In the fall of 1991, Manhattan tailor Anthony Giliberto received a call from Elliot Lavigne, then-chairman of Perry Ellis.
That one call would change the course of the third-generation tailor’s life.
“He says, ‘Anthony, come over here right now. I want to introduce you to somebody.’ I says to him, ‘Elliot, I can’t, I’m busy.’ ”
Lavigne insisted, and Giliberto went to the Perry Ellis offices to meet the mystery VIP, who promptly ordered a double-breasted suit from him.
“I made him the one suit, and he loved it. He called me and said, ‘I loved the suit. Make me 10 more,’ ” recalls Giliberto, who punched in the order for $14,000.
That man was Jordan Belfort, “the Wolf of Wall Street.”
Belfort asked his new tailor to bring the suits to his office, which had just opened in Lake Success, NY.
From then on, Giliberto would be the official tailor for Belfort’s brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont — ushered into the inner sanctum, where he witnessed first-hand the greed-fueled orgy of drugs, hookers and cash.
His life would be so closely woven into the fabric of Stratton Oakmont that he is named numerous times in Belfort’s book — in which swallowing Quaaludes and stealing money are described as competitive sports. He also made suits for Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Belfort in the Martin Scorsese flick of the same name, opening Wednesday.
“There was a sea of young brokers. I’m talking hundreds, probably three to four hundred; everyone making better than $300,000 a year. There was a clientele just waiting to be snatched up. And then [Belfort] introduced me to [Stratton president] Danny [Porush]. He was a huge client,” says Giliberto, who describes Porush as perpetually stoned and poised to pass out, lit cigarette in hand.
Giliberto made clothes for the wolves and their families, and once charged Belfort $21,081.89 for a single order.
The garmento’s services were so in demand, he became a de facto employee of the notorious chop shop, spending three days a week there measuring the monied young guns for $1,400 bespoke suits with pleated pants, wide shoulders and even wider lapels — the standard business suit style from the early 1990s.
“It was like Christmas every month for me,” says Giliberto, who notes that pay day arrived on the 15th of every month — and lots of conspicuous consumption along with it.
Giliberto and his trade represented the aspirational ethos that Belfort sold to his soldiers.
“When you graduated to that level [by opening enough accounts], they gave you me,” he says, adding, “I’d get there at 9 a.m. and listen to the morning meetings, which was invigorating because it made me hungry, too. It was like watching Tony Robbins.”
Giliberto, who was a 30-year-old newlywed and new father at the time, became so hungry for the free-flowing business that he moved from Staten Island to Long Island just to be nearer the Stratton Oakmont offices.
“I look at that house every day and say, ‘This is the house that Stratton Oakmont built.’ It’s the truth.”
The dapper Brooklyn native says he was even recruited to be a broker, an offer he turned down.
“I was always tempted. I am lucky I come from a strict Italian family. It made me calmer. I mean, I would have been in jail by now. It was all dirty money. I was working hard. I was doing what I was supposed to do. I was giving them a product.”
“I was probably selling them an average of $60,000 [worth of suits] a month,” adds Giliberto, who estimates he profited $10,000 monthly on top of his regular salary and business. “I had a really good run.”
Though he didn’t take the plunge and become a broker, he did attend company Christmas parties. Giliberto says they were so wild, he once walked into the men’s room and found girls making out with each other to the sounds of the Village People, who had been hired to perform.
“They were giving these kids prostitutes if they had a big order. They’d go [have sex] in the bathroom, in the back office and in cars.”
One time while he was fitting Porush in his home, the doorbell rang.
“He tells me to wait a second, goes to a side cabinet, pulls out a wad of cash and runs to the door,” says Giliberto, lowering his voice. “It had to be his drug dealer. He was bad,” he says of Porush’s drug habit.
The gravy train ended five years later, in 1996, when Stratton Oakmont shuttered its Lake Success offices amid a federal investigation. (In 1999, Belfort and Porush pleaded guilty to 10 counts of securities fraud and money laundering).
But he kept all of Belfort’s and Porush’s records, including invoices and swatches of fabric.
Giliberto’s memory and recordkeeping were so good, he consulted with the film’s costume designer, Sandy Powell.
He then fitted DiCaprio for suits inside the star’s Battery Park apartment as the actor peppered him with questions about Belfort.
“When he found out my name was Anthony, he kept playing ‘Anthony’s Song’ by Billy Joel. He was a nice guy. He wanted to know everything. I told him that I remembered [Belfort] telling me that he came into work in 1987 on the day the market crashed. He said, ‘That’s crazy. We don’t have that. We need to use it.’ And when Leo saw Danny Porush’s business card, he took a photo and sent it to Jonah [Hill].”
Giliberto plans to see the movie, which features a fictionalized version of himself, the day after Christmas.
“It was a crazy time. I made a lot of money,” says Giliberto, who now has a blossoming business on Broadway making suits for “Motown: The Musical,” “The Book of Mormon” and “Rocky: The Musical.”
“I was friends with them. I feel bad that I don’t have these relationships anymore. It was a wild ride. I enjoyed it.”