ADITLOAT: A Day in the Life of a Tailor

A Day in the Life of a Tailor.

Wondering why the heck your clothes have not been made already?

Panicking about why the tailor is suddenly not answering calls, is unreachable, or switched-off when he/she ought to have delivered your clothes 2 months back, as agreed?

Oh dear! Don’t tell me you’re still pissed at the badly fitting clothes the tailor delivered. What ever happened to the measurements the tailor spent so much time taking and penning down?

Has your tailor or designer, ever sewn something slightly or entirely different from what you both agreed on? Can you remember what his ludicrous reason was?

Probably something like ‘material been no dey enough to sew dat your style, so I say make I change dat your style small, do this one too… e fine and I been tink say you go like am.’

Have you ever wondered why tailors, though with exceptions add up to being some of the most unreliable humans on earth?

Oh well I can’t promise to have all the answers to your wondering minds and questioning lips but I can tell you one thing, tailors like other normal human beings have lives too and I hope the stories I tell you here open your mind up to our daily activities and maybe, just maybe, help you understand us better.

And yes, there’s been a lot of stories about the inadequacies of tailors. My guess will be that we all have waited quite a long time for a change, not that kind of change we hear only during political campaigns, or hear what they are up to if not making our clothes and delivering it like they said they would, right?

This blog right here, is my sneak peek into what goes on in a tailor’s life, as I have had quite a share in all of these. I’ve been a client but now I am a tailor and occasionally also a client. I hope that after reading each post you can get closure on a bad tailoring experience and hopefully learn a thing or two on how to deal with your tailor going forward.

I would also like to share positive experiences as it –if we must honestly concede– isn’t always doom and gloom with needle works.

Please indulge me, as I take you –one post at a time– into the life of a tailor working in a Nigerian city. With time, we would have features from other parts of the globe, so I encourage you to share your experiences with me as well.

Before we dive in further, here’s a caveat, I speak only from personal as well as shared experiences which may not reflect the overall sentiment on dressmaking and dressmaker. Nevertheless, the stories I would be sharing are no fiction, they actually happened except stated otherwise.

That said, welcome to this blog of my, confounding, irksome and equally titivating world…