“Customers bring their entire wardrobe.” Tailors say Ozempic shrunk Wall Street

New York tailors serving Wall Street’s financial elite are witnessing an unprecedented transformation in their clientele, who are flocking to request alterations to their clothes. Blame it on the mass adoption of weight loss drugs like Ozempic.

As executive clothes of Wall Street no longer serve them. They’ve lost too much weight, and they’re running to their tailors asking for adjustments.

Michael Andrewswho has run his Manhattan tailoring business for two decades, tells Business Insider that the change has been remarkable. In the past, I rarely took clients who said they wanted to lose weight seriously — except those with weddings on the horizon.

But in the last two years, investment bankers, private equity and corporate lawyers have been returning to their tailors with suits that fit them too much now that their silhouettes have improved. dramatically thinner.

“We had dozens of customers bringing back entire wardrobes“, explains Andrews. “In the case of some clients, they are 20 to 40 pieces that we had to tighten because lost between 9 and 14 kilos“.

Transformations of this type “were previously extremely unusual”, but have now become routine occurrencesnotes Andrews, who founded his company in 2006.

The numbers tell an impressive story. Andrews records the adjustments of larger size, defined as changes of at least two inches to coats or pants. In 2025for every fact it expanded, it tightened eleven. Last year, it recorded 192 requests to make parts significantly smaller, compared with just 17 requests to make them larger.

This represents more than double the tightenings recorded in 2024 and five times the number checked during a peak adjustments in 2020 which Andrews attributed to COVID-related lifestyle changessuch as fewer dinners with clients and reducing alcohol consumption.

According to the tailor, the phenomenon reflects broader trends no use of weight loss medications. According to some studies, GLP-1 drugs can help people lose up to 15% of your weight body in a year, but .

A November 2025 Kaiser Family Foundation survey concluded that 18% of Americans said they had used these medications, with about 3/4 using them specifically for weight loss and not to treat diabetes or other conditions.

The weight loss drug market is expected to reach 126 billion of dollars by 2029, approximately double that recorded in 2025.

The impact extends beyond individual transformations, reshaping own tailoring business. Andrews has hired two additional tailors in 2025, expanding his team to seven to handle the surge in adjustment requests driven by what he calls “the Ozempic effect”.

Other tailors in New York’s financial district report similar experiences. Alan Horowitzwhich creates custom facts for employees at Blackstone, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley and other large institutions, says that those on GLP-1 drugs have had a “dramatic impact” on your business.

Does your company offer free lifetime tweaksa benefit historically used by only 2.5% of customers for changes of eight centimeters or more. Last year, this value jumped to 16%with the majority requesting tightenings.

According to the New York tailor, the average breast size of your customers decreased by about 4 centimeters between 2023 and 2025. “People have weights that they hadn’t had since university and sometimes even since high school,” notes Horowitz.

Although the costs of adjustments have increased significantly, Horowitz points to a positive side: clients, feeling better about themselves, often choose replace entire wardrobes rather than simply tweaking existing facts.

Also Jonathan Sigmon reports having done about 30% more adjustments in 2025 than in the previous year, and approximately double the volume of 2023, with tightenings dominating. Israel Zubersays that his clients now ask him for shorter coats and generally more fitted cuts.

Michael Andrews himself has personal experience with these changes. After starting treatment with Ozempic in 2024, lost about 9 kilos and had to adjust 80 pairs of your own pants.

The tailor believes Wall Street’s shift toward thinner bodies is not driven by changing beauty standards, but rather by how affordable became weight loss with these medications.

As waistlines shrink across the Financial District, one thing remains constant: New York tailors have no shortage of work.