Beatings with the yardstick
When I was learning tailoring from my first teacher, mr Dahoe, I was a young, slightly foolish, but sincere aprentice. I would apply myself vigourously to learn all the knacks, and I must admit, he was very patient with me. 70 years old when I met him, but as youthful as anyone. He would nearly run when going up the stairs, and was still able to work through the night if he felt like it.
But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I would do my best, I just never seemed to be able to please him with my efforts. And I tried. And tried. Up until two or three o’clock sometimes, barely able to stay awake for my monastic prayers. In the morning I would then go to his place, a few streets down the road, all bleary-eyed and groggy, hoping for just a little encouragement.
I’d take the carefully pressed trousers or jacket, or shirt out of my bag, and lay it down on the table, waiting for his reaction. Then he’d look at it with a frown, for maybe a second or two, and then he’d say, ‘Well, it’s not bad, but it’s not yet how I want to see it’. End of the story, and he wouldn’t even look at the thing anymore, Or sometimes he’d lift just a sleeve with two fingers and disinterestedly throw it back on the table, and start talking about something else. And I’d just be crushed, thinking: If this, after all this trying, isn’t good enough, then I’ll never be even a decent tailor, let alone a good one.
In fact, he only once said something that was encouraging: ‘I’ll make a powerful tailor of you yet’. He had a funny way of expressing himself. And when he said that, I knew that he was just forcing me to try harder. Years later, he made a compliment on something I’d made. He looked the coat up and down and in and out, and then he smilled a bit and said: ‘I can see myself in this coat’.
Of course he never gave me a physical beating, but there were times when I had fooled up a job, and he’d just explode in rage, and tell me off so severely that I’d be unable to move or speak. I’d just sit there and let it wash over me, hearing him say every third sentence: ‘People underestimate this job’, referring to the tailoring business. It was a thing which he said to me nearly every day, whether he was angry or relaxed.
He was a lovely man, always serving me lovely indian food which he’d made himself, explaining to me what ingredients he’d used and what beneficial effect they had on each organ in the body.
The thing that had always inspired me when we worked, is that he was, and is, madly passionate about his job. He studied cutting first in Rotterdam, and found a job. But he wasn’t satisfied, so he went to an academy in Germany, to learn how to cut the German way. After that, he decided to do the same thing in Paris. And to top it all off, he went to Chicago to learn yet another way of cutting. And always he made clothing by hand, ten to twelve hours a day. Even now that he is retired, he is still teaching. And he still makes coats, because it is his life, his passion.
And I know it is the only way to do this job: with passion. You must sleep with shears under your pillow, wear a thimble on a chain, have pins stuck in your tie and a full-scale pattern stuck on your bedroom wall.
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