Crimson’s Creative Challenge #62
He was apprenticed to a tailor, learned to cut a gentleman’s suit, learned to sew it and with his stitching to effect the gentle roll and fall of his collar. He learned to shape the latest fashions, though these he’d not been trained to cut.
He cut and styled and sewed dress shirts, plus-fours and best tweed shooting jackets. He indulged his whim for safari gear… one must keep up with the times.
But those times change. Few are the gentlemen now who come to him, unknown in this foreign land. He has his life, he has his wife… and his living earned by turning up legs, replacing buttons and zips.
I pass this colourful display of zips on my way to the shops. And walking around town with my camera, I couldn’t resist. The tailor generously allowed me to take the photo. I didn’t question him about his life. Whether the above is true for him or not, it is for many others.
crispina kemp 
So many lost arts. This is indeed a tale of woe.
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But it’s true, it’s what your average town tailor used to do… in the west and in the east and in all the places inbetween 🙂
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Indeed. this is a lost art in this “off the rack world” we live in. Who wants to (or can) take the time and spend the money on beautiful clothes? So sad. And well done!
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The wealthy, is the answer. For us lesser beings… take it from the rack. It’s an awful lot cheaper
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Yep… but wouldn’t it be nice to splurge?
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To have clothes cut to fit our every bulge 🙂
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In such a manner that none of bulges show…
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That is the trick 🙂
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🙂
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Sorry I was away for a while.❤️
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Is okay 🙂
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🙏🌹
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And I wonder how many would even have these repairs made in this throw away society.
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This is true. Zip busted? Throw it away. Button’s lost? Disasterous, throw it away. And as for a rip… seems no one knows about invisible mending these days
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What’s most unfortunate is the off-the-rack stuff is so cheap because of cheap sweatshop labor. I often feel bad, but then what can one do other than go naked nowadays?
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Your comment reminds me of what I uncovered when I was delving into the history of the Norfolk textile industry. Apparently there were riots, with weavers and their families tearing the *foreign imports* off the persons of ladies who wore the newfangled cotton goods. Norfolk had already lost trade to the Northern mills, for Norfolk rivers were too placid to drive the machinary. Now they were losing out again. Today we take cotton for granted. Until then, the common folk wore wool and linen; the toffs wore silk as well.
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Well, global warming’s going to take care of the “too much cotton” problem. So, yeah.
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I was referring back to C18th.
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Even the Shakers, a communal religious group here in the U.S., who regionally made all their own clothes, eventually succumbed to the ease and lower cost of buying “off the rack” as early as the 1870s. Though one of their elders wondered if they had made the right decision, saying that store-bought clothes didn’t last as long.
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In that they were right. Commercially made clothes tend not to have the same seam allowance of a handmade piece… thus gives way quicker under general wear and tear. Their ‘finish’ is woefully lacking, so stitches unravel and ‘machined’ buttons, one tug on their thread and they’ll come off. Commercial-made clothes are intended to last for as long as the fashion holds. And we know how quickly the fashions change 🙂
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