The Tailor & His Sons

A tale of customer service, family business, and a sports coat

Gentle Reader,

They say it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

As a single man with neither a good fortune, a wife, nor a house, the present writer finds that he must fill the void somehow. And so, lost in the vacuum, it somehow occurred to me that I should get a blazer made, or what the Americans call a sports coat.

That would surely befit a gentleman of my standing?

What colour should this sports coat be? Why green, of course.

Of what material should it be made? Why corduroy, of course.

This morning, I was scheduled for the second fitting of this bespoke garment, and so I headed into town to discuss the finer points with my tailor. It was a mild morning as I loped through the streets, passing by public houses and walking over the cellar gratings from which that beery smell still wafted. Outside of cafes and hotels I saw thirty-somethings with obvious hangovers tucking into fried breakfasts, their bleary eyes clarifying in advance of the big rugby match today – Ireland vs Australia. Above my head a tyranny of gulls called out raucously, descending occasionally to interrogate the overflowing bags of rubbish on the sides of the street.

In the city centre there were the first signs of a Christmas atmosphere, with larger than normal crowds on the famous Grafton Street. Too many people – I ducked through the thoroughfare, entering into a side street and passing a cafe outside of which three Irish rugby players were sitting – apparently this is part of their morning routine the day of home matches.

I went by them and climbed the steps into my tailor’s premises, getting a real blast from the past as I went inside.

Few people have a tailor nowadays – you can order something very cheaply online and return it if it’s not quite right. Your t-shirt will have travelled hundreds, maybe thousands of kilometres on it’s return journey. If you don’t like it, you’ll order the next size, the next colour, the other fabric. When you go to Zara in Dublin, you don’t even have to speak to anyone to buy – they have self-service checkouts there now, similar to supermarkets.

And, let’s face it, having a tailor isn’t cheap. You are paying for something to be precise, to fit your form. There is a particular value in it, especially if you have an unusual body shape.

But it also feels just right. I stood in front of the mirror under the scrutiny of the tailor, his three sons, and the master cutter. Ten eyes watching me, as I watched myself, and banter all the while.

I am not sure that people in their twenties really understand the good customer service which is now dead and gone, except for a few rare places, and so the online shopping generation don’t miss it, because you can’t miss something you never had.

They don’t know that you can have a relationship with your tailor, your butcher, your barber, your doctor. Few people say ‘my doctor’ anymore, because they don’t have one – they just get an appointment wherever they can. It’s the same for me, I also don’t have a doctor, a butcher, a barber. But I sure as heck have a tailor, and he runs a family business in the truest sense, in a style you don’t see very often anymore.

Seeing them work made me question a belief I had unwittingly internalised – my mother once told me to never go into business with family, in case you fall out. She learned this from her father who told her:

“Never join in anything with anyone, except the rosary.”

Maybe he was right. But standing in that room and witnessing the master tailor orchestrating, the sons watching and learning, the knowledge being passed down garment by garment, customer by customer, it was hard not to be jealous:

Here was craft, here was connection.

Maybe the business will break them apart. Maybe they will fight over profits and advertising and target markets. But today, I saw how it brought them together on a Saturday morning, doing good honest work and having a good time doing it.

But when, I hear you say, will the jacket be ready?

Just two more fittings, gentle reader – they tell it will be ready in mid December. In the meantime, I will have to sit tight in my ill-fitting garments, dreaming of a corduroy Christmas.

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Speaking of tailors, one of my favourite books is The Tailor and Antsy, a humorous chronicle of the day-to-day lives of an early twentieth-century Irish couple.

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