Cairo, house to 23mn individuals, is a whirling fever dream of noise, visitors and a mishmash of as soon as grand Egyptian-European buildings — although maybe not a metropolis that instantly brings to thoughts the world of excessive trend. However within the nineteenth century, when Cairo rivalled London for its nightlife and set trend traits earlier than they went to Paris, it additionally possessed a formidable artisan class of tastemakers. Chief amongst them was a coterie of European-trained grasp tailors, whose ateliers had been clustered within the central space of West El Balad, generally known as Downtown.
Just a few of the ateliers stay right now, fading reminders that the world was as soon as the centre of gravity for the social and political lifetime of the nation. Altering trend, modernisation and an absence of prepared apprentices imply the craft is threatened with extinction.
One of many final individuals in Cairo who is aware of how one can design and make a bespoke swimsuit by hand is Samir El Sakka. At 89, he’s the town’s oldest and most revered grasp tailor, and stands as maybe the final residing steward of his craft. Most of his contemporaries and lots of of his purchasers have died. He’s survived revolutions, coups, financial crises and Covid, which shuttered his enterprise and virtually killed him. However he nonetheless loves coming to work to satisfy his purchasers; many journey from throughout the town to have their garments hand-fitted and reduce by him and his small group.
I meet El Sakka at his atelier in an ailing artwork deco constructing. Initially it was at floor degree subsequent door however, frightened by the road battles of the 2011 revolution, he moved to one of many higher flooring.
Mannequins carrying day jackets occupy the corridors. In an adjoining room two employees manoeuvre a 9kg electrical iron in mid air, rigorously urgent the shoulder of a blazer. They name this methodology “trendy” as a result of the earlier one they used was powered by sizzling coal. El Sakka sits reverse me behind a small desk surrounded by photographs that narrate the story of his life and the numerous eras, cultures and folks that have formed his craft and the town itself.
In 1956, when El Sakka’s father, additionally a tailor, died all of the sudden, the household was left to resolve what to do with the atelier. Samir was a scholar at Cairo College and recollects: “I had no curiosity or information of the work.”
Initially, the household employed somebody to supervise the enterprise, which on the time employed 20 labourers and made fits for the pashas (high-ranking officers) and palace workers. When that didn’t work out, El Sakka’s older brother Mohamed, a military officer, stated he would take over. However his buddy Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had led a coup to oust the monarchy in 1952 and would later change into president, refused the concept of Mohamed leaving the military, suggesting Samir take over as an alternative.
Samir agreed as a result of he “wished to be taught the craft overseas”, and went to Italy to review design and reducing on the Santarelli & Castellucci Institute in Rome. He additionally frolicked observing the method at Cifonelli, a retailer identified for its bespoke tailoring. However what stayed with him had been the phrases his instructors had imparted. “You’re a tailor, you’re an artist,” he explains. “They taught me there may be nice respect in what I do.”
El Sakka returned to Cairo in 1958. “Folks began to love me . . . once they noticed my work was exact,” he says. Quickly the atelier and the events he hosted grew to become a spot to have garments made and to be seen. Actors and politicians began coming, though celebrities made for troublesome purchasers: considered one of Egypt’s most celebrated actors refused to pay a mounting invoice, telling El Sakka that his patronage was sufficient. “Since then, I finished working with well-known individuals,” he says.
Then competitors with different tailors started. A listing from 1957 lists dozens of males’s tailors, generally known as tarzi in Egyptian Arabic, round 10 of whom had been famend. “I grew to become considered one of them . . . that was the start,” he says.
A type of was his late buddy Hassan Swellam, a grasp tailor who had studied in France and opened a retailer close by on Adly Avenue in 1954. If El Sakka eschewed celebrities, then Swellam courted them. The customized safari swimsuit he designed for Nasser grew to become a logo for the brand new republic’s elite, who had been keen to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, and considered one of his signature designs remains to be obtainable within the retailer. But it surely was Swellam’s work with Anwar Sadat throughout his presidency (from 1970 till his assassination in 1981) that made him well-known.
Swellam died in 2018 aged 95. However his daughters Ola and Azza have stored his atelier because it has been for the previous 70 years. It’s an old-world area that brings to thoughts a Wes Anderson movie, with its retro burgundy scalloped Venetian curtains and completely organized units of leather-based slippers and striped pyjamas.
Nowadays they promote ready-to-wear and tailor-made fits made by Swellam’s former assistant utilizing machine and hand building. The sisters say they’re dedicated to conserving the enterprise going. They hope that salvation lies in renewed curiosity from a youthful era and abroad guests to Egypt. Eugenio Frignani from Venice lately had a swimsuit tailor-made utilizing English wool cloth he purchased in Florence. He hoped the extra inexpensive value of tailoring in Egypt would supply others “the possibility to expertise one thing that culturally is admittedly fading away, however can also be unbelievable . . . It’s actually one thing that enriches you, as a result of you could take into consideration all the main points.”
In a metropolis the place custom and modernity are consistently crashing into one another, the destiny of the tailors displays the present state of the Downtown space, hovering between a wonderful previous and an unsure future. Many Cairenes have moved out of the centre to compounds in satellite tv for pc cities, draining the world of its authentic clientele, and modifications to an outdated hire legislation will imply business rents rise considerably over the following 5 years. Below the earlier legislation, tenants handed down contracts between generations, typically paying tiny rents of lower than £1 a month. The change has stirred fears of gentrification that might make it unaffordable for historic companies to stay within the space.
Mamdouh Gamal, a third-generation bespoke shirtmaker, is on the precipice of this unsure second. He lives in Al Shorouk, a satellite tv for pc metropolis east of Cairo, however commutes to handle the shirtmaking enterprise began by his father in 1949 when the neighbours had been a mixture of Egyptians, Italians, French, Greeks and Armenians, and the atelier heaved with orders. A small order for Fouad Serageldin — then a distinguished politician — consisted of 24 shirts, 12 pyjamas, 4 robes and 48 pairs of underwear.
Extra lately, Gamal, who learnt to design shirts in Paris, was in a position to maintain the enterprise by cultivating a following of embassy workers largely from South American nations. However he fears for the long run. An financial crunch has made it dearer to purchase cloth and import buttons and thread, and his hire has elevated underneath the brand new legislation. At the moment he employs two males of their sixties who take two weeks to provide a bespoke shirt. However with out apprentices or a successor he says he’ll quickly be compelled to shut.
Samir Raafat, a historian, remembers “the ritual” of going to the tailor along with his father, and later had his personal shirts made by a bespoke shirtmaker, who has since closed up store. He attributes the decline to altering trend however says it was the flooding of the market with ready-to-wear that signalled the dying knell of bespoke clothes. “When prêt-à-porter arrived in Egypt it modified the style scene utterly,” he says. “Immediately our language grew to become ‘small’, ‘medium’ and ‘massive’.”
Raafat feels bereft in regards to the lack of documentation on the tailors and dressmakers who formed the sartorial id of the town, after which simply as rapidly slipped away. “They made films on the good European designers, however no person instructed the story of Swellam or Madame Rita,” he says of a gown designer who was “the Elsa Schiaparelli of the southern Mediterranean”.
In an period of quick trend, the tailor’s craft stands as a quiet counterpoint. “After I see a swimsuit, I can sense whether or not the tailor was or not,” says El Sakka. There are not any computer systems; measurements are saved on paper and appointments are made by cellphone. A swimsuit takes round 10 days to make, together with fittings, however there’s a three-month wait.
At the moment the largest existential risk to the craft is an absence of apprentices prepared to tackle this demanding work. But there should still be hope. El Sakka has been coaching a successor. Osama Fouad, 46, has been working with him since he was 17. Nowadays he oversees the atelier, wielding the reducing scissors El Sakka inherited from his father.
For Fouad, the craft is each deeply private and collaborative, with every consecutive step depending on the work of the one that got here earlier than. “The character of this job,” he says, is that it’s “the work of associates — there must be a gaggle sitting collectively serving to one another”.
Observe us on Instagram and join Fashion Matters, your weekly publication in regards to the trend business
