St. Clair Shores grew faster than any other Detroit suburb during the 1950s, which means a great deal of it was built inside a single stretch of years by people who arrived at roughly the same time in roughly the same circumstances. Cities like that inherit habits as well as houses.
One of those habits is durability
The generation that built here bought things expecting to keep them, maintained them, and regarded replacement as a failure rather than an upgrade. That applied to houses, cars and clothes alike, and it wasn’t sentimentality. It was how they’d been raised.
It has mostly survived in everything but clothes
People still maintain the house and service the car. A suit that stops fitting gets replaced, usually unnecessarily, because almost nobody now thinks of a garment as something that gets adjusted over its life.
What adjusting covers
A waist in either direction, a seat, sleeves, sides, a recut length. Nearly everything except the shoulder. Roman, master tailor at Lincoln Tailor, on site in our store, does all of it on suits bought anywhere and quotes each job first.
Also for St. Clair Shores: A Mile of Jefferson, Between Nine and Ten. More on style consulting, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
