Cut from the same cloth

BY MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
Monday, February 04, 2008
2/04/08 at 3:32 PM

Read other stories in the series: A funereal existence :: Last real Coyote hunter :: Big-City Cuisine in Small-Town America :: Reaping what we sow :: Prairie family persevered :: 'Not much left' of town except strong local pride :: Oklahoma 'ghost town' still alive and kicking :: ‘We’re all characters around here’ :: Hominy warms to Mexican cuisine :: Remnant of boom days

“My work is always excellent,” Mr. Loren told his apprentice. And she knew her work had to be perfect, too.

Mr. Loren’s first employee lasted less than an hour.

“Get out,” he told her. “If you can’t do the job well, don’t do the job at all.”

For 30 years, Mr. Loren had kept his own little tailor’s shop, tucked into a cluttered corner in the basement of downtown Tulsa’s Philtower Building.

And for 30 years, nobody ever complained about his craftsmanship.

“Not once,” he used to tell people. “My work is always excellent. Always.”

During World War II, the Jewish Mr. Loren escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Russia before making his way to America — first to New York City, then to Tulsa, where the rents seemed more reasonable and the tailoring business was a little less competitive.

Not that Mr. Loren wasn’t talented enough for New York. He claimed to cut a suit as fine as anything from London’s Saville Row, or sew a dress as elegant as any fashion from Milan.

“The best,” he promised every customer. “The very best.”

By the 1970s, however, old age was cutting into his skill and Mr. Loren couldn’t keep up with the workload of his busy shop.

He needed help. But he demanded perfection. “I work for free,” Wendy Martin offered when Mr. Loren hesitated to give her a chance.

“Why should you work for free?” he scoffed.

“Then you see how good work is, and you hire me.”

“Fine,” Mr. Loren relented. “But if you can’t do it well, don’t do it at all.”

‘Just as good’: Growing up in Vietnam, Martin never had more than two sets of clothes.

“One wear. One wash,” she explains. “Why you need more than that?”

It’s not just that Martin’s family was poor.

Even middle-class Americans used to be sensible about clothes — an etiquette book from the 1940s advised a well-dressed gentlemen to keep four outfits, two summer-weight suits and two winter-weight suits.

One to wear. One at the cleaners.

Even back then, a tailor-made suit from the basement of the Philtower might have cost more than three or four suits from a department store.

But Mr. Loren would say it makes sense to invest in quality instead of quantity.

If a button ever came loose, he’d sew it back on. If a pocket ever tore, he’d mend it. If you ever gained a few pounds, he’d take out the waist.

“Still look good when buried in it,” Martin repeats what Mr. Loren used to say.

Handcrafted. One-of-a-kind. Better than anything a factory could ever make.

“I showed him that I could do it,” Martin says. “Just like him. Just as good.”

She got the job. And a few years later, she got a lot more.

‘Work like this’: To open his shop in the 1940s, Mr. Loren bought two pairs of scissors, found a three-way mirror and paid $10 for an oversized cutting table from a used furniture store.

It’s all still there in the Philtower basement — the mirror in the corner, the table in the back room, the scissors on the desk — exactly where Mr. Loren kept it.

In 1978, before he died, he left everything to Martin, his loyal and talented assistant.

“For anybody else, it’s old junk,” she remembers him telling her. “For you, it will be a living.”

Occasionally, a client will still commission a bespoke suit, or ask Martin to match an evening gown from a famous designer. But these days, most people would rather have a closet crammed with cheap, disposable trends than keep a small wardrobe of timeless fashion.

For Martin, normal tailoring is “easy work” — sewing buttons, hemming pants, lining coats. But she puts the same old-fashioned effort into it.

“Where did you learn to work like this?” Mr. Loren used to ask her.

Before she left Vietnam in 1971, she gained experience in her uncle’s tailor shop. But it was her grandfather who really prepared Martin to work in Mr. Loren’s basement.

“If you’re going to do it,” her grandfather used to say all the time, no matter what “it” was, “do it well or don’t do it at all.”

A Jewish tailor. A Vietnamese grandfather. Universal wisdom.

Michael Overall 581-8383
michael.overall@tulsaworld.com

Associated Images:

Wendy Martin sews a hem as she works in her Philtower basement tailor shop.