Meet The Internet’s Freakiest Tailor
Roshan Melwani of Sam’s Tailor has recently attained meme status thanks to his suggestive—and very questionable—videos. But what lies behind his provocative online persona?
By Patrick Kho
Photos by Chloe Ching
Published
There is no tailor like Sam’s Tailor. At least, there is no other tailor with a Know Your Meme page. Why? Because of viral TikToks like this one: “I am DRIPPING WET…” cries Roshan Melwani—these words, overtly sexual, refer only to the client standing awkwardly beside him. At Sam’s Tailor, a bespoke suit tailor based in Hong Kong, this is business-as-usual. For Roshan, the current tailor-in-residence, such suggestive videos are the way he showcases work to followers—that is, 1.8 million on TikTok and 385k on Instagram as of writing. After unleashing this lewd cry, he highlights the final product: a custom, fully-fashioned suit crafted in-house. “…are you happy?” he asks.
As hard as it is not to laugh watching Roshan’s content, it’s probably even harder not to feel second-hand violated. In another video, he expresses wanting to “UNDRESS” his male client, and then later, violently smacks his ass. One fan comments, “spank me like that please it’s all i want.”
To reduce Roshan to his provocative digital persona would be a serious injustice. Meet him in person and you might first notice a triple diamond piercing on his left earlobe (but not his right) and tattoos in a cursive font. His OOTD when I first met him? A gray, four-buttoned, U-shaped suit-vest on top of a maroon shirt. Even in 2023, his go-to work computer is a rose-gold MacBook Air. Roshan is, if anything, indulgently stylish. What else can we expect from a third-generation couturier? After all, Sam’s Tailor is a family business first, and a risqué TikTok producer second: his grandfather first opened up shop in 1957 with savings earned during a five-year stint with a Chinese tailor. And while Roshan leads most of Sam’s Tailor’s operations now, the business is still run in collaboration with his father and uncle.
“Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, I am the number one tailor on the planet right now. Nobody makes suits like I do.” Roshan says. In some of his pieces, you might find “two glorious horn buttons,” “a very narrow peak lapel with hand needle and thread pick stitching,” or “a built-in pocket square.” There is no stringent formula for how a Sam’s Tailor suit ought to be crafted. “What differentiates me from everybody is the wealth of styles that I can create,” Roshan tells me. “We create so much because we don't dictate.” While other tailors might be unwilling to break from their own established styles and conventions, Roshan is the (self-titled) suit whisperer. “Not because I talk to the suits; I talk to my clients. I get inside their heads and I bring their vision to life.”
Panache is what differentiates Roshan’s suits from the rest: “Everything I make has something dramatic available to it.” Browse through his atelier or scroll through his TikTok and you’ll find sophisticated linings—some depict tigers and butterflies, others flowers, stripes, or patterns that could’ve been on a Qipao. Suits made of corduroy, with sparkles, or in ‘Lady Gaga-style’ are among the norm. “Each one of my suits is a piece of art.”
Such an experimental approach has brought various innovations to Roshan’s name. “I’m the inventor of the secondary button, where you get two different colored buttons at the ends of the cuffs. I took the gauntlet cuff from Tom Ford and made it slightly tinier, so it's more mainstream. I am the inventor of the Tarzan cuff, where the last button is bigger.”
But Sam’s Tailor does not just service men: “I make the most phenomenal woman outfits,” Roshan boasts. His expansive visual repertoire of female fits is available via #SamsMuse on Instagram, where (in his words) he has served “every type of woman, every color of woman, every size of woman, every race of woman. Chinese, white, Black, Indian. Dresses, Coats, Suits. Thin, Fat, Short, Tall.”
“It doesn't end. It goes on and on. Old ladies. Crazy ladies. Femboys. Politicians. Gorgeous babes. Twins. Sexy women.” (Yes, he really said this).
And with innovative designs-for-all, Sam’s Tailor has garnered international acclaim, and a clientele of Everybody Who’s Anybody. Roshan’s worked for Bill Clinton five times. He’s tailored suits for Boris Johnson, HRH Prince Edward, and not one, not two, but three members of the Bush family. Other celebrity customers include Bruno Mars, Imagine Dragons, Jon Hamm, Sigourney Weaver, Meghan Markle, Terry Bradshaw, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss. “I don’t even know where to start.”
But where does this internationally iconic tailor get his sense of humor? About being “dripping wet” for clients and wanting to “undress” them, no less? “I have no idea,” Roshan admits. “[The jokes] just come. Nothing is scripted. I don't know what the fuck is going to come out of my head. Whatever comes out, comes out. I never watch the video back. I don't even watch the video I'm posting. Nothing is pre-planned. You work on the client's insecurities and it comes out being funny. I'm not a comedian. I'm not a writer. I'm not an actor. I'm just an artist.”
Despite relying heavily on improv, Roshan’s content is not without a distinct style. His videos always begin with a risqué remark: “sexy Asian girl,” “I’ll get on my knees…,” “this man is dripping with sex.” He’s also built a unique vernacular: “gift-wrapped” is a metaphor for wearing a suit; “planets” denote ass-cheeks, which are usually slapped or even punched at the end of every video. At times, Roshan might even present a mix of perversion and ‘punching up’: “Young white men from the United States scurry to me.” he declares in one video. “Like mice. Like rats. Like maggots. Like the savages they are.”
“I had boys come to me and say they want me to spank their ass,” Roshan recalls. Some of them were underage. “I said, ‘Fuck that, man. I don't want to get anywhere near you.’ So I grabbed a hanger one day, and said ‘stay away from me.’” Even now, when Roshan feels he should not physically touch a client, he uses a hanger instead.
Of course, you can’t have 1.8 million TikTok followers without a few haters. “Dude, you’re a fucking freak. You’re going to get arrested.” Roshan remembers being told. On YouTube, one reaction channel describes him as “TikTok’s Most Disgusting Creator”; another says “This Suit Tailor Needs To Be Locked Up Bruh 💀” Roshan’s response? “I want to pull my dick out and piss on them.”
Given Roshan’s recent transcendence into meme status, it’d be easy to assume that he’s new to fame. But quite the opposite is true. “Look, I was born famous,” he tells me. “I was in the South China Morning Post [Hong Kong’s New York Times equivalent] when I was 10 years old. I was on Round the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin.” In 2015, Roshan also made an appearance on Season 27 of The Amazing Race.
The key to keeping his fame, then, is evolution. In 2000, Sam’s Tailor was one of the first companies to create both a website and an email address. “My website became famous. Everybody started emailing me to book appointments, orders.” Friends and family were initially worried his website was giving too much away. “I said [to them], by the time someone's done copying me, I'll have moved on to something else.”
When Roshan first got the iPhone 5 in 2012, he claims feeling “like Neo, waking up from the Matrix” and becoming “a new man.” And with the advent of video content on Instagram stories and Tiktok, Roshan found his true calling: “I was born for video. It took me like 9,000 videos and nine years to become Insta-famous, and maybe less than 90 videos and less than 90 days to become TikTok famous.” Today, Roshan releases short-form videos on twenty-one social platforms, ranging from established (Douyin, China’s TikTok alternative) to fringe (WhatsApp Status… the only people I know who use this are pre-teens whose parents forbid them from downloading Snapchat).
“Constant evolution. That's all it is. You've got to be ready to evolve.” Roshan advises. While I agree, I don’t know if I would ‘evolve’ towards posting suggestive jokes on the internet for 1.8 million people to see. But I digress. After all, “you can't be stuck in your ways.” Roshan emphasizes. “You just move with the times.”
By the second time I visited Roshan, he had already ‘evolved’ again, saying, “I don’t slap asses anymore. I touch and fondle.”