ZENDO GARAGE: Wardrobe for Utamaro

Kitagawa Utamaro (喜多川 歌麿^?, ca. 1753 – October 31, 1806) was a Japanese printmaker and painter, who is considered one of the greatest artists of woodblock prints (ukiyo-e). His name was romanized as Outamaro. He is known especially for his masterfully composed studies of women, known as bijinga. He also produced nature studies, particularly illustrated books of insects.

FOLAWOLE the dancer at the ZENDO GARAGE

Vintage silk shirt (prohibition era) & twill denim pants

Japanese vest (Meiji era) Pants (gabriel russo)

Vintage shredded jacket & shirt (gabriel russo)

Schmatta Ghosts (yiddish) rags,tattered clothing

click on images to enlarge

ZENDO GARAGE: The indigo dye vat

JAPANESE BORO DIPPED IN INDIGO DYE VAT:

THE JACKET  

It took 7 dippings to get it to the nice deep indigo blue I was after (click on image for a closer view).  Indigo doesn’t dye into the fabric like most dyes, it attaches itself to the fiber. When I submerged the jacket, I had the breast pocket sewn on. I removed the pocket after the dyeing process and that gave me the ghost pocket silhouette.

The boro (Japanese for rags) are  vintage textiles that have been hand stitched and reused for generations.

THE VEST

The fabric is dyed to a blue black with a dusty indigo blue pocket  (click on image for a closer view).

SON OF A POCKET MAKER

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He swears, he meditates, he’s east, he’s west, creative, political, sophisticated, simple… meet men’s clothing designer Gabriel Russo, born in Brooklyn, the son of a pocket maker. In just moments you’ll feel you’ve known him all your life. If you’re nearby, he’ll invite you into his studio, sell you a shirt and tell you a story.

Gabriel embraces the past with a passion and generously shares it through every project and most conversations. His clothing creations reflect a day gone by that honor hard work and detail, yet manifest as fully up to date.

Through humor and deep reflection, Gabriel navigates through life searching for character, meaning, and answers with a deep respect for where things come from.

LIVING ON THE SELVEDGE: Tulare Ca, 1974

It was the summer of 74′. I was driving into Tulare about an hour south of Fresno. The temperature was unbearable. Even with the windows shut you could smell the cow manure hanging heavy on the air. At Neilsen’s diner people were talking about Nixon resigning. It was a lousy week of car trouble, heavy drinking and barely just enough cash to get me through this road trip before heading back to L.A.

You could see the heat waves rising on Hwy 99. I passed a teenager with a sign that said Portland. It could’ve been Willy Loman with a sign that said ” You gotta dream boy, it comes with the territory”! I had an appointment with The Owl & the Pussy cat shop. The store was well known throughout the San Joachin valley and the owner Lucy was as beautiful and sweet as the fruit that grew in this valley.

I had a variety of styles. Mary Quant mini skirts & hot pants knockoffs. Peasant blouses and Granny dresses with the frilly pie crust neck.  She loved it all, and wrote a whopping $20,000 order. I thanked her, and told her how she turned my week around.

I was rolling my clothing racks back to the car when I came upon two clean cut young men dressed in blue suits, white shirts & ties holding bibles. They stepped into my path and said, “Sir have you found god”?  I told them that I had indeed found god. I turned around and there was Lucy in the sunlight waving goodbye. I pointed to her and told them, “That’s god waving to us right now”! and continued rolling the clothing racks to my car. They seemed startled with my answer, and started to walk towards her. When I drove away, I saw them through the store window. Lucy the patron saint of salesmen, and the wayfarers.

LIVING ON THE SELVEDGE: Uncle Vinnie in Florida

Franky Stunziata pulled up to the curb in a shiny buffed out 67 Bonneville. The top was down and it was freezing outside. We loaded the trunk with about 500 cut garments that his uncle Vinny was going to sew in his factory in Florida for a cheap rate. All we had to do was drive it down and pick up a tan while we waited for the blouses to be sewn. I never saw Stunzi driving this car so I asked him about it and he said that he borrowed it from his cousin Crazy Sal to deliver it to Uncle Vinnie in Florida. Unbeknownst to me, Crazy Sal was looking for him and his car for the past few days.

Heading out of Brooklyn we run into Crazy Sal in another car and he starts chasing us at speeds that felt like 100 mph. Stunzi’s speeding down Fulton street yelling “Oh, shit” and I’m crouched under the seat peeing in my pants. I’m thinking, “let me out of here!” since I knew Crazy Sal and his neighborhood reputation. But my world investment is loaded in the trunk!

Before long we’re speeding over the Brooklyn bridge on our way to Uncle Vinnie’s tropical paradise. We finally lose Crazy Sal & his crew somewhere in New Jersey. We pulled off Hwy 95 and backed the car into some high weeds way off the road in the dark night so we wouldn’t be spotted by Crazy Sal & his crew. We fell asleep, and deep in the night we hear a loud rumbling sound and a huge headlight coming straight for the car. It was speeding right at us. At the last moment an enormous train turned on the track just barely missing the car. Stunzi starts the car, floors the gas pedal and the car must have slipped on ice or mud because we skid closer to the tracks and the car turned. Now we’re facing the train just inches from it. We jumped out of the car and crawled away. We waited till the train passed, which seemed like it was the length of New Jersey. Pushing the car up the embankment didn’t work, so Stunzi decided to drive the car on the train tracks!

We finally got to a highway diner as the sun is coming up and I’m trying to convince Stunzi that he needs to return the car to his crazy cousin or we’d have been better off being crushed by that freight train. Finally Stunzi makes a call to his uncle Vinnie who, by the way, is Crazy Sal’s father. Uncle Vinnie is pissed that Stunzi took Crazy Sal’s car.

Later that day we drive back to New York and I drop off my garments at a local sewing contractor. We leave the car a few blocks from Crazy Sals house. Stunzi calls Sal to tell him where he can find the car. A few days later I see Stunzi. He has a busted nose and his arm is in a sling. I always have a candle lit for Stunzi cause he told Crazy Sal that I knew nothing about it.

A few years later when I was in Los Angeles I received a letter telling me that Stunzi died as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. All I kept thinking about when I was holding the letter was when we were riding on the train tracks and the car was bumping up and down. He was singing, “Who put the bomp in the bomp shoo bomp shoo bomp? Who put the ram in the ramalama ding dong?”

LIVING ON THE SELVEDGE: Mary the patron saint of pockets

“You’ve got to make the turn on the pocket. Make sure it’s straight or it will have a crease in it and you’ll have to redo it. It takes a year of doing welt pockets everyday to get good at it”. I’ve heard Max say this more than once, talking above the noise of the sewing machines, showing someone how he wanted a pocket sewn or how the corners of a collar should be finished.

This was Mary’s job. Making pockets. all shapes and sizes. Didn’t matter if it was coats, pants or finely-tailored suits. Max said that Mary was the patron saint of pockets. Mary was a piece worker. Which meant that you got paid by the number of pieces you finished, not by the hours you worked. Five cents a pocket. Most of the time she had to fight for a few extra cents for pockets that were difficult and  required her to work so close to the needle that she was sent to the emergency room more than once with a needle stuck in her finger or one that went through it. It was a result of the frenetic pace they worked. It was the amount of pieces that had to be completed for a days wages, and everything had to be showroom quality.  It had to have the right drape and hanger appeal.The incessant buzz of a hundred sewing machines and Max walking up and down the aisles checking the quality of the work or settling a feud between sewing operators in the cramped working conditions was constant.

After school I would walk a few blocks to where Mary worked. She was at the end of a long line of sewing machines next to a second floor window. I would pick up little pebbles from the street and pitch them at the window to get her attention and ask for a dollar or what ever change she had.  I didn’t call up to her or go into the factory  because Max would put me to work if he knew I was there. Knowing I wanted money, he would have me sweeping the factory floors or running errands for him. When the window would open sometimes it was not Mary, but cranky Max that would stick his head out and yell down at me “Your mother works hard for her money! If you want money come up and work for it!”. I would have no choice but to go up. Filtering down as you walked up the crickety old stairs to the factory you heard  a constant  buzz of sewing machines like a concerto of fog horns and cellos inhaling and exhaling.

When you opened the factory door, adding to this industrial melody was the hissing sound of Angelo’s iron presser. He was always in a t-shirt even in winter  because of the heat from the big iron press. He’d lay a garment down, push down on the presser foot and lower the top of the presser clam, and the iron would  release a big plume of steam. He’d lift the top of the clam and the garment would be as flat as a board. I remember the time he pressed my best pants for Easter Sunday. The creases were like knife pleats and lasted till I grew out of them.

I can still sometimes hear the moaning of machinery filtering out of a building, reminding me of those pants I ripped on that Easter Sunday. The smell of the steam when it heats wool brings me right back to Max’s factory. I can see Mary going in her purse and  throwing some change out the window to me below.  These memories lead me to consider the shape of a pocket that I have just sewn. Max would probably have me redo it.

LIVING ON THE SELVEDGE: Go see Big Frank up the street

THE CUTTING MACHINE

Nat was a short man, heavy around the middle.  He always had a cigarette hanging from his lips and there always seemed to be a long ash that could never shake it self loose. You could always catch Nat on the corner of 35^th & 7^th avenue before eight in the morning. This was where garment cutters, pattern makers and other factory workers met before they started their work day. They would exchange war stories about their jobs, place bets with bookies and schmooze. Weather permitting, this went on throughout the work week. In bad weather it went underground to the Horn & Hardarts’ cafeteria below Macy’s.

Nat was a connector, the mayor of 7^th avenue. He had the inside word on what fabric cutters and pattern making jobs were available. How he knew this and how it came to him was a mystery to me. I would watch men walk up to him, shake his hand then lean in close and they would have a brief conversation. Nat would stick his hand in his pocket and fish around through slips of paper and finding the right match, he would hand it to the person and then the man was gone. Then there would be some male maneuvering, some posturing and repositioning, and then another man would approach. This same ritual would be repeated. It was a like watching the documentary March of the Penguins.

One morning when I went to see Nat, there was a line to see him. It was like waiting to receive holy communion. When it was my turn, I leaned in and told him Louie sent me. He nodded, fished around in his pocket and pulled out some papers and handed one to me and said “go see Big Frank up the street”. In the building occupied by Big Frank, the elevators, like most in Manhattan, opened up right into the factory. When the elevator door opened, there sat Big Frank in front of the cutting tables dwarfing an old wooden desk. I told him Nat sent me and he put me to work with one of the head fabric cutters. Later that morning the fabric cutter and I had just finished laying up plies of cotton tubular fabric that were stacked up really high on the cutting table. A blueprint paper was laid on top of the fabric. This schematic of the graded pattern pieces is used as a cutting guide. On each edge of this paper, the front, back and sleeve and other pieces are folded on the half to accommodate the tubular fold. The fabric cutter is supposed to cut around this piece and not cut off the tubular fold. The head cutter went to lunch and asked me to get the cutting machine ready for him. I did this and decided I needed a little practice to advance my apprenticeship. Without any knowledge of what I was doing, I proceeded to cut off all of the tubular fold.

The head cutter came back from lunch and took one look and noticed all the tubular fold had been cut away. He stood there staring at what he could not undo. A fabric cutters crime scene lay before him. Something had gone terribly wrong. The apprentice cutter  had ruined about 500 tubular tops! He shouted. “Oh no, Frank the f**kin kid has ruined the order for Macy’s!”. I can still hear it today as if it’s coming from the next room. There was a long moment of silence. Then Big Frank’s frame filled the doorway. His look cut deep and I knew that there was no explaining my way out of this. As I said before, the elevator opened up into the factory loft. I couldn’t just go over and push the button and stand there and wait for it. I was standing near an emergency exit door that looked like it hadn’t been opened since the civil war.

I caught one last look at Big Frank, he didn’t look good and he was bearing down on me. I pushed and kicked open the door to the emergency exit and leaped down landings over homeless people that were sleeping in the halls. I could hear Big Frank yell down the stairs “ If I ever see you on this street again…*@#*#!…” and his voice faded as I fled out of the building. After that day, I decided to work in Brooklyn for awhile and stay out of Manhattan.

LIVING ON THE SELVEDGE: Chas the Bookie

I remember when I started working in the garment center in the 1960′s in New York. I had to walk from 34th & 8th avenue up to 11th avenue. If you’ve ever walked those 3 blocks you know that they are long and felt more like 6 blocks. The wind in the winter coming off the Hudson was so strong that I would have to seek shelter inside store fronts till it subsided.  It was a six story factory loft with an elevator that had a pull down wooden gate that rumbled its way to the top floor. This elevator was large enough to transport a buick. The company that I was working for was on the top floor and had a poor man’s view of the Hudson. In the winter months you could see ice floes coming down the river along with cargo freighters navigating through the frigid waters.

At this company I was an apprentice fabric cutter working with Charlie the bookmaker. We called him Chas for short. When I would arrive about eight in the morning he was usually there leaning on the cutting table turning the sports page with one hand and hollering into the wall phone with the other while puffs of steam were coming from his cigar. Saying things like ” Ok,Ok, parlay in the 2nd race. You want the number straight or you wanna do a combo? Yeah, Yeah you’re on the hangar till the end of the week”, stuff like that.  The phone wire would usually be stretched to its limit across a skinny aisle where people passing would be ducking under it. From a distance it looked as though people were genuflecting as they passed him.  As usual when Chas would see me he would pull out a fat roll of money that had a couple of rubber bands around it to hold the wad of dough in place. He would slide the rubber band up to his knuckles and he would peel off a hundred dollar bill and tell me to run down to the deli and pick up bagels, crumb buns and cups of coffee for the guys. One time he told this new guy who didn’t understand much English to go to the deli and pick up a couple of sandwiches and get something for himself. As usual he peeled off a $100 and gave it to him. When the guy came back with the sandwiches, Chas asked  him where the rest of his change was. The guy says, “Well, you said to get something for myself”.  Chas says, “So what the f**k did you get?!”  The guy looked down at his feet. He had on a new pair of shoes.

Chas was one tough guy from the old Italian section of Harlem. I’ve seen him leap over cutting tables and collar guys against the wall that would show any disrespect. Chas would take money on all sporting events, including the numbers racket. This is how the numbers racket worked: at the end of the local horse race day the amount of the mutual handling of the money was tallied. The last three numbers of that tally was what the numbers were for that day. The odds and the payout were 600 to 1. I’ve never seen anyone hit those numbers in my life. One of the guys in the factory comes in yelling one morning that he had a dream about these numbers, and these are the same numbers of his address and something like his mother in law’s birthday.  He goes around the factory telling everyone this story and is collecting nickels, dimes and quarters. He comes to Chas with a small fortune of coins and dollar bills that totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 bucks. Now the hit on this would be about 60,000 dollars. Like I said, this is a 600 to 1 shot but Chas is not taking any chances. Chas makes a few phone calls and pushes off some of this money to other bookies in case this guy delivers a miracle. These were common favors in the bookmaking world. The next morning the number was off by a point or two. Still, it didn’t matter. The next day someone else was collecting nickels and dimes and helping to pay for Chas’ Cuban cigars. Chas has moved on to whatever heaven has to offer bookmakers, which could be a place where nobody wins in the betting world, or maybe Chas is in the eternal hell where the factory guys’ dreams come true everyday.