Yes, these days you can go all the way to legendary tailor witout touching a piece of leather.
I raised tailoring from 30 using primarily these items: short pants, skirt, cloak, fur boots, kasa, oil cloth, elven shirt, gargish cloth kilt / arms.
In between the elven shirts and gargish kilt (skill 113,9-115,2) I made studded hiro sode, because the gains from the elven shirt were getting harder to come by and I needed some variation for my own entertainment. You can of course substitute elven shirts with ninja cloth hoods, they are just more costly to make, but will give you armslore gains if you need it.
Getting from 115,2 to 119,6 making gargish cloth kilts cost me:
Cloth: 11.119
Sewing kits: 80 (NPC quality)