The Coat Route (25 page)

John often brings Genaro up to the showroom to be in on fitting sessions. Some favored customers even get to go downstairs to watch the tailors at work.

“I like to do that with the ones who are nice people,” John says. “I don’t introduce the hard ones.”

Sometimes the customers don’t want to leave.

“We had a young Chinese man from Perth come in,” John recalls. “He was on holiday and we had corresponded by email before he arrived, sorting out what he wanted. When he got here, I cut the pattern and the cloth, and he stood and watched me do everything. Then he went down and sat in the workroom for ten days. He watched every stitch. He was at the door when we opened and he went to lunch with the guys. He had come to Sydney to see his suit being made. It was his first one.”

I ask Genaro if he minded being watched like that.

“It’s okay for me. I feel secure in what I am doing.”

Genaro was excited when John came to him with the idea of making Keith Lambert’s vicuña overcoat entirely by hand.

“I want to see how they do before machines,” he says. “And I prefer working with difficult materials. Everyone can do easy. I want to know what I can do.”

Genaro worked on the coat for two solid weeks, putting the needle in and drawing it out, advancing the seams stitch by stitch, inch by inch. At the same time, his colleague Leng Ngo, who is J. H. Cutler’s foreman, was crafting the coat’s innards—the padding and linings that would give it shape.

Leng, who has joined us at the table, is a slender boyish-looking forty-two-year-old Cambodian who escaped to Vietnam from Phnom Penh in 1975, when he was six years old.

“We left the capital city and suddenly it is very difficult—nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nowhere to live,” he tells me. “Trucks would run over the bodies sleeping in the street. They didn’t care. The river had bodies in it, but you had to drink. You remember those things.”

With the financial help of two brothers who were living in Australia, he enrolled in tailoring school in Saigon. When he was eighteen, he and his family were able to join them in Sydney. A school counselor helped Leng get a week’s worth of experience in J. H. Cutler’s workroom.

“I was impressed with his attitude,” John says. When Leng was done with school, John hired him full-time.

“As team leader, I have to be quick-thinking,” Leng says of his role in the workshop. “I say to the team, ‘Nothing is impossible. Let’s work together; let’s make it happen. We will support each other.’ ”

Teamwork is especially needed when clients request rush jobs.

“We had a retired Russian atomic-sub captain come into the shop once,” John says. “He was only going to be in Sydney for a few days. He didn’t speak any English; he arrived with an interpreter, a very pretty girl. He wanted the best—and he didn’t want anything Italian. He said there were too many Italian suits in Moscow. So we had to get the cloth flown over from Scabal; it was a Super 250. Money was never mentioned. It was a nineteen-thousand-dollar suit. He was very pleased.”

“People are so happy. They say, ‘How you do that?’ ” Leng says. “I really enjoy it. Every day I feel excited. To stay and work twenty-two years, I must be feeling love.”

“Leng told me once that when he came to work for me it was the day he was born,” John says.

A
fter nearly a week in Sydney, I have given up trying to guess what would be appropriate to wear on an outing with John Cutler. He has his own internal dress code—one that never, ever includes “casual.” For a sightseeing flight on a harbor seaplane, he wore a suit coat of black wool flecked with random pea-size white dots, white wool trousers, a black beret, and black suede tasseled shoes. Craig Dyer, who had come along on the trip, was in a tan silk-and-cashmere suit with a white dress shirt and no necktie.

“You told me to dress down,” he had said to John as we sat on an open skiff, getting splashed with Sydney Harbor water on our way out to where the seaplane was moored.

For a ferry trip to Manly, a surf resort town six miles north of the city, John donned a light-purple cashmere-and-silk jacket
with a white pocket square, black wool trousers, and a white-and-purple striped shirt, the cuffs of which were held together by gold cufflinks engraved by John Thompson. His friend, the writer and historian Bruce Stannard, who was joining us, had been easy to spot at the dock. He was wearing a Cutler-made three-piece Harris Tweed suit, with a dark-blue shirt and a moss-colored knit tie and substantial saddle-brown brogues. He looked dressed for a moorland ramble, or something involving grouse.

In Manly, under a low overcast sky, we had walked along the sickle-shaped beach and the choppy Tasman Sea, past overweight young mothers in straining sweatpants and sulky, narrow-eyed surfer boys in hoodies and baggy board shorts. John and Bruce had followed me into a surf shop and stood near the wetsuits with their hands clasped behind their backs while I hastily picked out T-shirts for my daughters. The kid behind the cash register stared at them as if they were alien beings.

But John Cutler is used to being stared at. In fact, he seems to relish it. On one of my last mornings in Sydney, I meet him at his apartment in Potts Point, on the quarried ridge above Woolloomooloo Bay. The plan is to take a long walk following the contours of the harbor through the Botanic Gardens, past the Opera House, along Circular Quay, and up to Observatory Hill Park, overlooking the water and the muscular arch of Sydney’s famous bridge. I notice that most of the people strolling the paved shoreline walkway, or sprawling on picnic blankets or sitting on the sea wall in the milky winter sun, are wearing jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers—myself included. It makes perfect sense: who wouldn’t want to be comfortable and have well-cushioned feet? But, as a group, we look unkempt, rumpled, and dull.

John Cutler, on the other hand, is marching along under the hoop pines and giant figs in bright-fuchsia trousers, of a fluttery
wool faille, and a dark-pink-and-white checked cotton shirt. He has on matching suede shoes and is carrying a walking stick. Almost everyone we pass looks him up and down. A few people comment on his ensemble.

“Do you enjoy that?” I ask. “Being looked at?”

“It’s not that I think I’m good-looking. I’m not good-looking,” he says. “But I dress the way I feel. If I’m feeling chirpy, I like to show it with color. And I guess I’m saying, ‘You can do this, too.’ I want to challenge people’s perceptions, get them out of their comfort zone. People say, ‘But that’s not normal.’ I don’t care if it’s normal or not. I believe in the individual, rather than the masses. The masses are made up of individuals, but they don’t realize it. Most of them just fit in.”

We walk on, past outdoor cafés and souvenir shops selling boomerangs and Ugg boots. Near the ferry docks, an Aboriginal man, with a painted face and bare feet, is sitting on an overturned plastic crate playing the didgeridoo. The long wooden wind instrument emits a froggy vocalized drone, like an aural toothache. In a while, I get up the courage to ask John how he feels about being the last in the long line of Cutler tailors.

“What makes me sad is not the name Cutler going away,” he says. “It’s the trade. I can’t see that the old skills can be taught sufficiently well for real tailoring to continue.

“But things change. You go back to the days of the dandies or the French courtiers. People wouldn’t have a clue in the world now how to do all that. It’s the same progression. Maybe one day we’ll have spray-on suits. You get up and you go to the bathroom, you do your stuff, and you spray something on you. Virtual suits. I mean, who knows? Who knows. I think it’s time. The world changes, and you have to change with it.”

A
fter the first fitting, the coat was disassembled, pressed, and remarked. Then John handed it back to Leng and Genaro. He knew they were relishing their freedom. There were no time or cost constraints. The challenge was simply to produce their very best work
.

The inside and outside of the pockets were constructed; the silk lining was cut and stitched into place. The facing was attached and the back seam finished. Then it was all put together again for a second fitting. Keith returned, and the coat was marked for slight adjustments and sent back down to the workroom
.

There was not much left to do. The side and shoulder seams were finished, the pads were put into place, and the sleeves were made. The collar was hand-shaped using a heavy iron
—
the goal was a rounded fit without any bubbling. The undercollar and the sleeves were basted into place
.

Keith came back for a third fitting, to double-check the balance of the sleeve and to make sure that the height and the fullness in the collar were perfect. To allow for Keith’s lower shoulder, John felt that the right sleeve needed to be pitched slightly back
.

Back in the workroom, Genaro finished the sleeves and the collar and made the buttonholes. Then he used a beeswaxed four-cord thread to attach the navy buttons. He sewed on the gold plaque and chain, and then gave the whole thing one final press, using a sixteen-pound iron. The overcoat was done
.

Keith arrived for the final fitting. John smiled broadly as his client
slipped it on. The fit, the drape, the silhouette, and the workmanship—all superb. If this was the last garment he ever made, John Cutler could die happy. Keith invited the tailor to dinner at his waterfront house in Mosman, on what was known as Millionaire’s Mile. When John arrived, Keith had a bottle of champagne for him, brought up from the wine cellar—something extra-special
.

I
am in the high-ceilinged lobby of one of Vancouver’s swankest hotels, which occupies the first fifteen floors of a skyscraper. Massive crystal chandeliers, which would look a bit much hanging in Versailles, illuminate groupings of square-backed chocolate-brown leather couches and chairs. Black lacquer screens and big-leafed potted plants are strategically placed in corners on the parquet sandstone floor. One wall is dominated by a two-story-high Chinese-character painting, done on rice paper in what looks like the single stroke of an ink-dipped mop.

There is no front desk. Instead, members of the staff escort guests to their suites for a private check-in. I am not checking in, I tell the young man who has glided to me as if wearing small hovercrafts for shoes. I am here to see a resident. He shows me to the elevator that will take me to one of the building’s top-floor penthouse apartments. This is where I will find Keith Lambert, who has invited me to visit while John Cutler is also in town. John had flown in from Sydney the day before to deliver some new clothes to his client.

This is where I will find the vicuña overcoat. As the elevator rises, I feel nervous and jangly, as if I were about to meet in the flesh someone with whom I have been carrying on a lengthy and intimate online relationship. I knock on Keith’s door, and in a moment he appears and invites me in. Keith, a tall, fit man in a tweed jacket and striped tie, is holding Rosie, the dog, under his arm. He is soft-spoken, very polite, and obviously a little wary about having a writer in his apartment, wanting to see his clothes.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows is a sweeping view of the city, the harbor, and Vancouver Island. Tiny black-and-red-hulled freighters dot English Bay, blue under a bluer sky. In the apartment, giant ceramic vases sit beneath abstract paintings hung on mocha-colored walls. A glass vase of yellow and lavender tulips is centered on an antique-looking Chinese table. Built-in lacquered shelves hold low stacks of oversized books. I can read some of the titles on the bindings:
Porsche. Fois Gras. Bulgari. Vogue
.

I greet John Cutler, who, in a black jacket, white silk vest, lavender tie, and striped trousers, could be dressed for his own wedding. After a moment or two, John steps to one side and says, with a sweep of his arm, “Here it is.”

The vicuña overcoat is draped across the back of a dark-brown rattan sofa. One edge has been turned back to expose the blue-printed silk lining.

“The coat,” I say.

I reach for it, saying, “Can I …?” Without waiting for an answer, I stroke the soft nap, touch a button, and then open up the coat to take in the full glory of the lining. I rub a finger lightly across the letters “J. H. Cutler” on the engraved gold plaque.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Why don’t you put it on for her?” John says, and hands the coat to Keith. John buttons it for him, and brushes some lint from one shoulder. I ask Keith to pose for me, which he does sheepishly, grinning, with his arms hanging straight down. I snap the picture.

“Could I try it on?” I ask. Keith takes off the coat and holds it out for me. My arms slip along the liquid lining in the sleeves and the coat settles on my shoulders. I look down at the buttons, slide my hands into the pockets, then pull them out and run them down the coat, feeling the plush.