I'd been measured in London before, the usual way. Brioni. Polished rooms and mirrors that make you stand a little straighter than you might normally. A glass of something of course. It was all theatre. And that was the point — I sometimes wondered if I was just a character in a play.
I had this faint sense that I was being dressed from the outside. Like an appointment in the costume department. The suit arrived, beautiful of course. I could wear it, inhabit it, show it off. But if I wasn't wearing it then I was someone else. It did what it was meant to do, and I did what I was meant to do, and we both played our roles with our respectable competence.
I explained the 'character in a play' idea to Marcus over a catch-up at the RAC. Marcus was really quite affable. Suffolk bred. Still liked to offer the occasional droll quip every now and again that came from his grandfather. We would all laugh and he was a good egg. 'Go and see Albert,' he said. 'Old-boy just outside Cambridge.' He then told me about the tailor he'd been using for years and that he was full of quips like "...there's no good a-hurryin'... you'll only git there sooner…"
That sounded like an altogether different play. I made an appointment.
Well, there was no curated ambience and no polish — just a cup of tea in a china cup. This was a workshop that had been a workshop and nothing else for a very long time. Cloth stacked where cloth gets stacked. Old light. The faint smell of pressed wool and chalk and time. There was a little clutter here and there but it wasn't unorganised, it was kind of midway in its journey. It felt simple, honest. It was the sort of room where you could imagine the same gestures repeated for decades. Measure, mark, pin, cut. But there was something else.
The funny thing was when I met Albert. A small elderly man with a very slight stoop, wearing a perfectly shaped brown pinstriped suit that seemed to wear him. You know those films where a man greets a horse and they're about to take a long ride together? I felt like he assessed me like that. There was no performance in him, he didn't judge me — but it seemed that his small glances noticed things about me that only he could see.
I was expecting the usual sequence: measurements, preferences, fabric talk, timelines. The normal transactional dance that we perform. But he just watched me stand in the doorway for longer than I was comfortable. I broke the silence and asked him about how long he'd been tailoring. Nothing. I asked him about the possible selection of fabrics. Nothing. I wanted to know if this was a family skill that had been passed down. Nothing.
He nodded and said, "Right my boy, walk o'er there" — pointing to the other end of the room.
No please and no sir. But I obliged.
He waited, looking at me in my slightly off-kilter state. He nodded his head and then curled his index finger back for me to return. I returned.
He held me by the arm and said "Too many questions, not enough doing," picked up his cup and saucer and took a sip, and glanced me up and down once more. Looked me in the eye and said, "You hold yourself like you're carrying something."
No drama. Just a sentence. I let go a slightly nervous laugh.
"Well then. How's the tea?" he said.
Somewhat dazed, I'd completely forgotten about the tea. I collected the cup and took a sip of the slightly sweet tea. It's funny but that old cliché about "let's have a cup of tea" seems to cure all ills. Well, it did.
He said, "You know son, my old grandad used to say, there's two ways to drink a cup of tea; you can hold it perched between your fingers with your little finger sticking out, or you can bloody taste it." He looked at me and gave a little chuckle. I nodded and understood the point.
"Now go over there again."
I went. Same stretch of floorboards, same old light. But this time I felt oddly as if my body had been brought into a conversation that was formerly a secret.
When I turned, looking back at him and standing still, he didn't say anything for a moment.
"Hmm, better, but you're in a hurry even when you're not moving, son."
I started to answer and he lifted his hand. A small, neat gesture. He looked.
And I felt the tension in my jaw. A slight lift in my chest that wasn't my breath. I was in presentation mode. I'd spent years doing it without knowing. A kind of permanent readiness. For judgement — always bloody judgement.
"What do you want, Leo?" he said.
"...A nice suit, I think." I wasn't quite sure of anything at that moment.
He chuckled and said, "Well of course you do. You didn't come here for a pound of nails and some wood to build a fence now did you?" He shook his head. "What do you want from your suit, son?"
I thought for a moment. "...I suppose I want to feel like myself in it."
He nodded once, like that was all he needed.
"That's better," he said. "A lot of men come here wanting to be somebody else. We can do that — but the best suits are the ones that fit the man himself."
"Now, stand like you're seeing someone you love that you haven't seen in a long while."
He moved around me, tapping here and there with the chalk as if mapping a landscape. And soon the session was over.
At the next fitting he gouged me once more, poking at the focal points of my erect stance. And I softened once more.
When the suit was finally finished and I put it on properly, it didn't feel like putting on something new. It felt like stepping into something that had been waiting for me.
The shoulder line didn't just "fit," it felt like it agreed with me. The chest wasn't puffed up, it was allowed. The waist didn't cinch me into an image, it followed my truth. And there was this odd sensation — quiet, almost simple — that my body could relax inside itself. Like I didn't have to 'stand' anymore. Not slouching but confident and comfortable without trying to be.
And that was the revelation. Not luxury. Not excellence. Not the fact that it was handmade or that it cost what it cost.
The revelation was that I felt more present in it than I did without it. And that bothered me, because I knew a part of me was still hiding.
Marcus was right. Albert had built a garment around a more grounded man and not a theatrical one. And when I wore it out into the world, I carried that around with me like a reminder.
That I didn't need to perform.