The small tailor on rue de la Roquette
On the woman who alters my clothes — and the case for a relationship with a tailor as the single most useful purchase in clothing.
There is a small tailor on rue de la Roquette who has been altering my clothes for the last seven years. Her name is Sylvie. She works alone, out of a small shop the size of a parking space, with a single window onto the street and a small bell that rings when the door opens. She has been at this for forty years.
Almost every piece of clothing I own that fits me well fits me well because of Sylvie. The fit was, in most cases, not how the garment came. The garment came in a standard size that was approximately right, and Sylvie made it precisely right with the small adjustments that almost no one bothers to make any more.
What she does
Mostly small things. The sleeves of a blazer shortened by two centimetres. The waist of a pair of trousers taken in by one. The hem of a skirt raised by a finger's width. The shoulder of a sweater eased by a few millimetres because the original was pulling slightly. None of the alterations are dramatic. All of them are the small final calibrations that turn a garment that fits roughly into one that fits exactly.
What the alterations cost
Almost nothing. Most of her alterations are between ten and twenty-five euros. A more substantial alteration — taking in a blazer at the back, for instance, or relining a pair of trousers — runs to forty or fifty. The most expensive job she has ever done for me, which was the recutting of a coat to fit my shoulders properly, was a hundred and twenty.
These numbers are small compared to the cost of the garments themselves. They are also small compared to the value the alterations add. A two-hundred-euro blazer that has been properly fitted to my shoulders for fifteen euros is a much more useful blazer than a six-hundred-euro one in the wrong size.
What the relationship is
Important. Sylvie now knows, by sight, how my shoulders sit, how I carry my weight through the year, what I am willing to wear and what I am not. When I bring her a new piece, she does not need to remeasure me from scratch. She makes the small adjustments she knows my body wants. The whole process takes ten minutes at the counter, and the garment is ready in a week.
I cannot overstate how much this relationship has improved my wardrobe. The garments I owned before Sylvie were, in retrospect, all slightly wrong in small ways that I had been ignoring. The garments I have now are, almost all of them, properly mine, in a way that off-the-rack clothes are not.
On finding a tailor
Most cities still have small tailoring shops, although the number is declining every year. The good ones do not advertise. You find them by asking other people, by walking the older streets of older neighbourhoods, by being willing to spend a few small jobs trying out different tailors until you find the one whose work you trust.
The investment is worth it. A relationship with a competent tailor is, by considerable margin, the single most valuable thing you can have in clothing. It is more valuable than any single garment. It turns the whole wardrobe into clothes that fit you, instead of clothes you happen to fit into. The difference is, day to day, real.