A stitch in time

I don't know why, but good tailors, like maids, are very difficult to find. For some months now, even a couple of years, I have been looking for someone to make my fashion statements a reality, be they straight and simple salwar kameez - the best thing you can wear in the heat of Mumbai's October - or more complex tunic tops that have to be a perfect fit whatever you wear them with. And every time I go through the aggravation of a getting a new person to make clothes for me to conform to schedules, I swear that I will wear readymades from that day forth. And then I find some wonderful fabric that I just have to own in that ideal style...

When I was little, I had someone to make my clothes for me - these people were meticulous, fast, creative, up-to-date and very very good. They were easily accessible, threw only the very occasional tantrum and sourced all the fabric and the accoutrements that were required without being specifically asked to. Overnight deliveries were also the norm. I still call them my favourite in-house designers - my parents made pretty, unusual and exclusive little frocks for me using an antiquated sewing machine, novel ideas and lots of love.

Then we outsourced. A tailor in a tiny shop in the garage of a building down the road made me clothes to my mother's design. That worked out pretty well, except for one instance that I can remember when we arrived at the hole in the wall place and found it firmly shut and my parents were understandably annoyed. Another of the same ilk was found closer to home at a later time in my life and he did a decent job too...until I found one in a shop that rubbed shoulders with the circulating library I temped with - that made getting clothes made the easiest thing in the world. And I could throw a fit when something was not ready as planned and still take it home with me, finished to my needs, when I was ready to leave work for the day. I used the same tailor for many years, from my school uniform days to when I started wearing saris to work, and he was allowed to make personal comments about my changing dimensions and sartorial tastes without my being too offended.

Then we moved house and I had to find someone closer to home. This, my mother did for me when I was away, and she more or less 'adopted' a newbie 'designer' to source fabric and make her designs reality. So I acquired a larger wardrobe than I had ever had in my life, with clothes for all occasions, from ratting about at home to attending the toniest dos in town. But soon, with familiarity and time, the lady started acting up, as they all do. Mistakes had to be forgiven as if they had never been made. Promised delivery dates were taken as a joke rather than a commitment and changes were made arbitrarily, as if I had no say in what I wanted to wear. When I started losing fabric that I had found after exhaustive searching and was given more excuses than clothes promised, I gave up. And have never gone back.

Now I use a tailor in town who works with a small boutique that I frequent (yes, the one I fall up the stairs of). He is unreliable with his timings, vanishes for days together and has no idea that it takes a lot of effort and time to drop by the store to collect stuff he had vowed he would have ready. Of course, he is rarely there for me to tell him. But it seems as if I will soon need to find someone new to make my wardrobe bloom the way it always has.