Made to measure

The needle masters

John McCombe

Mark van Roosmalen has been stitching up a storm for decades, as have many Christchurch creatives.

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In the lead-up to Cup and Show Week, the skills and talents of Christchurch artisans are in hot demand.

Show-goers are keen to flaunt unique, stylish garments that will stand out in the crowd. Rosa Shiels interviews the creatives who are keeping traditional arts alive.

Back in the mists of time, people stitched together animal skins with needles of sharpened bone and threads of sinew to clad themselves in winter. They tattooed the leather with pigments and tied on talismans and fetishes of bone and twig for decoration and protection against evil spirits.    

Millennia later, skilled artisans and hobbyists are continuing the tradition. We've invented machines to replace some of the hard-slog mechanics of garment and fabric creation. However, we still turn to the nimble interplay of eye, hand, brain, and intuition to individualise garments, construct a new bodyline, colour a thread, bead or sequin a bodice, bone a corset, and finish a seam to perfection.

The creative and aesthetic possibilities are infinite. Vision and realisation are in the hands of the artist.

In Christchurch, professional artisans are busy creating or hand-finishing and trimming made-to-measure garments and accessories for Cup and Show Week, weddings, balls, their own creative amusement, or for the peacock inclinations of a stylish dresser.

The tailor

Mark van Roosmalen has been operating his own tailoring business in Christchurch since 1988, when he took over the premises of The Suit Doctor at 117 Manchester Street.

"I bought it about 21 years ago, and prior to that it was pretty much where the stock exchange is, over the road from the Grumpy Mole there, at 167a Cashel Street," he says. "There had been a tailoring shop there since the '20s and The Suit Doctor was there since around 1930. It didn't involve itself so much with making things as just repairs and alterations."

Mark's business combines made-to-measure tailoring with bespoke garments.

"True bespoke is handmade for the individual with numerous fittings, whereas with made-to-measure, I've got a size range of garments from the manufacturer in various short, tall fittings etc and different styles," he says. "Someone comes in and says 'I want a suit, what can you do', so I measure them up, get the closest stock size, put the garment on the person and assess it: 'You're down on the right side, or you slouch, or you've got a pot gut'. We work out all the variations where they vary from the stock size and put together the order." 

"We" - he and his one full-time employee - "do handmade, which is as close to a true bespoke suit as you can get, with all the canvas interfacings, stitched edges and hand-sewn buttonholes. It is classic tailoring." 

Tailoring is in Mark's blood; people from both sides of his family have been dressing the citizens of Christchurch since early last century. 

"My father was a tailor," he says, pointing to a photo on the wall. "That's him, bottom left, in Amsterdam in 1949. He came out to New Zealand in the 1950s." 

His mother's family came out from Lebanon via Chicago about 1910.

"My grandmother, Olga Poulton, arrived here when she was about 10, and her father was a clothing manufacturer. He did lingerie and childrenswear on the corner of Cashel and Barbadoes streets." 

Mark's grandmother started her own factory at 96 Lichfield Street and his great-aunt, Maida McGee, manufactured in Manchester Street and had a small retail boutique, Minerva Gowns, in New Brighton. 

After Mark's father immigrated from the Netherlands, he worked as a tailor in Auckland, then moved south.

"He worked for Munn's in Christchurch, who were doing bespoke suits and so forth. One thing led to another. He met my grandmother, then met and married my mother."

Mark grew up with four sisters, all of whom sewed. He always knew he'd be a tailor. After a stint working out of David Woolff's Paddington menswear and antiques shop in Sydney, he signed on and graduated two years later from Wellington Polytechnic. He went on to work for his father's Van Roli clothing factory in Sydenham by day, completing private orders by night and eventually setting himself up in business.  

"So, both sides of the family have been involved in the clothing industry and I'm fourth or fifth generation."

*Read more in the October issue*