My Father’s Tailor

The summer I turned seventeen my father took me to his tailor for the first time. We were on a family vacation in Portugal and I was to graduate into “grown up” clothes. I would finally meet Senhor Alvalade, the 73-year-old tailor who had made my dad’s slim suits in the sixties. Before my parents immigrated to Canada. Before I was born.

The tailor shop was located exactly where I imagined: on the second floor of a small, nondescript building, down a side street in Lisbon’s medieval Alfama district. We climbed the flight of cracked marble stairs instead of waiting for the ancient elevator. When we walked into the front room, smelling of old fabric and coffee, I was intimidated. There were black and white photos on the walls of past customers—soccer stars and Presidents of the Republic. Rows and rows of fabric were stacked on shelves. Huge, gleaming metal shears lay on the tables. Senhor Alvalade sat in an old chair in the corner of the room in a three piece suit, hunched over some fabric that he repeatedly stabbed with a needle. He was as I expected: short, stocky, with silver hair and thick eyebrows behind thick glasses. He greeted my father as if no time had passed, even though they hadn’t seen each other in over 20 years. “Fernando,” he said in a thick Lisbon accent I found a bit hard to understand, “como vai isso?” “Bem, obrigado,” my father responded, adding, in deference, “Senhor Alvalade.”  The shop’s other tailor, another silver-haired man, also in a three piece suit but with his jacket laid over the back of a chair, didn’t look up from his work. He just continued bludgeoning a jacket’s lapel with a steaming hot iron. The shop’s seamstress didn’t look up either as she fed a pair of trousers to a sewing machine.

I didn’t say very much, just a nod and a “Bom dia.” My Portuguese wasn’t so sharp and I knew nothing about tailoring. I let my father lead. He told Senhor Alvalade that since this was to be my first suit, something I could wear for various occasions like weddings and graduations (including, hopefully, my own) it should be simple, classic. He and Senhor Alvalade picked out a bolt of dark blue fabric and draped it over one of my shoulders. They didn’t ask my opinion, just considered the shade between themselves. Then Senhor Alvalade came at me with measuring tape. The other tailor put down his press and picked up a thick paper ledger that looked older than he was. He wrote down numbers in various columns as Senhor Alvalade called them out. The numbers didn’t seem to me to correspond to any known measuring system. Plus, Portuguese tailoring terms were quite literally a different language. I stood stiffly self-aware, not knowing what to do as he moved over my body with the measuring tape. I raised my arms then brought them back down again. An L-shaped device was placed on each of my shoulders. Then that awkward moment when he measured my inseam. Through all of this my father looked on. Not with pride, just practical interest, as if he were at his mechanic’s.

We came back for the suit three weeks later, just before the end of our vacation. I put it on behind a curtain hung from the ceiling; a single breasted jacket and trousers. As I parted the curtain and stood in front of my father and Senhor Alvalade, I felt different. For the first time in my life I felt comfortable in a suit, maybe even elegant and refined. And I felt like I had grown up, just a little. Like I had been welcomed into some old, august private club or had passed some kind of coming of age ceremony. Or at least I would have if any of it had happened.

My father never took me to his tailor. Never took me to any tailor, in fact. He almost never wore suits when I grew up and when he did, they were certainly not custom made. I grew up part of a generation that missed this rite of passage, that could not draw from those experiences and knowledge. I grew up without the guidance and inspiration on how to dress well and why it matters.

And yet here I am, with a young son of my own, wanting those experiences. As an adult, I have visited many tailors. And shoe makers. I even frequent a hat maker. I do my best to dress well. But I’m doing it at a time when suits and ties and hats are rare. Rarer still on fathers. Most fathers would say they don’t have the time or the patience for the extra care that’s needed with tailored clothes. But I make that time, hoping that my example will seep into my son’s conciousness. Maybe he will grow up with more sartorial tools in his toolbox than I had. And he’ll be ready for the day when he turns seventeen and I take him to my tailor. For real.

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