I’ve had the same tailor in New York City for years, which is a sentence that sounds extremely twee, but let me clarify.
I’m not talking about an Anderson & Sheppard, by-royal-appointment-to-some-fancy-boy Savile Row kind of enterprise. I’m talking about a place that will shorten sleeves properly, fix moth holes, and figure out how to let out the waist of a pair of expensive pants without making a lot of judgmental side comments.
Because if, like me, you are defenseless against the bread basket in restaurants, you often have to get your clothes adjusted to reflect the new reality of whatever it is you’re now carrying around, thanks to airport Cinnabons.
Or maybe, like me, you occasionally mount fortifications against your true nature and declare that, for you, bread is over — I don’t even miss it. In this case, you need a tailor for that happy (and temporary) triumph.
And the best tailor is one who speaks a complicated foreign language — one in which the words Look at what happened to him and We’re going to need stronger thread and Yo-yo dieters like this guy end up having massive heart attacks, right? are unintelligible to you. It just sounds like gibberish as they measure you up.
Hong Kong Tailor Jack was exactly that place. It was a shabby storefront in an old building in Greenwich Village that was actually owned by a man named Jack from Hong Kong. He had the perpetually sad expression and papery skin of someone who lit his first cigarette in 1932 and has been smoking continuously since then.
But he also knew exactly how to fix the cuff of a blazer from the shoulder and how to point out politely that there was no material left to let out a pair of trousers. In other words, he was a master tailor.
A few months ago, I walked into Hong Kong Tailor Jack and was greeted by the usual noisy Cantonese and the smell of soup. I could hear the sewing machines going in the backroom. I asked for Jack, and the mostly Cantonese-speaking guy behind the counter made this gesture: He put his hands together and then up against the side of his face and closed his eyes.
“Is he taking a nap?” I asked.
“No, no,” was the reply. “He died.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, which was interpreted by the guy as Well, I guess I’ll have to go somewhere else, because he said, in a heavy Cantonese accent that I won’t try to reproduce because it’s racist, “No, no, it’s OK. Jack didn’t do much anyway. He was old. It’s the people back there.” He gestured to the backroom with the sewing machines and the Cantonese chitchat. “They did it all. And they’re still here, still the same. So, want us to let those pants out again?
I did, but it was different. Over the next few months, the place was remodeled, spruced up, and (here’s the real word for it) relaunched. A couple of younger women showed up with Americanized accents. The smell of soup and cigarettes faded. Even Jack’s widow disappeared — she, by the way, in the kind of flinty lack of sentiment prevalent among small-business owners, was standing behind the guy as he was telling me that Jack didn’t do any of the real work, nodding and agreeing and saying, over and over again, very sick, very sick, better now, better now, all in a heavy Cantonese accent that I won’t try to reproduce because it’s racist.
The only person with a lump in his throat was me. I missed Jack. I missed the way he kept a dozen pins in his mouth, I missed the way he marked up my clothes with bits of soap, and I even missed the way he looked at me when I’d walk out of the changing room after squeezing into a pair of trousers. He’d shake his head, too tight, too tight, and then get to work.
It’s a better business these days: faster, easier to communicate with the staff, and open into the evenings. When you get your clothes back, they no longer smell of cigarette smoke. The sign above the door doesn’t say Hong Kong Tailor Jack anymore. It’s just Hong Kong Tailor now. The Jack part is gone. Although, apparently, he never did much anyway.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
