Why I Am So Quiet

N.C. has thumbs calloused by sixty years’ work as a tailor. He stands in his little shop off Madison Avenue and flips through the paper patterns of bigshots’ bodies – the late-night talk show hosts, the rulers of industry – while talking about the work that goes into making a bespoke suit. At his feet, a couple hundred dollars’ worth of fine cloth soaks in a plastic barrel of cold water (to remove the manufacturing chemicals); in a few hours he’ll remove and dry it, and then begin to cut. “There are more tailors in New York than in Italy,” he sighs, running through why his art form is a dying one.

Sixty years ago, he started an apprenticeship, sewing along with a few dozen other boys whose fathers pushed them to learn a trade. These days, though, no 10-year-olds seem to want to spend sixteen hours a day in a hot and windowless space, practicing the same tiny hand motions over and over again, learning the ins and outs of the perfect two-piece. He shows off stitching along the inseam of a pair of tuxedo pants that apparently made a lesser tailor blanch, when the tuxedo’s owner came to the latter for alterations. “They have to send it back to me,” N.C. laughs. “It’s my hand.” Not to mention his giant pair of shears.

Four yards of cloth go into a suit. At nearly a thousand dollars a yard, plus labor, this means it costs nearly the median salary of an American worker to afford one of his suits. But they fit you like a second skin, and you can never wear a made-to-measure suit again.

N.C. is one of the last of his breed. The only thing you can tell about old and worn men is that they’re survivors.

To dedicate yourself to something, even if that something is a perfect 1/16” slice through a piece of super-160 wool. To transform your mind and body into a tool that is more than a tool – to try to harness the spirit within a process, the ghost within the machine.

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“What are you thinking about?”

“Tailoring.”

“Why?”

“A second ago I was dreaming about talking to tailors.”

“That’s an odd thing to be dreaming about, two in the morning.”

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Standing in the rain on Amsterdam Avenue, you think about old men – the survivors. And the ones who didn’t make it – the friends and colleagues and family eaten by cancer, or dropped by a heart attack, or who put the .38 to their temple and said why not; those who died in stupid car smash-ups and druggy stupors and at the hands of Minnesota psychopaths, left to dissolve under the woodsy backwoods loam. The rain comes down and you think: I have no right to be happy. The rain comes down and you think: In the face of all that, the only thing that matters is being happy, for as long as possible. The rain comes down and you think: Wow, I’m being pretentious again, and I need food.