Enson’s Marks 100 Years In Style

It’s no small thing to stay in business for a hundred years, but Enson’s Gentlemen’s Fashions at 1050 Chapel St. has accomplished that feat of entrepreneurial longevity. 

The reason? There’s a surprisingly old-fashioned thread — pun very much intended — that runs through the decades.

“Nice things, great customer relations, and all these years, we’ve had great tailors.”

So said Enson’s current owner, Jim Civitello, during this reporter’s recent stop at the downtown haberdashery. 

Civitello’s son, Nick, reported that in the heyday of the store, up to three tailors were employed. Now there is only one — another Nick, last name Giannopolos, who is in his twentieth year with Enson’s. Giannopolos learned his trade long before in his native Olympia; make that not Washington State, but Greece.

“That’s what keeps customers coming back,” Jim said about Giannopolos’s prowess as a tailor.

While there are two other venerable clothing stores in New Haven – J. Press on York Street and Ferruci Ltd on Elm Street — Enson’s is unique in having a tailor in residence.

The Chapel Street store is also brimming with artifacts and anecdotes from its past century of serving New Haven.

There’s the quaint Rolodex. There’s the medieval display of huge scissors in the tailor’s shop behind the wooden sales desk, unchanged from when they moved in 60 years ago. There’s the memorabilia behind it, including a photograph showing founder Irving Enson and his partner and brother-in-law Zelly Levine at a promotional event. The deal: if you bought $35 of clothing at Enson’s, then they would give you a free seat at Yankee Stadium, reserved no less!

In 2020, during the height of the Covid pandemic, the store almost went out of business. Then their long-time loyal customer base began to come together. ​“They bought exorbitant gift cards they didn’t need,” said Nick Civitello. That and a government grant or two made all the difference.

At that time, Nick Civitello returned from managing restaurants in New York City to help his dad Jim rebuild the business.

And rebuild they did, so that this year, Enson’s Gentlemen’s Fashions, one of New Haven’s most venerable haberdasheries, is celebrating its centennial.

First: The history.

"A True Centurion Of New Haven"

Samuel Enson, Jim Civitello said, was a refugee from the pogroms in Russia/Ukraine in 1905. He made his way to New Haven, and in 1924 opened Sam’s Army Navy on Legion Avenue, in the heart of the immigrant ghetto.

Come the model-citying of Mayor Richard Lee several decades later, and the store moved to Church Street and then, 65 years ago, to the present location.

Sam’s son Irving summoned Jim in part because he was ailing, and also because neither of his two sons wanted to continue in the family trade.

Jim recalled that he had no money to purchase the store. He said he took a road job instead, during the week, representing clothing firms in the northeast while working for Irving Enson on the weekends.

When one of his best customers came in and asked for him and he wasn’t there, Jim recalled, that customer got in touch and he explained, yes, he had wanted to purchase the store, but he simply didn’t have the money.

That loyal customer was Ed Marcus, an attorney and Branford-area state senator and influential state Democratic politician for a generation. Marcus put together a group, along with Jim, to buy Enson’s.

Four years later, in 1986, Jim bought out the others and the store was his.

“Enson’s has marked a century because Jim Civitello is a true centurion of New Haven — a commander, connector, and caretaker,” City Historian, and long-time Enson’s customer, Michael Morand told the Independent in appreciation of the store’s centenary. ​“By my second time in the shop, now years ago, he remembered me and knew me — and that’s true for countless patrons. Enson’s stocks great clothes that wear well and last long and they are a place where everybody knows your name. Retail requires great goods to survive. It takes great people to thrive. Enson’s has made its mark because of great people like Jim and his team.”

Click here for an article in the industry’s magazine for a brief history of the store and a review of the kinds of items it carries.

"They Have Nice Stuff"

Of course another big part of the reason they have survived, and in style, was expressed by David Harding, who one afternoon this week came into the store with his wife Pam.

“They have nice stuff, “ Harding said as he tried on a warm plaid shirt.

Before retirement when he was working as a real estate developer and living in New Haven, he needed the right professional look, so he bought them all at Enson’s — 40 years’ worth of suits, jackets, and accessories.

But you could tell as he talked with Jim with the familiarity of an old friend that the personal touch, doing business with someone who greets you by your name — and knows you — is also an important aspect of Enson’s success.

A salesman extraordinaire but also a modest man, Jim insisted the secret haberdasherian sauce of Enson’s is the reliable great tailoring it has offered decade after decade.

Yale students come in to have trousers lengthened, said Jim, but then the 80 percent of customers from their base on the Shoreline and the Greater New Haven area who are not Yale-related also use the tailoring services, which are free if you buy a suit or jacket.

From spending an hour at Enson’s, you learn there are many people who not only like beautiful new things, but want to keep old items, which have meaning and sentiment attached to them.

Jim told this reporter about how a customer came in whose own father had been a tailor and made a suit that he’d worn at his wedding. Now the father was gone, but the suit was still there. The son wanted the tailor Nick Giannopolos to re-build the suit.

Not only was the tailor up for the task, he said he would look forward to it. 

Why? In Greece, Giannopolos said, he learned his trade by making suits from scratch. Here at Enson’s most of the work is in alterations. This job would be like a coming home.

Enson’s has marked its centennial with a handsome ​“1924” cap for every customer; a party and a direct-mail-to-the-customer-base campaign in October that Nick said was very successful. They plan to work on increasing the store’s e‑commerce in the years to come.

Jim stressed that they’re a store where people need to come in person, to touch, to feel the material, to measure.

That’s what Phillip Coles was doing on a recent visit to the shop — during the first time he and his wife had ever come to Enson’s. 

Coles said they are building a house in Deep River, and they were in town to meet some plumbing supply folks. They had lunch at Zinc, and then for some reason Coles, a retiree, realized he had given all his suits and jackets away to Goodwill.

His wife went online, Googled men’s clothing stores in New Haven and, mirabile internet dictu, Enson’s came up. 

So they headed over to the nearby store. The sale of a new trim blue wool jacket was the result.

There was an odd crease near the vent in the back on the right side that Phillip’s wife wanted attended to, so they left the jacket at the store for the tailor’s handiwork to fix. They then happily went about their business, to return in a few days to Enson’s to pick the item up.

Decades after Jim took over Enson’s in 1986, the business is doing well. The competition with the town’s two other venerable haberdasheries is a healthy one, he said. ​“We send customers to each other.”

It turns out a quaint old back-to-the-future shop, as Nick described the place, and one with a tailor-in-residence, is perhaps just what 21^st century New Haven continues to need.