A perfect fit with tailor Francois Delphin

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Francois the tailor works alone, every day, in his narrow space across from busy Vineyard Haven Harbor on Beach Road. He is the boss, the manager, the customer relations person, and the workforce. He is barely visible when you enter his shop, overmatched by piles of customers’ clothes to be adjusted or repaired, and fabric that will become trousers or a stylish dress or jacket, or anything at all that must be made to look sharp and fit correctly. His customer might have put on a little weight and has clothes that need some letting out. Or an old guy in his seventies finds he has somehow gotten shorter as the years added up, but he wants to keep on wearing his favorite corduroy pants, so they need to shorten too.

Maybe it’s a prom dress, a wedding dress, something for a party, or an idea and some cloth a customer found that she thinks will make a spectacular summer dress. Maybe it’s a business suit whose owner loves the fabric but thinks the style has gotten too frumpy. Or maybe it’s an old, worn duvet cover with a hole in it that its owner knows should be tossed, but she just can’t do it. Can Francois patch it? He can.

Actually, Francois Delphin does not really work alone. The sliding glass doors to the southern end of his shop open to the shore of Lagoon Pond, just eight or 10 feet from the water’s edge; he shares the beach with a family of geese and another of ducks. They watch him work. They tap on the door. And he sometimes gives in and feeds them, knowing that he is only confirming their understanding that there will be more to come.

Francois’ journey to his life and career on Martha’s Vineyard began in Haiti under the watchful, malevolent eye of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The New York Times described Papa Doc in an April 23, 1971, report this way: “Although patently a dictator who would not hesitate to kill his enemies in order to maintain his power over the black Republic of Haiti, Francois Duvalier would have had the world believe he was really just a simple little country doctor, so loved by his people that it became his abiding duty to remain ‘President for Life.’”

“Haiti,” Francois says, “has gangsters all over the country now. And do you know what happened? The politicians were the ones who sold them the weapons. All those crooked politicians. And that is why Haiti is ‘gangsterized’ now. It’s sad. And it’s not a place for people to visit at all, because life is nothing.”

As a young boy in his small, rural hometown of Gonaïves, Francois, an only child, helped on his family’s farm. But as was common, Francois chose to enter an apprenticeship of almost six years to learn clothing design and alteration — really, the clothesmaking trade. At the time, male Haitians made their own clothes, or had them made by well-trained graduate tailors.

“So when I graduated from my apprenticeship, I was hired by the same guy where I went to tailor school, and I was a designer. And I used to go to the movies. That was the time when we had those themes, those movie stars. I used to go to the movies, and what I’d do when I went to the movies, I’d study the type of clothes the actors wore, and after a couple of days I went to the store, bought a piece of fabric, and designed it. When I walked on the street, people thought I was a movie star. It was fun. But there was only so much we could do about it there in Haiti, and fashion is endless. It’s endless.

“At first, in New York, when I came there to work for a Haitian friend who had a business there, I saw different fashions. I worked in Manhattan for a while in the fashion industry. And I learned lots of little things. I ended up working with women’s clothes in the U.S., because in Haiti it was only men’s clothes. So working in the garment industry in Manhattan, I learned a lot of things. I mean, it was piecework, but it turned out to be my way of life. I’m older than I look, you know. I am 74 now.”

It was 44 years ago that Francois, then an experienced Haitian tailor, joined his friend who had a dry-cleaning business in Spring Valley, N.Y., Francois worked part-time for him there. His life on the Vineyard began when his friend noticed an advertisement that the Issokson family of Martha’s Vineyard were offering their dry-cleaning business for sale. His friend visited the Island to have a look.

“My friend loved the Island right away,” Francois says, “and he bought the business. Then he called me. He said, ‘Francois, I am on a small Island, and there is no tailor on this Island, and we need a tailor badly on this Island. If you come to the Island, you will have a good life.’”

At first, Francois would “pop up” to the Vineyard to help his friend from time to time. Francois was living with his cousin. “So, you know, my cousin and I were always on good terms to some extent — but when my friend asked me to move to the Vineyard, I thought, ‘Man, it’s really a good reason for me to move farther from him,’ so I ended up to come to the Island.”

His first Island home was a rented apartment on Franklin Street in Vineyard Haven. When Francois opened his own Island tailor business, he moved his shop often over time, to several different rented spaces in Edgartown and Vineyard Haven, where he, his American wife, and his children — all in their twenties — now make their home on Skiff Avenue. Francois’ wife is a nurse at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. His daughter and two boys are all Vineyarders.

Francois’ demeanor is cheerful, modest, and settled. Francois’ solitary working life appears to complement and nurture his devotion to what is his calling.

“Most of the time people say, ‘Why are you working by yourself?’ But taking people’s clothes and working on them is a big responsibility. If somebody doesn’t know what he’s doing, I mean, he’s going to ruin it. And then you’re the one to blame for it. And today, because of the quick making-money system we are in now, kids often do not want to learn, even to be in apprenticeship. They want to make big money. But you have to learn first. I went to school. The reason I learned tailoring is because I graduated from the apprenticeship. In Haiti, when you’re growing up, you then go to a place like that to buy a suit, or to buy pants. You brought the fabric and then the tailor shop makes you what you want. And once my father bought a nice piece of the most expensive garment fabric, at the time. He brought it to a tailor to make nice pants for me for my graduation. And they ruined the pants. They didn’t make them the way I wanted. And since that time, my ambition is, “Oh, I have to be a tailor.” And that’s why I went to school to become a tailor. Now, it’s my way of life. Especially being in this country. To tell you the truth, there are not too many good tailors left.”

Francois and his family are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and study the Bible. “We follow the pattern of Jesus,” Francois explains. “We don’t force people, just talk to people about it. If people agree, want to study? OK. They are at liberty to choose what they want. And that’s why, when we go door to door, and if somebody accepts, wants to come, we go back and talk with them. If somebody says, ‘Not interested,’ we just leave. You see what I mean. That’s the way it works, you know? And for me, it makes life interesting. I feel I’m living for something.”

Is he not discouraged that life has turned out to be, at least in his lifetime, not what he might have hoped for?

“You know what? Before, I could have been discouraged. But now, I’m a Witness, and I know no matter what happens, God has the time to put into everything.”

About his Vineyard customers, there are some who are easy, some not so much. “You know, one thing I found out with my customers, some of them, you know, sometimes they say I’m too pricey, I charge too much. But most of my customers are happy with my work. You know why they’re happy? Some of the people, some of the suits I fix for people, some of the dresses they have, they are so difficult to work on. When the customers bring them to me, and I fix it, they try it on, and it always fits perfectly. So therefore, all customers are happy. You see what I mean? Even some of them say, ‘Yes, you’re a bit pricey,’ but they love the work. And that’s what happens with the customers.”

Men’s clothes or women’s, does it matter? “No. I work on everything. I don’t care. You know, the only thing about it — I don’t know if it’s a gift — I went to school to be a tailor, and I don’t use patterns. I take your measurements, use my tape measure and cut your clothes according to your measurement. So therefore when I’m taking your measurements, when I make a dress that’s way too big, with too many details to fix it, I measure it on you. When I’m working on it, it’s like I see you in front of me. Your shape — if there’s somebody out there with one shoulder longer than the other — it’s like I see it in front of me. It is a gift. I can tell you that. And that’s what keeps me going. Everything I do for people, once I do it, it fits perfectly.”