George Hamilton’s Key to Cracking Hollywood? A Good Tan, a Great Haircut, and an Ace Tailor

When George Hamilton was beginning his career, he received three key pieces of advice. From Cary Grant: “Get a good haircut,” from Robert Mitchum: “Get a good tan,” and from Fred Astaire: “Get a good tailor.” And after decades of traveling the world, wearing the finest clothes and being dressed by the most prolific tailors and designers, Hamilton found his sartorial home in Paolo Martorano Bespoke.

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The Long Island born Martorano, whose clientele roster boasts everyone from actor Brian Cox and British blogger Simon Crompton , to a billionaire Cuban businessman (who happened to be stopping by the shop during our conversation) has rapidly become bespoke tailoring’s golden boy. At just thirty-two years old, Martorano is exceptionally young as far as bespoke tailors go, especially in the US, which lacks the regimented education of Savile Row. Like many Italian Americans (myself included) Martorano’s lineage is filled with tailors and it was a tailor in his Long Island neighborhood who first sparked his passion for the art form. On a lark, at just eighteen years old, Martorano sent an email to Alan Flusser , who gave him his first job. “I remember the first suit I saw when I worked there. It was a double-breasted, very wide pinstripe suit,” says Martorano. “One in navy, one in gray, with burgundy lining inside and polka dot braces hanging from them, and I was so inspired by those two suits. They were probably the two most important suits I’d ever seen and the customer for whom it was made is now a good friend of mine.”

Since that first job, Martorano has had a meteoric rise to success , working for Paul Smith before opening his own bespoke business seven years ago. He has made a name for himself as a tailor who creates garments that effortlessly flatter, ooze masculinity and timeless appeal, and are precisely proportioned: a craftsmanship that spoke directly to the heart of Hollywood icon George Hamilton. The two met in Palm Beach, at the Colony Hotel when Martorano approached Hamilton and remarked how much he admired his style and that he’d love to make a garment for him. “So he came up to my room and we made him a blazer and a pair of cream trousers and went out to dinner after that.”

The rest, as they say, is history. This past week at the Core Club in New York City , the two hosted an evening together for a who’s who of the menswear world to discuss menswear, Hamilton’s legendary career and more. During Hamilton’s final fitting of his outfit for the evening, Paolo and George gave me a call to discuss why they’re such a perfect match.

Hamilton, for his part says that for all the tailors he’s worked with in his life, no one competes with Paolo. “Clothes have their own language,” he tells me. It’s a language he learned to speak first growing up in the south and attending military school in Mississippi. “My mother married every Ivy League college,” he quips, speaking to the influence the staunch New England aesthetic (thanks to his mother’s numerous marriages) had on his personal aesthetic. Then came Hollywood.

“I looked at Clark Gable, and he looked great. But he looked like he was fit and ready to fight if necessary, and yet he was a lover,” says Hamilton. “And that’s because, really, he had a kind of what they call a “charging shoulder.” It was very attractive, the shoulder on it, but it wasn’t very Ivy League. Yet at the same time, Clark wore button down shirts and regimental stripes. So he combined the kind of look with it. I saw the same thing with Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper. All of them had a wonderful kind of Eastern look, but there was something, and it was the word I had just come upon called glamour .”

On location in Italy in the 1950s working with Olivia de Havilland and Rossano Brazzi, Hamilton also learned one more critical styling lesson: when it comes to tailoring, listen to the Italians. “The first thing Brazzi says to me is, “Why are you wearing such American clothes?” So I called the studio and I said, “I’ve got the accent right. I know I’m speaking the words right. But the clothes are not right.” They said, “What do you mean? They’re made by our top tailor.” I said, “He’s not Italian. And Mr. Brazzi told me that.” They said, “Oh, well maybe you should go and have your suits made there.””

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And so he did. And it “opened a whole new world,” he says.

It’s a kind of cultural and sartorial kismet, then, that Martorano and Hamilton have found each other. Martorano considers his tailoring to be American in that it is emblematic of the melting pot that is the US. “Our cutting system, and how we draft a pattern is completely English,” he says. “It’s 100% English. What is more Italian about our garment is the fact that we generally use lighter materials internally, although we buy them all from England, like most Italian tailors. And [like the Italians] we go for the softer, lighter trimmings because we are competing against ready-to-wear, whether we like it or not.”

Hamilton says what sets Martorano apart from the rest is an instinct about the principles of tailoring, style and masculinity that have been naturally imbued in menswear icons for decades, even centuries. “A man’s suit should tell you that he can handle the problem,” says Hamilton, noting that Martorano’s sublime tailoring does just that. It is a perfect blend of Italian movement and British structure, a rarified combination in a world of suiting marked by visible ankles and too-short jackets, and pants with belt loops being worn with suspenders (pet peeves that earned groans from both Hamilton and Martorano).

While it was an immense delight to pick the brains of two men as studied in the world as suiting as George and Paolo, getting to observe their dynamic as a sort of interlocutor was equally enjoyable. The relationship between a tailor and his client is practically sacrosanct, requires an immense amount of trust, and, as evidenced by Paolo and George’s dynamic, a dose of good humor. Paolo quite plainly understands not only Hamilton’s physique and the precise mathematics required to construct the perfect suit for him, but also Hamilton’s personality, the way he carries himself, and his outlook on the world. Reciprocally, Hamilton quite apparently enjoys the collaboration the two of them share, which is rooted in Martorano’s understanding of and reverence for the tailors who came before him.

“I have never met anyone that young who knows basically a history of bespoke clothes,” says Hamilton.

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