How To Find A Local Tailor - 7 Tips To Choose A Seamstress - Locate Tailors Seamstresses
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
And today, we're going to be talking about how to find a quality tailor.
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In addition, if you'd like to comment, if you've got some tips on how to find or select
a quality men's tailor, well, go ahead and leave it right there in the comments.
I love hearing from tailors.
I know some of you guys are out there watching and I would love to hear your feedback as
well.
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right down there.
I've already talked about that probably over a hundred times, so I'll let you get right
to it.
All right.
This is the question that came in.
"Antonio, I love your channel and your videos.
They're really helpful and I'm needing to dress up more.
I have a question that maybe you can help me with.
How do I find a good tailor?
You've mentioned tailors and that there are good ones and bad ones.
I live in a medium size town and I doubt there's a high demand or excellent tailors in my area,
so how do I determine what's a good tailor, what's a bad tailor?
Thank you for your help and good work."
That's a good question and it sounds pretty intuitive that if you're in a smaller town,
there's going to be less competition and you're going to have less access to tailors.
That's not always true because there are diamonds in the rough.
That's why I think it's important that a man be able to identify a good tailor.
When I say "tailor", it could be a seamstress, tailor, they're all kind of interchangeable
nowadays.
Technically, there is a difference.
I know that there's a difference, but for all intents and purposes, if somebody is listed
as a seamstress, if somebody is listed as a tailor, go ahead and in many ways treat
them the same.
Usually, women are going to be considered seamstresses, men are tailors, but that is
interchangeable and again, we're playing with definitions of words here.
It really comes down to -- and I've put out a great article, which I'm going to link you
to down below -- but I have seven steps in which I recommend a man go through as he's
trying to identify a good tailor or a seamstress in his local town.
And just to tell you my story, when I moved to rural Wisconsin, we needed to find some
good tailors to work with my company.
I had a lot of alterations that I wanted to expand out.
How in the world was I going to find quality tailors or seamstresses outside of Chicago
or New York?
Well, it turns out that if you look, you can find people who have the skills and who can
be trained up.
In addition, we actually have some immigrants in our area and there's a Russian seamstress
who turns out -- my wife's Ukrainian, she's Russian.
Instantly they got together.
They're speaking their Slavic languages all over the place, but it worked out perfect
for us because here's a woman that went to one of Moscow's best fashion institutes, learned
how to sew over in Moscow at Saint Petersburg, and now she's living over here in Central
Wisconsin.
Who would've figured?
She's great because she actually fits all seven of these points, which I'm going to
get into.
You'll see.
You just need to know what to look for and you'll be able to see those diamonds in the
rough and latch on to them.
So what are those seven steps?
Let me get right to it.
1.
Educate yourself.
Yes, you have to do a little bit of work.
You have to know what you're asking for.
It's like if you're looking for a foreman or looking for someone to work on your house,
you have to have a decent idea of what you want to have done.
You can't just expect the first guy you call up that you invite over to your house that
you just say, "Hey, I want to get my kitchen remodeled.
Here's $5000.
Get it done."
You're not going to get what you're looking for.
You need to do a little bit of research.
You need to have a good idea of what you want.
And usually, the more research you do upfront to a point, you'll be able to very expressly
articulate exactly what you want.
It's the same when it comes to clothing and alterations.
The more you know and the more you can be detailed about exactly where you want something
brought in, the better the tailor is going to be able to deliver it to you because they're
not mind-readers.
I highly advise, if you haven't already, go to my blog, Real Men Real Style.
I've also got a website called atailoredsuit.com.
We've got a free style guide there, just tons of articles.
If you need more, go to forums like Ask Andy, Style Forum.
There are books that you can order on Amazon and we're talking $10 to $15 to $20, "Gentleman"
by Bernhard Roetzel, "Anything" by Alan Flusser.
There are so many great books out there.
Again, you have to spend a bit of time educating yourself, so that's number one thing.
2.
Ask for recommendations.
Look who the best men are dressed in your area and ask them what tailor they use.
If you can't find any men that use any tailors in your area, well, ask some of the women
because women use tailors and seamstresses more often than we do.
Maybe it's a great conversation starter for you, too, but ask them where they're getting
their clothing adjusted.
You may find some very interesting stories.
I know here in the Midwest, we've got a lot of religious communities like the Mennonites,
the Amish, and these groups, they are actually great with the needle and thread because they're
making all of their own clothing in many cases.
I know a lot of the cleaners in my area actually send their alterations to be done by some
of these ladies because they're the best people with the needle and thread.
You may ask, "What happened to all of America's seamstresses and tailors?"
I think back in the 1970s -- in '60s, '70s, '80s, we saw it really die down.
And so, a lot of young people did not want to get into any of this craft.
It didn’t pay well.
It still doesn’t pay too well.
It's one of those things that you have to put in a lot of effort.
You have to usually start young, and so, most of the tailors are older.
It's kind of a dying craft except in these communities where they still make their own
clothing.
3.
Solid communication skills.
A lot of tailors, like I said, it's a dying craft, a lot of them are coming from other
countries.
You may find a gentleman, he may have incredible skills, but if you don't speak Korean and
he only speaks Korean, you're going to be hard-pressed to have that -- there are going
to be some communication gaps, so maybe you've got a great translator, but at the end of
the day, you've got to make sure he understands what you want.
4.
When is this person satisfied?
This reminds me of a story.
We were over in Thailand and I was with the Marine Corps at the time.
My buddy, Trey, he had a suit made.
The guy came out, looked at the suit -- or actually it was a shirt -- looked at the shirt
and he thought he was -- he went crazy for some reason.
Maybe his assistant made some mistake, and he tore it off Trey's body.
Now, you don't want a tailor that's going to tear clothing off of your body, unless
she's incredibly attractive.
Well, we'll talk about that some other place, but what I'm getting at guys is that you want
to make sure that they have really high standards because they do work that you can't see.
I mean, they're going to do stuff inside the jacket and you don't want it to be all messed
up in there, so make sure they've got high standards.
5.
This is very rare and I did find it with Lioudmila, who I use here locally, she understands style.
She went to an institute where they taught her all about design.
Most tailors and seamstresses, they don't understand this.
And if they do, they're over in Milan or they're in London, or they're in areas where they're
getting paid buku dollars because they understand style and they could sew.
So that combination is pretty rare, but if you can find it, you don't like to go with
that tailor or seamstress because that's gold.
6.
Look at some of their sample work.
Ask to see things they worked on.
Most tailors, they've got stuff all over the place, especially if they're doing alterations
and they can show you work probably from clients who probably dropped something off and never
picked them up.
Here's a hidden tip.
Maybe they've got something in there that's been sitting there for a year or two which
they might want to sell you and will look great on you.
7.
Availability.
If you need something done and you need it done quick, you want somebody that's available.
Now, the best tailors and seamstresses, they're going to be busy and if you don't need it
done quickly, don't push it.
This is why you want to form a long-term relationship because if you need something in two days
or 24 hours perhaps, you need the kind of relationship that you can go in there and
say, "Hey, I know this is short notice, but I really need this.
It would mean so much to me."
And when they do deliver, tip them.
These are people that are not making huge amounts of money and they went out of their
way to take care of you.
Okay, so that's how you find a quality tailor.
This one was a pretty easy question because I've written about this multiple times.
I wish you the best of luck.
Use Google Search.
You can go out there and you can see what people are saying, but take it with a grain
of salt because those recommendations and things people say, oftentimes they're complaining
about something that's not even related to the tailor.
Maybe they had a bad dry cleaning experience and they're relating that to the tailor who
just happens to work in the dry cleaner, so make sure to take this checklist.
Go in there and talk with the person.
Best of luck finding a local tailor; you can do it.
I know I was able to.
Okay.
See you in the next video.
This has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style.