“Hand Stitched: Teaching Needlework” by Skyler Reid
Marion Anderson has crafted a life around a needle and thread. After 70 years in the custom tailoring business, he now runs a small school out of his home in Harlem.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:24] These stitches here, these are done by hand. By these hands.
[00:50] My main wish over the years was to operate my own school, and that’s what this is.
[01:03] I started here right in this room. Must be, what … gotta go back to 25 years. And all of this was my living quarters. So what was my den in the front is now a school. And maybe this was a bedroom or something.
[01:36] The trades, hands-on areas, provide a student with a certain discipline.
[01:48] We used to have home economics. We don’t have that much anymore.
[02:04] Hello, Manhattanville School.
[phone] Hi, it’s me. You got home okay and everything?
Oh yes, got home fine, yes.
[phone] And were they still there?
No, no. Yeah, they were still here.
[phone] Oh good. Can they help you with the heat problem?
Yeah.
[02:16] I have five children. I taught them how to sew.
[02:24] Any experience that is like a hands on experience has real value.
[02:37] Cause there’s nothing more pleasing than seeing somebody make something and appreciate what they’ve done.
It started because he didn’t want to get his hands dirty. Seventy years later, custom tailoring is Marion Anderson’s life.
When Marion was in high school, his mother told him that he had to learn a craft. He eventually settled on tailoring, primarily choosing the class because it was the cleanest of the vocational studies offered. And then … he made a pair of pants. It was the first time a student in the program had finished that task. Marion didn’t have any reason to suspect it, but his aptitude for tailoring would be the defining thread throughout his life. He later took up an apprenticeship, later a job in the tailoring industry in New York. He took to teaching, becoming the first African American accredited by the New York Board of Education to teach tailoring. He taught in high schools, universities and even at Rikers Island. But for Marion, it was always just a craft.
After nearly 40 years of working and teaching tailoring, Anderson started his own school, the Manhattanville Needle Trade School. The size of the program has fluctuated over the past 25 years, but now Marion’s small class is one of a very limited number of options for learning custom tailoring outside of a university. The once widespread craft of custom tailoring has been replaced by alterations and fittings at major retail outlets. The art of individualized tailoring has been replaced by assembly line style production.
The History Makers: http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/marion-anderson-41
The Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/design-cut-saggy-pants-trend-article-1.441439
The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/whats-a-4000-suit-worth.html?pagewanted=1
