and got lost because of my excitement."
His love affair with New York grew over the years as he shuttled back and forth between the two fashion capitals. He has developed a special take on the city, "When a European interviewer asked me about New York, I said that the city is an incredibly demanding woman. She is so particular that she wants the best of the best of the best or else she'll kick you so far that you won't even know."
He is best known for developing the dry cutting method, an invention that evolved out of a practical solution to his interest in developing form, "I was probably one of the only people in the world that wasn't Sassoon trained. I try to destroy, make dimensions and try to get hair at its best. I had no idea I invented my own method and all of a sudden most of the best hairdressers in the world were cutting with the Sahag method."
Today, Sahag has a line of hair products sold the world over but he retains a simplicity in his life, "To me it never has any value to say if I 'made it' or not. What does that mean? You always have to remain at the beginning or you start blinding yourself spiritually and mentally. There's so much to learn in life, how can any one of us think we've made it even for a moment before we die."
His workshop on New York's street of excess, Madison Avenue, was designed with the help of his long-time friend Onnig Kardash. The space is a fusion of nature with the loft sensibility that defines New York's downtown style.
His celebrity clients are the hottest and hippest of the Hollywood, music and fashion worlds, and industry insiders say stellar superstars Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hugh Grant, Isabella Rossellini, Jon Bon Jovi, Melanie Griffith, Mira Sorvino, Rene Russo, and Sara Jessica Parker all make periodic pilgrimages to the Master.
What does he think is the next big thing? Sahag is confident of his answer, "The hottest thing in New York is New York, she is always the best client." As the denizens of style can attest, the reason she is so special is because of the work of individuals working from a family tradition like Sahmanians and Sahag and their devotion to making sure that nothing but the best is good enough.
