Bespoken For

When walking down Church Street, people rarely look above street-level. If one did stop and allow his or her gaze to wander for a moment, they might spot an artist. Separated from the honks and cries of cars and pedestrians by a pane of glass, tailor Joe Calautti can often be found deeply entrenched in his work, creating heirloom-quality clothing from scratch.

Looking out from their store windows, Boston’s few remaining traditional tailors —including Joe Calautti, Christos Soillis, Jack Papazian, and the Kopellas family —have watched people shed tradition and old styles along with their formal dress. In the 50s and 60s, any young American man would wear, at minimum, a shirt and tie, likely with a jacket and hat. Watching any film from the 60s, one can see that the default of dress was set a bit higher than where standards rest today. However, within some small workplaces tucked away in the city, the old respect and complete understanding of clothing are kept safe and well in the hands of a few talented artisans.

SUITS FAUST

For those who are nostalgic for the time of the everyday jacket and tie, walking into Rizzo Tailor at 66 Church Street is a something of a holy experience. The fitting area is covered in jackets and suits that are at various stages in the bespoke’s process; each garment is handmade for an individual customer. Books upon books of fabric samples line the window overlooking Church Street. Swaths of fabric are spread out over an aged wooden table covered with thousands of pockmarks from a needle piercing cloth and indented where a hot iron sat for years. A glance to the left reveals the heart and soul of the shop, the workshop itself. Spools of thread line the walls, half- and quarter-finished garments hang all over, and a gorgeous, old Singer sewing machine sits beside a wide work table. It is in this room that Calautti demonstrates his skill time and time again, outfitting the likes of Senator John Kerry, President Drew Faust, and more than a few other Harvard professors.

Calautti has been working at Rizzo for 46 years, and he is the current owner of the business. When it comes to the world of tailoring, he is the genuine article, born and raised in Italy, one of the capitols of the art. “I was eight when I started going to the tailor’s shops. We were the little guys watching the big guys and learning what they were doing,” Calautti says. He demonstrates how the older tailors used thread to tie the boys’ middle finger in a certain position to make it flexible and quick enough to properly work a needle.

There is a real romance in the way Calautti talks about his pieces of custom work. Each suit is introduced as a reflection of the person who ordered it, and I learn as much from Calautti about the fabric as I do the customer who chose it. He looks at a cashmere sportcoat and launches into a detailed account of each small aspect of the jacket, “You see this wide lapel? And how many jackets do you see these days with a peak lapel? And the slash pockets,” Calautti says. “I do all this because this is how the gentleman likes it.” Calautti delights in sharing the stories behind every garment hanging in his shop, and not once does he need to stop to check a tag to know which item belongs to whom.

Calautti’s enthusiasm for his work is apparent from moment he greets each customer. A jovial, middle-aged Italian man in a crisply pressed shirt, he is as eager to hear about his customers’ day as he is to hear about their clothing needs. He wears a small black workbelt, filled with needles, pins, and other tools of the trade, which he uses to deftly pin and adjust fabric as he explains his vision for the garment to his customers.

HANDY WORK

Calautti’s workshop still does all of its work by hand. Calautti executes most of the custom work entirely by himself, investing between six to seven months to create a custom suit. Rizzo Tailor’s process presents a stark contrast to the new changes in tailoring brought by advanced technology. Many online made-to-measure services have sprung up in the past few years, including Indochino, which started in 2007. Most of these work by simply plugging values into an algorithmic, mechanized operation. These services offer a degree of customization in suiting at a fraction of the price of a true bespoke item, but the difference in price is not without a difference in quality.

The key technical distinction between made-to-measure and bespoke tailoring is that made-to-measure services use a customer’s measurements to adjust an existing pattern, altering small details such as sleeve length or waist size, while a true custom tailor will cut an entirely new pattern for each customer. Most made-to-measure services will still produce machine-made clothing, while custom tailors such as Calautti work almost exclusively by hand. Details such as hand stitching in the lapel of a jacket create an irreplaceable, rounded quality, and the overall drape of a handcrafted garment will almost always surpass that of a machine-made piece.

Unhurried by production schedules or assembly lines, Calautti works over a long process with a first and second fitting, creating a garment that bears his handiwork like a proud signature. Each of Calautti’s items is created to the specifications and unique silhouette of an individual customer. In this sense they are unequivocally the customer’s, but every stitch and feature of the item carries Calautti’s talent and philosophy. He gives intense attention and uses a finesse born of years of practice to something as simple as attaching a button to a jacket, making sure that the stitches are all the precise tension and the shank, a device for providing enough space in between a garment and a button, is done properly to preserve the drape and integrity of the fabric. “To learn this trade, it’s an art. You have to know everything,” Calautti says. “To say you’re a professional tailor you have to know from A to Z. Otherwise I could never call myself a professional tailor.”

VISION TO VESTMENT

Discussing clothing with a tailor and with a salesman are fundamentally different experiences. A customer’s interaction with a salesman is limited to an hour, maybe less. A salesperson sells a finished product to the customer, usually one made by a third party. When the customer has paid for an item, his or her relationship with the salesperson ends. Many tailors, on the other hand, maintain clients over decades and through multiple generations. What they sell is trust and an ongoing relationship. “We’ve been here since 1974, and we have some third generation customers now,” says Bill Kopellas, son of Frank Kopellas of Frank’s Custom Tailoring. “We build relationships with the customers.”

A tailor’s relationship with a customer is built over years of service and communication, dressing their clients for some of the most important events of their lives, such as weddings and graduations. Jack Papazian of Jack’s Tailoring in Porter Square has worked at his shop since 1986, and his family has in the tailoring business for over 65 years. “I’m a good listener. The first thing I do is simply listen to a customer to try to learn their psychology and how they like their clothes,” he says. “Then I explain everything to them, A to Z, to make sure they understand exactly what I am thinking.” A tailor must have all the communicative skills of a salesperson, but also the fine skills of an artist. He must listen to the desires and vision of a customer, and then translate those ideas with a needle and thread into a piece of clothing.

Maintaining their shop’s reputation rests squarely on the shoulders of the tailors themselves. Papazian works completely by himself, doing all of the alterations in his shop with his own hands. “I’m a one-man operation; I don’t trust this work to anyone else. Anytime I don’t see the nicest work on a finished job, I can know exactly what I did, and I know how I can fix it to make my customer happy,” Papazian says. “At the end, it is me facing the client. It is my reputation.” After a customer leaves the tailor’s with a suit, any opinion of the garment is also a judgment of the craftsman behind it.

GRECIAN SHOES

What comes with each of these master craftsmen is a long history and tradition. None of these tailors attended a four-year school or training course to learn their craft; they have spent their lives mastering their profession. Many of them were sent off at an age between 8 and 12 to apprentice with an experienced professional in the trade.

Calautti and Papazian come from families that have worked in tailoring for generation. But for Christos Soillis of Felix’s Shoe Repair, his initiation into tailoring was less than straightforward. Soillis has been working with shoes since he was 11 years old, when he left his natal village to find work. In another town, Soillis was looking for a place to sleep when he found two neighboring buildings, one for a cobbler and one for a tailor. He knocked on the first door and asked if he could simply sleep in the doorway, but the owner insisted he must come in and stay with his family. Soillis stayed with them, and felt obligated to work in return for the family’s hospitality, even though his initial desire was not to be a shoemaker. “When I was a boy, I always dreamed of being a tailor,” he says. “I never had good clothes, so I thought I could make suits and have nice clothes.” His host offered to find him work at the tailor’s next door, but the young Soillis refused, saying he would rather work in his host’s shoe store. Soillis’s story is present in every bit of work and skill he invests in a pair of shoes. For Soillis, tailoring is more than a paycheck; it is a way of life and an art form to be honored.

Many of these artisans have been in the Cambridge-Boston area for decades, becoming integral parts of the communities. Soillis came to the United States in 1963, and began working in the original Felix’s Shoe Repair in Harvard Square. In 1969, he bought the business from its original owner, and he has owned and operated the business in Harvard Square to this day. “I grew up without shoes or good clothes, and I came here with nothing. And a kid with no money, no education, can come here and grow a business and support a family. This doesn’t come from me, this comes from my customers, who come in and support me because they can see that I am working as hard as I can,” Soillis says. “I love the square.” Soillis’s loyalty extends beyond his customers to the community itself.

SOULFUL STITCH

Visiting a tailor is completely different from stepping into a big department store. The most immediate difference is the space itself. Visiting a conventional clothing store, what one sees are racks and racks of clothing in shiny, organized displays. If any alterations need to be done, the clothes are whisked off to some man or machine behind a curtain. Walking into Rizzo or Felix’s Shoe Repair, one never feels any distance from the true soul of the operation. There is no mystery about where the work is done; the work is what is being displayed. In Felix’s Shoe Repair, customers will often watch Christos Soillis working on a handbag or shoes. His workspace is in the very fore of his shop, as his handiwork is the very essence of his trade.

What Soillis does is not particularly lucrative, and he knows this. Sometimes, he will spend more than an hour on a simple shoe repair to ensure that it is done properly. “The money you make ends up being less than a dishwasher would make, but if you love what you do, money is the last thing you worry about,” Soillis says. “I feel like the luckiest man in the world.” The joy Soillis derives from helping his customers exceeds any money woes.

NO MASK

These men are not working to meet deadlines or financial goals; their primary concern is the quality of their work. “I’m not a salesman, I’m not a designer. I’m a tailor. When I work, I want to please myself first, then the customer,” Calautti says. “If I see in their eyes that they don’t like the work, or I don’t like it, I’ll rip it up and do it again.” He views each garment with an artist’s eye, and if it does not meet his standards, even if it might meet someone else’s, that is not good enough.

There is no mask or diffusion of responsibility; a jacket from Frank Kopellas speaks of Kopellas himself. The workmanship of one of Calautti’s suits is nobody’s but his own. Every stitch in a shoe resoled by Soillis testifies to his work ethic. A blazer recut by Papazian gains new life through his hands.

Tailors put forth this level of care and personal attention not only to earn their customers’ loyalty but also to protect their integrity of their art. The item leaves their shop carrying their handiwork, present in every small stitch or alteration. Madelan Kopellas recounts what her father, Frank, always says to his customers, “You have to look good when you walk out my door. That’s my name your wearing.”

—Staff writer Alexander Tang can be reached at tang@college.harvard.edu.