This Rebellious London Tailor Is Now Making Custom Suits in N.Y.C.
If the suit is to be saved it may be at the hands of Beggars Run, a London-based tailoring operation with an eye for unorthodox fabrics that opens its first New York showroom on November 30. This Atlantic crossing is the latest chapter in an unlikely origin story that began in 2010, when co-founder Cian McAuliffe was running an “East End boozer” in London.
McAuliffe, an Irish native, had been interested in clothing from a young age, and after initially attempting to launch a leather bag business decided to set his sights on tailoring. His lucky break came when friends operating another pub in a Victorian building offered him the use of its third floor as a showroom—without the knowledge of the building’s owner.
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“No one really knew about it,” McAuliffe recalls of the business’s first days. “Customers would come in through the pub saying, ‘Beggars Run, is it somewhere here?'”
Despite its semi-illicit status, the made-to-measure operation soon found a following among artists, musicians, and other creative types, who were drawn to its laidback atmosphere and untraditional business model. Unlike the great majority of tailors, who present clients with fabric swatches before ordering cloth, Beggars Run curates its own fabric selection directly from English mills twice yearly and tailors the majority into sample garments that clients can slip on.
The chance to see a potential fabric in finished form has proven particularly valuable to Beggars Run, as McAuliffe and his business partner (and fellow Irishman) Edward Hussey curate a colorful, texture-rich range of materials. It might be hard for a client to imagine himself in a suit made from pink 10-wale corduroy or flecked blue wool silk when grasping at a tiny swatch, but it’s another story when he can slip a fully realized example over his shoulders.
“We allow people to experience stepping out of the gray and navy box,” McAuliffe says of the approach’s utility, which also allows clients to see how they might appear in a jacket with wider or more narrow lapels.
While the house style at Beggars Run, so much as one exists, is relatively straightforward—McAuliffe describes it as “a softer approach to English tailoring”—some clients have pushed the envelope. McAuliffe recalls one patron who ordered pleated overalls and a matching jacket tailored from checked bamboo fabric, while Hussey remembers making a Victorian-style smock coat for a vicar.
“Always good to have a cleric on your side,” Hussey says.
Beggars Run has also partnered directly with mills to produce exclusive cloths that can border on the experimental; one recent effort with Dormeuil saw the firm weave an emerald green and burgundy herringbone flannel.
“There’s a sense of alchemy,” says McAuliffe of the process. “The designers say, ‘We think it should come out like this, but it might come out a little bit different.’”
The business’s risk-taking was rewarded in 2017 with new digs in London’s Shoreditch district, on the premises of what had been a fifth-generation family-owned furniture workshop. While the presence of Beggars Run was no longer a semi-secret, signage was non-existent, and customers were required to ring a bell for access. By comparison, its New York showroom, a ground-level storefront on Elizabeth Street that dates to 1900 and had once been an Italian grocery, is less incognito.
“We haven’t had seven years to build up the business, so we need it more upfront,” McAuliffe says of the by-appointment showroom’s greater visibility. But once that secret is out, one can imagine the same creative set that made its London business a success flocking to 172 Elizabeth Street for flannel and corduroy.
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