A man walks into Bloomingdale’s looking for a new suit, then stumbles out in shock and disbelief at the high prices. The doorman takes pity on him and directs him to Phil’s 1908, diagonally across the street.

It’s probably just an urban anecdote. But Philip Pravda thinks it entirely plausible. He opened his store, Phil’s 1908, on the corner of Third Avenue and 59th Street precisely because he wanted to offer an alternative to stylish New Yorkers not inclined to shell out a month’s wages for a suit. From sports coats to business suits to tuxedos, his inventory is geared toward a younger clientele, men in their twenties and thirties, who, he says, “like to be tailored, with a slimmer silhouette, a more tapered figure.”

Strategic considerations in selecting the store’s location included the proximity of Bloomingdale’s – Mr. Pravda astutely stays open half an hour later than his neighbor – but also the nearby Bloomberg Tower, whose daily traffic of an estimated 20,000 employees and visitors largely fits the profile of the Phils’s 1908 customer.

“All merchandise is made in Italy,” Mr. Pravda says, “I select the fabrics and styles I think will be best suited to my younger clientele.” Younger men today tend to dress conservatively, but they do not want their fathers’ suits.

Mr. Pravda’s great-grandfather came to New York in 1893 from the Ukraine. Speaking only Yiddish and Russian, he worked on the railroads in the South, then at a general store. He returned to Russia to serve in the Army, and then came back to New York, where he took a job in a clothing store. With his savings, he rented the store across the street. He found his inventory in the obituaries, buying the clothing of the recently departed.

Mr. Pravda’s grandfather Alfred, an imposing man who drove a hard bargain, put his profits into real estate and opened Village Squire at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street and House of Cromwell at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street. Mr. Pravda’s father opened British American House at Fifth Avenue and 49th Street and sold Armani suits in the 1980s, before Richard Gere made them famous in “American Gigolo.”

Philip Pravda studied environmental sciences in college and computerized the family store inventories while on summer vacation, but his flirtation with information technology was short-lived. He had spent time in clothing stores since the age of 3, worked there on Saturdays after his bar mitzvah, and it seemed natural that he should carry on the family tradition.

He lives round the corner from Phil’s 1908. Just a month after the store’s first anniversary in March, he is opening a shoe department.

Phil’s 1908, Third Avenue and 59th Street, (212) 230-1908.