Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

In my ongoing plan to pretend that it is almost winter, I decided it was time to talk to a tailor about repairing my winter coat in preparation for the daily wear and tear of winter.

I don’t know anything about local tailors or really, tailors in general as my normal practice is to wear a garment until it becomes threadbare and ultimately falls apart, I don’t get the garment fixed, I buy a new one. But, winter coats are not engineered to fall apart after repeated wearings. Winter coats are kind of like the life time sport of outer wear, the clothing industries Tennis , because once you have a winter coat, you are always going to have that winter coat; you can wear them forever and the whole winter coat industry is set up for irregular buying and price them accordingly. Unless you are a fashion victim, people who have stopped growing do not need to replace their coats every year, buying a new winter coat is an investment in your future.

So. I enter in the wide world of garment repair.

I did a sizable amount of research into the local tailors, well, I tried to think if dry cleaners offered that kind of service and if there was one near my house, then I remembered I have used dry cleaners in the past about as frequently as I have used tailors and much of what I know about both come from TV or books so what I think I know may not accurately reflect the realities either industry. Its not that I'm cheap, its just that I've always been a kind of a off the rack, ready to wear, machine wash, tumble dry kind of girl.

I went to the tailor that has a um, store? Office? Place of business? A tailory? next door to my McDonalds. And then I waited. And Waited And Waited while a crazy woman verbally bitch slapped the Korean seamstress because the lady decided that when the seamstress had pinned up her slacks, she had made one leg shorter then the other. The seamstress tried very hard in broken English to explain that most people have legs of slightly different length and that was why one leg looked longer. The lady pulled out a measuring tape and demanded that both legs be 39 inches long and then went behind the counter, filled out a slip and announced to the seamstress that she would be in on Friday to pick up her pants. All the while the seamstress was trying to fit a skirt on another customer. That woman had to go to the back while the crazy woman tried on another pair of slacks and bitched and moaned about how she would not wear pants that dragged the dirt! She didn’t care what the style was! I had hoped the man standing in front of me belonged to the crazy woman and was not standing in line, but sadly he did not and he was. He was waiting to get his pants hemmed.

I had been there for freaking ever and wanted to leave. I heard a door open somewhere in the back and a sewing machine start but no one was helping the seamstress and I had a very simple question about whether they did coat repair and I really needed to get back to work but I didn’t want to leave because after standing there listening to the woman ranting and then watching as the seamstress hemmed the mans pants “I want you to cut the fabric, I don’t want a big hem. No more then an inch of hem!” I felt like we had bonded.

Finally she freed herself up and answered my coat question. Happily, they do fix coats and I will get my pocket repaired and possibly the lining of my good rain coat fixed too. I can make winter come damn it. I will be with out proper outer wear; it will get cold and rainy.