Assistants wielding multiple livestreaming mobile phones are now as crucial to Roshan Melwani’s tailor shop as the measuring tapes, needles and fabrics that have made his Hong Kong family business so famous.

The Melwani family has dressed everyone from American presidents to aristocrats and celebrities over the decades.

But the pandemic nearly sunk them — and many of Hong Kong’s once thriving tailoring businesses have not survived.

Few places remained internationally cut-off during the coronavirus pandemic for as long as Hong Kong, a self-imposed isolation that the city’s government has only begun to lift in the last two months.

As a result, Melwani’s shop Sam’s Tailors has been reliant on online sales for most of the last 2.5 years, long after rivals in Saville Row, Milan and New York reopened their doors.

“Understand that if I did not have 60 years of cash behind me, I could not operate,” Melwani, a third-generation tailor, tells AFP as a frenetic day of video calls with customers and livestreams to showcase new designs gets underway.

“Pre-pandemic I had a minimum 20 people that I would work with per day, sometimes 40 people, up to six days a week.”

Quality and speed

Tim, a client in the United States, is the kind of customer that has helped keep Sam’s Tailor afloat.

During the pandemic, he ordered an entire new wardrobe and now he’s on the look-out for something more daring.

With the help of assistants broadcasting a dizzying array of choices over video call, Melwani steers Tim towards a burgundy three-piece with an inner lining featuring pin-up girls.

“Yeah, let’s get to it,” Tim says over the phone as assistants frantically jot down all the extra details in yellow notebooks.

Before the pandemic Hong Kong’s tailors were a must-visit for many tourists thanks to their reputation for quality — and their ability to turn a bespoke suit around as little as 24 hours.

The walls of Sam’s Tailors are festooned with photos of famous patrons, from Bill Clinton

The city’s tailoring scene traces its origins back to Shanghai, which was renowned for its quality and craftsmanship at the start of the twentieth century.

Many of those tailors relocated to Hong Kong in the aftermath of the Chinese Communist Party’s civil war victory in 1949.