MILESTONES: MARC ALLEN CELEBRATES 20 YEARS

I first met Marc Streisand a few decades back when he visited MR’s NYC office and introduced Inside Out, his new image consulting business that provided wardrobe advice and personal shopping for corporate execs. Even as a young guy right out of school, Marc understood the intrinsic value of fine clothing and was able to communicate his enthusiasm to others. (Interestingly, he found men easier to work with than women, who “needed more reassurance and made the process more tedious. Men were quite happy to hand over clothes shopping to someone else.”)

Fast forward to 2005, when Marc bought the Briggs Doherty store in Providence RI (founded in 1941 by Briggs Sr; his son Briggs Jr., famous for his over-the-top personality, ran it for nearly 60 years), mostly because it had good tailors. Changing the name to his own, Marc made a few bold moves over the years: adding a store in Newport, a merchandise-packed mobile van, and a second-floor atelier in Boston. Soon realizing that Newport was essentially a summer business, he closed that store. The Boston atelier hit its stride as Covid arrived, meaning no clients for the next nine months.

But Marc persevered. “In 2023, as Covid ended and luxury department stores struggled, I saw an opportunity to double down. I bought and restored an old movie theater in Providence, creating a 3,000 square foot menswear emporium, a big jump from my original 800 square feet.”

Indeed. Marc and his 10 employees (4 of them tailors) now do lots of wedding and event business: 55% custom, and 45% RTW. His tailored clothing is 70% sport coats, 30% suits, with Kiton, Sartorio, Mauro Blasi, Pescarolo, and private label top brands. “Working with Kiton is always a pleasure: they are genuine partners, demand no minimums, with truly exceptional product,” Marc proclaims.

What’s not a pleasure is those newly imposed tariffs. “It’s nerve-wracking,” he contends. “As business owners, we need stability. It’s hard to chart a path with so much volatility. And so much inventory. I need to fill my space but clearly, our sales are no longer $825 per square foot. We’re still good at $565 but it’s not what it was. So every year we donate end-season inventory to a local charity for them to auction. I sell expensive stuff to rich people: it feels great to help the community and those in need.”

Marc also feels great about dressing guys to look and feel their best. “When I can do that, when I can dress a guy to build his confidence and make a difference in his life, it gives me chills. So that’s why I do this. And why I remain optimistic, perhaps foolishly optimistic, that we will come out of this tariff war okay.”