To The Tailor -- Gatsby Knew It: The Shirt Makes The Man (And Woman)

IN "THE GREAT Gatsby" a London tailor shipped boatloads of clothes across the Atlantic to West Egg's droll inhabitant ruminating in his mansion. F. Scott Fitzgerald described Gatsby throwing shirts on his bed, "the soft, rich heaps mounting higher - shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue."

I suspect all those characters out on the veranda gazing abstractly at Gatsby's "feudal silhouette against the sky" had tailors, the mark of a well-dressed man in the Roaring Twenties.

In the 1960s tailored threads fell out of favor with the arrival of attractive, moderately priced ready-to-wear clothing. The time-honored craft of the tailor, frequently passed down through many generations of fathers and sons, lost many of its sons to commerce or computers.

Now fashion's economic wheel is turning backward. Gatsby's tailor has returned. And he's here in Seattle.

You can still buy nice ready-to-wear shirts, but the market for designer-label clothes with high price tags has steadily grown. For instance, shirts by Armani and Gigli and Klein will run in the $150 to $200 price range, more than having a shirt cut and fit at Gian DeCaro Sartoria, 2025 First Ave., Michael's Bespoke Tailors in Rainier Square or The Custom Shop, 1212 Fourth Ave. Tailors require a minimum order, usually three shirts.

Gian DeCaro is a tailor's son who didn't go astray, unless one

counts against him his taste for hand-rolled cigars. His father, Silvio, immigrated from Italy in 1947 and opened a small tailor's shop in Spokane. DeCaro, after graduating from Gonzaga University, went into the retail-clothes business in Seattle, then opened his own custom shop in 1988. In 1991 he was anointed one of "America's Top Tailors" by Town & Country magazine.

DeCaro has reams of swatches - cloth samples - on his shelves. The choices can be overwhelming, so DeCaro spends quite a bit of time guiding his customers toward a look they'll like. "Men frequently have misconceptions about how patterns can be mixed, and I try to work through that with them."

Men's-wear custom boutiques emphasize personal atmosphere and impeccable tailoring; they keep files on their customers, who tend to be loyal to their tailors. Typical customers are top-drawer CEOs and younger managers out for the kill who buy a suit, several shirts and a batch of ties nicely packaged together for a coordinated look.

The obvious advantage is fit. Shirts off the rack have two measurements, collar and sleeve. Sleeve measurements generally have two sizes, 32 and 33. The tailor gleefully asks: "Which is it?" He will measure to the quarter-inch. In addition to getting an exact fit, many men will find out they have one arm anywhere from a quarter-inch to an inch longer than the other. The tailor takes about a dozen measurements, "building" a shirt through the chest, across the shoulder and underneath the arms.

This is especially advantageous for men who are not, as they say in personal ads, HWP. "My job is to make my clients look two inches taller and 20 pounds lighter," said DeCaro.

Tailors will put flaps on shirt pockets or better yet, leave the pocket off altogether. They'll add epaulets on the shoulders for men who want to retain a touch of military bearing. On the sleeve it can be straight cuffs, French cuffs, two-button cuffs or Palazzi cuffs (cut off at the corner).

Choose a collar wide or narrow, though most men prefer to go right down the middle with a business collar. At the Custom Shop, JoAnn Henry, the manager, gave me a quick collar fitting, suggesting a collar about a half-inch taller in the back than on a regular shirt. "This helps create a frame," she said, "shifting the focus off your neck and drawing attention to your face." That's polite tailorspeak for letting me know I have a long, thin neck.

Not many men can spot another man's shirt and know it came from a tailor. But one tailored extra is a dead giveaway: monogrammed initials. To each his own here, but it seems like a pretentious bit of ornamentation more suited to - well, Gatsby. A monogram can go in three places. Most men have their initials put on the shirt sleeve. Some prefer the chest. Probably the best spot - and the one fewest men choose - is low on the shirt, a few inches to the left of the fifth button, a look favored by Europeans.

JoAnn Henry of the Custom Shop, a New York institution with 77 branch stores across the country, noted a trend which she said is hot in the Los Angeles store in Century City: two monograms, one on the sleeve and the other on the chest. "We're not seeing any of that in Seattle," she added quickly. Maybe it was the earthquake, but let's hope this monogrammatic madness doesn't slip over the border.

Gian DeCaro said about 80 percent of his customers have their shirts initialed. I sensed a slight discomfort during my interview with DeCaro, and it all came to the surface in his defense of the monogrammed man. "A monogram harkens back to the days of propriety, when, for example, a writer in the course of his civil duties wouldn't think of coming into this store wearing a T-shirt."

I crawled out of the store, went home, put on the only silk shirt in my closet and headed to Rainier Square where I spoke with Michael Weinstein, owner of Michael's Bespoke Tailors. He showed me his "attention getter," a two-toned blue shirt with a white panel down the front, white cuffs and white sleeve vent panels along the cuff. Then he showed me a sporty pullover. "You're wearing a silk shirt, so you might like something like this," he said. (I took that as a favorable comment on my shirt, even if it was intended only as a neutral statement of fact.)

His shirts run in the $60 to $150 range, about the same as at Sartoria and the Custom Shop. And custom shirts don't walk out of the store on a man's back. It takes about four to six weeks to fill an order. Weinstein concedes this is a problem. "Guys are lousy shoppers; they come in and want it today," he said.

Men plan ahead in business, yet never plan their wardrobe a few months in advance, as Weinstein recommends, in order to have their suits and shirts ready for the next season. "You were nine months in coming - so are your shirts," he said with a laugh.

Weinstein showed me some straight tabs and button collars, and noted pin collars were going strong. Pin collars are out, I said. He dismissed this with a flick of his yellow measuring tape, which tailors still wear around their necks, even when suited up looking like they're ready for the Seattle Symphony. "Nothing takes the place of good taste, which doesn't just come and go with the season."

For women, good taste can be found in a single shirt, a special design created by Renee Bassetti, who opened a small shop on the 12th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel two years ago. Her signature wrap-front shirt with a wide, flared collar and its unswerving emphasis on continental style can be worn with a suit or cut-offs.

Depending on the fabric, the shirt costs between $110 and $250, about the same price as her men's shirts. She said her business is split about 50/50 between men and women. It takes her about two weeks to make a shirt.

Making shirts was a natural for Bassetti. "When I was 13 years old I bought this pale yellow Italian shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons. I always loved shirts. I'd take old shirts, rip them apart and make a new shirt. Men have had the answer to dressing for a long time. The shirt is the key element in the wardrobe that holds everything together. And a shirt for women is the least well-done thing in the marketplace."

Her suite in the Four Seasons is a combination fitting room, office and salon. All of her customers come through word of mouth and one window display outside the hotel. Business people staying at the Four Seasons head up to the 12th floor and frequently get hooked. Her client list looks like an international airport display terminal: New York, London, Rio, Tokyo. "Most of my customers call me back and order more shirts. I try to make sure they are satisfied. I want them to come back until they die," she said sweetly.

Bob Armstrong is a Seattle freelance writer. Harley Soltes is Pacific's staff photographer.