Jason Kingston still reflects on those days when, as a young man, he wore tailored trousers, cut and sewn to fit the contours of his lower body. He recalls that he wore these with considerable pride, not unmindful of the role his neatly tailored trousers played in “attracting the girls.”
Now in his mid-sixties, Kingston recalls that up to maybe 30 years ago, visits to the tailor were par for the course for young men wanting to look their best, whether for work or for night life. He recalls too that those were the days when tailors and dressers alike kept track
of the fabric being imported into the country. “In those days that was one of the ways you used to measure fashion-consciousness,” he says.
The age of tailoring may not be dead and gone but Stabroek Business has discerned significant changes in the sector. The industry has learnt to live with what has become an increasing demand for ready-to-wear clothing. Tailored trousers, particularly, face a formidable rival in the enduring option of denim jeans khakis and off the peg trousers.
In the course of conducting research for this article, Stabroek Business spoke with 15 random men, including two tailors. The non-tailors, with one exception, favour the ready-to-wear, store bought approach to acquiring trousers. The reasons have to do with the range of cheap brands of trousers available on the market. Several of our interviewees pointed out that while it is still possible to acquire a pair of ready-to-wear trousers for less than $2,000, tailoring a pair of trousers can easily cost twice as much or more. Among the older men, none of them had tailored a single piece of clothing “in years.” Most of the younger ones admitted to never having seen the inside of a tailoring establishment. Kingston still wears his tailored trousers to church on Sundays.
Regent and Water streets remain the last bastions of what has come to be known as trouser lengths and suit lengths. Up to during the 1980s you could still buy a piece of fabric from an itinerant vendor who would pound the pavements, stopping at corners and visiting offices with a dozen or so ‘pants’ lengths’ draped over his arm. Sometimes you might pay marginally better prices than those that obtained at the established fabric stores. Those stores have their patrons too, professional men including judges, lawyers, bankers, regular church-goers and men with middle-class pretensions. Some have survived the rise of ready-to-wear suits, though, these days, even the professionals who were once joined at the hip with their tailors, take frequent excursions into the world of ready-made clothing.
It may not be all doom and gloom for the tailoring industry but Ramlochan ‘Rambo’ Rajcumar and his wife Seelochni who operate Rambo’s Tailoring and Alteration on Robb Street believe that the profession has been knocked from its perch. Rambo recalls that whereas, just 20 years ago, he could rely on orders for 25 trousers each week, “If you get two orders a week these days, you get a lot,” he says ruefully. He declares that the importation of ready-made clothing is killing the tailoring industry without, it seems, realizing that it is the change in fashion and the aggressive, multi-million-dollar marketing by manufacturers that pose the real challenge to the tailoring industry.
If the elite tailors appear to be weathering the storm resulting from the ascendancy of brand name clothing, the regular tailors have had to endure significant financial losses. Equally difficult to endure has been the loss of hard-earned reputations. Rambo says that while the approaching Mash celebrations has brought in some “costume jobs,” regular tailoring has been in decline. “About 95 per cent of my jobs are alterations. The cheaper ready-made clothes come to us for alternations. That is how we make a bit of money,” he says.
Some comparisons are instructive. A pair of tailored trousers which would include a length of fabric priced at around $1,200 can cost between $3,500 and $4,000. Some of the cheaper lines of ready-made trousers can still be bought for less than $2,000. A tailored men’s suit may cost between $16,000 and $20,000, but a jacket and trousers can be had from a store for considerably less. The simple truth is that apart from the high cost of tailoring, some of the tastes and protocols associated with formal dress have changed. These days it is not uncommon to see guests at cocktails and receptions clad in casual clothing that includes brands of trousers available off the peg in an arcade.
On the day Stabroek Business visited Rambo’s establishment his only takings were $2,000 from a lady who had ordered a skirt suit for work. All tolled, the suit including the fabric she had bought would have cost her around $4,000, which is about what she would pay for a similar outfit off the peg. When asked how he copes, Rambo assumed a thoughtful expression. Earnings are down and expenses are up. The decline in tailoring has coincided with a sharp rise in overheads. City rents are high. He pays $50,000 per month and he is only too well aware that competition could push the rental rates even higher.
Zulfikar Mohammed has a near identical story. He has been a tailor for 36 years. He used to ply his trade in Wakenaam, Essequibo River but he moved to Georgetown six years ago to be closer to his sons who were attending the University of Guyana. In Wakenaam business was slow too. Mohammed now plies his trade on the stelling behind Stabroek Market. He says the tailoring industry “lost its shine” more than 15 years ago.
In those days, he says, his now 82-year-old father was considered one of the best tailors on Wakenaam Island. He believes the popularisation of imported ready-made clothing was the beginning of the end of his father’s business. The elder Mohammed was compelled to switch to women’s clothing.
Mohammed, like Rambo, is no longer the conventional tailor. In an industry where competition has become as keen as mustard, he has had to settle primarily for alterations. Asked whether he does not miss the creative edge associated with sewing an entire pair of trousers, Mohammed unhesitatingly replied that “alterations is what brings in the money.” He points out that while the tailoring of a pair of trousers or a suit means the payment of an advance and, in many cases, a period of waiting for the balance, customers who do alterations pay “up front.” Since, as a general rule, alterations take less time than full-fledged tailoring, more jobs can be completed in less time.
These days, the prices of alternations are set to take account of the losses that have resulted from the reduced demand for tailored trousers. These can begin from a $400 charge for adjusting the length of a pair of trousers to greater or smaller charges associated with adjusting waists or legs. Those costs may seem minimal but both Rambo and Mohammed explain that when you buy a pair of trousers off the peg, you are likely to have to address a ‘fault’ associated with the fact that the trousers were not made to fit you.
Mohammed says that alternations apart, the tailoring of women’s work ‘uniforms’ account for most of his income. “I would not have been in business today if it were not for women’s uniforms,” he says. He believes that women’s greater concern with their appearance might be a factor that influences their more frequent visits to the tailors.
Rambo says that these days, faithful customers are few and increasingly, tailors must adapt to survive. They must keep an eye out for tenders for the sewing of uniforms for factories. Landing a decent tender can be a considerable cushion, though small tailoring establishments, not accustomed to the paper considerations associated with tender procedures rarely ever get those jobs.
There are other headaches associated with tailoring. During our conversation with Mohammed in mid-January he gestured to two men’s suits hanging in his shop. They had been ordered by two groomsmen for a December 2013 wedding. Presumably, the wedding has past and gone, but the suits remain in Mohammed’s shop. They may remain there for some time. He bellyached about the loss of time and earnings. Since then he has turned away persons seeking tailored suits to put attention to the greater number of requests for the less onerous and more rewarding task of effecting alterations.
As the sector has changed, Rambo and Mohammed have both become more realistic. Neither has illusions of re-training for some alternative job or going into retirement. Both, however, have accepted the reality that tailoring is not what it used to be. Fashion and preferences continue to change and economic realities impact choices in ways that have not redounded to the benefit of the tailoring industry. That is a reality that they must simply learn to endure if they are to continue to make a living.
