Yahoo Lifestyle Meet the Boston Brand Elevating Casual New England Staples
Boston, to put it politely, is not considered a fashion-forward town. And having lived there for the last 15 years, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with the assessment. But I have noticed green shoots of late: a Wythe hat here, a Drake’s fleece there, and yes, the ubiquitous ALD cap. Which is to say that the Massachusetts male is beginning to dress like style-conscious guys everywhere else by wearing buzzy labels that are either based in New York or have a major presence there.
But Mark the Tailor, which quietly launched this past November, is giving Boston’s nascent menswear guys a homegrown label of their own.
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While a brand-new brand, it’s not the first time Boston has hosted a business by that name. The original Mark the Tailor was established in 1960 by David Mark, a Romanian Jew who survived the Holocaust and later emigrated to Boston to find work as a tailor. He set up shop inside the Motor Mart Garage, an Art Deco icon in the city’s heart, and plied his trade before passing away in 1969.
Although Mark’s shop was long gone, it would be remembered a half-century later by the grandson he never met. While working in Boston in an advertising job, Adam Mark would find himself thinking about it each time he passed the Motor Mart. “I would walk by it, and I just started to get the chills and a feeling of ‘Wow, I can’t believe my grandfather was sitting behind a sewing machine there,” Adam says.
What began with an interest in his family history gradually snowballed into launching a brand of his own, and by 2024 Mark the Tailor was reborn. Still employed in advertising, Adam moonlights as its creative director, while his wife Lindsay—who comes from a fashion background—works full-time as its CEO.
Together, the husband-and-wife founders have assembled an inaugural collection that isn’t stuck in the past, but whose style codes would still be recognizable to its name sake. Take, for example, its moleskin David trousers, whose drawstring-waistband puts it in modern, casual territory, but whose tailored details including a single reverse pleat and a pressed center crease nod to mid-century cool.
“In a lot of ways, we’ve lost the elegance that defined styles in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Just because the dress code has changed and people don’t wear suits every day doesn’t mean you can’t still dress elegantly and exude style and confidence,” Adam says of the brand’s aesthetic.
At the same time, the collection is intended as an elevated riff on the sort of clothing Bostonians actually wear (hint: not blue blazers or Nantucket reds). Its suede-trimmed Park Place Pullover is a 100% wool alternative to the fleece quarter zips sported by modern-day preppies, while the ambitious Dorchester coat—a water-repellent piece of wool outerwear with an adjustable cinched waist, padded shoulders and wool-blend fill—is essentially a dressed-up version of the ski jackets Adam wore growing up (lift tags not included). Adding to the garments’ sense of place is look book imagery that situates them in local climes including the Italian American North End neighborhood and mansion-lined Commonwealth Avenue.
Other factors that so far define Mark the Tailor are its commitment to all-natural fabrics—including wool milled by the American Woolen Company in Stafford Springs, Connecticut—and domestic manufacturing, which occurs at factories in New York City and Los Angeles. “We love keeping things as close to home as possible,” Adam says.
The Marks say their first collection has been met with a positive response in Boston and beyond. For now, they’re tinkering with their first spring/summer offering, which will see the label expand into knitwear, dabble with cottons and linens and overall evoke a different feel from what’s come before. “I think it shows a little bit of a different side of the brand, because there is such a shift in the mood and vibe of summers in New England,” Adam says of the next collection.
The couple speculate that future look books might be shot elsewhere in Massachusetts or across the region as the brand leans into what Lindsay dubs its “New England-inspired heritage” generally. But neither will lose sight of where it—and its forebearer—began.
“Boston’s a really special place to me. It gave my family a new life after the Holocaust. My dad was a cab driver and knows every street like the back of his hand,” Adam says. “I think there’s an appetite for homegrown brands, and our ultimate goal would be to open a storefront—but one step at a time.”
So, if all works out, history might just repeat itself after all.
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