Rochester Adams on West Tienken has about 1,500 students. Stoney Creek on Sheldon Road has been open since 2001. Between them they put a lot of seventeen-year-olds in a tuxedo every spring, and the boys arrive expecting a transaction and get a fitting instead. It takes about ten minutes. This is what happens in them.
Minutes one to three
He gets measured. Chest, waist, the length of his arm, his height in the shoes he brought. Most boys have never been measured for anything and are surprised how quickly it settles what he is: a 38 long, say, rather than the medium he’d have typed into a website.
Minutes four to seven
Jackets. More than one, because the number is a starting point and the shoulder is the test that a number cannot pass or fail on paper. When the seam ends where his own shoulder ends, that’s the jacket, whatever it says on the tag.
Minutes eight to ten
Trousers pinned over his prom shoes, and the bow tie held against a photograph of the dress on his phone. Then he leaves, and Roman, master tailor at Lincoln Tailor, on site in our store, does the hem; a hem is a small job he can often do while you wait.
Also for Rochester Hills: Black Tie in a 1929 Ballroom: What the Room Asks. More on tuxedo rentals, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
