If Amer Ejjeh is dining in the same restaurant as you, you’ll wish you were on sitting at his table. From his neatly parted salt and pepper hair, welcoming smile, gleaming Royal Oak watch and immaculately tailored jacket with a Lebanese cedar tree pin adorning his trademarked extra-wide lapels – he is a man that carries a level of elegance and understanding of the good life that is unmissable from across the room.
In conversation he effortlessly strings together anecdotes with a charisma that is as generous as the helping of fresh lentil salad that he insists on piling on your plate. He clearly enjoys the company of others but – and this is key – not as much as others enjoy his.
“I have some clients who ask me to come and suggest how they should restyle the interior of their house!” laughs Ejjeh. “Others ask me for advice on what car to buy, or what cigars to order – I’m happy to do so but, to be honest, those are not really my area of expertise.” Amer Ejjeh’s expertise are in fabrics, which helps because he runs Ejjeh 1926, one of the most prestigious and highly sought-after tailors in Lebanon.
As the date suffixed onto his family’s name would suggest, Amer is not the first Ejjeh to have worked in the business. Having been set up by his grandfather in 1926 as a luxury textile trading company, further input from three generations have seen it evolve into where it is today – a tailoring atelier specializing in luxury bespoke garments. Today’s Ejjeh 1926 is very much built in Amer’s vision.
“I don’t consider myself a tailor,” says Ejjeh. “Sure, I can sew and cut and understand material, but I am more of an advisor. Buying a bespoke suit is an investment in our company’s skillset. I want to make sure that if you’re buying something from us, you are aware of exactly what you are getting and how it will best suit you. For example, when buying a suit forty percent of it is fabric. If you choose the wrong fabric the forty percent of your investment is wrong! I want to allow people to go deeper into what they are buying. I believe that there should be a story in every stitch,” he says.
Ejjeh does not take shortcuts. At 19 he took a break from university in Lebanon in order to take a rare apprenticeship in Italy with one of the world’s most respected wool mills, Vitale Barberis Canonico. While being in a tiny, remote village of Biella, he cut his teeth and learned firsthand the processes necessary to cultivate quality suit fabrics from a diversity of raw materials, to the treatment of the yarns, to even learning to understand the specific needs of clients who were buying the materials.
Today he can effortlessly rattle off the differences between mohair and sheep’s wool, with regards to the hot and dry Middle East climate – able to explain it with a passion that if your high school science teacher had, you would probably be helping Elon Musk land rockets on the moon right now. The key, he says, is a hunger to learn.
“There is no limit to the amount you can educate yourself. Every day I learn something new about this industry, and I try to filter that down to my clients,” says Ejjeh. “Typically, people mainly buy suits on the strength of a brand name – like Hugo Boss or Zegna for example, who both produce beautiful collections of suits, but not necessarily ones that compliment someone working in a Middle East summer.” He explains how big luxury brands create a size 48 black suit for up to 10 million people around the world from Moscow to Cape Town, regardless of the difference in climate or individual personality. “I’ve always believed that if you want to spend good money on something, you should try to understand a deeper level of what you’re buying – not just the fit, but the material and the benefit it can offer your lifestyle.”
While Ejjeh’s reputation is well-known in Lebanon – where it currently has three stores offering a permanent collection (updated three times a year) and made-to-measure service – word of the bespoke offerings to private clients has rapidly picked up across Egypt and most of the GCC, leading the company to identify that the time for expansion is now.
However, in typical Ejjeh fashion, any idea of expansion is carefully considered. Rather than opening up dozens of Made-to-Measure tailoring shops in every mall across the GCC, he see the future of the company comes in doubling down on the bespoke sector, eventually opening up ‘Gentlemen’s Lounge’ concepts with coffee and cigars to compliment the tailoring service. “The core of the business is the bespoke service, which is where I specialize personally,” he says, and it is his attention to detail and ability to convey his knowledge to his clients that is the bedrock of the business. “Most of my clients come from referral, because they trust my taste. When I deliver a bespoke service I am going deep into your life. Deep into your details. If someone called me after two years I want to get feedback on a jacket I made for them, where they happy? Why? I need to know more so I can give people more.”
Running a company that carries the weight of your family’s name can come with an added element of pressure, but it is not the pressure of legacy that Amer feels directly. “Of course I feel pressure, but it’s not pressure to because it is the name of my grandfather and father, it’s because the name is mine,” he says. “I put a pressure on myself, not pressure that it put on me.” To further emphasize his point he reels of a list of names, Enzo Ferrari, Luciano Pavarotti, Charles Aznavour, Fairuz – “If you truly want to be the best at what you do, you have to have a passion that people will still appreciate you after you are gone. That’s the kind of pressure I put on myself, to leave an impression after I am gone.”
By all accounts it is clear that Ejjeh is a man who fueled by passion, but he is also well aware how quickly life can change. As we speak he is waiting on a phone call to see if his wedding is still going ahead in three weeks’ time, due to issues with travel restrictions. He is a man who likes to keep busy. A man who “hates” to wake up and not do anything. “I want to wake up every day and learn something, to do something, to deliver something,” he says. Hearing all this, we’re not surprised to find out that Ejjeh is a goal setter. We’re even less surprised to find out that his professional goals are lofty ones. “I would like my name to be as respected in men’s tailoring as Elie Saab’s name is in when it comes to woman’s clothes,” says Ejjeh. And judging by the way Amer Ejjeh can control a room, we believe him.
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