Albert Karoll started his custom menswear business from his Chicago apartment with just a phone, a legal pad and a book of fabric swatches that he took to customers' homes and offices. In the early 1990s, he combined his fledging business with five local bespoke tailor shops whose owners had either died or were retiring without successors. In doing so, Karoll kept the old-fashioned craft of bespoke tailoring—one that had been practiced by Italian and Eastern European immigrants for decades—from obsolescence. Today, his tailors still make men's and now women's clothing from paper patterns customized for individual customers.