Joe Sauro, Buttonholing The Capital's Suits

For 43 Years, Tailor Took the Measure of the Powerful

At Joe Sauro's tailor shop, Washington's bold and powerful men indulge their inner fussiness.

"I need you to look at something," says Ed Flenner, a commercial real estate broker, thrusting a blue bundle into Sauro's arms.

It's a suit. Flenner bought it at a very fine store in town, where the in-house tailor pinned and chalked it for alterations. That was five years ago. The pins and chalk marks are still there. He wants Sauro to erase the other man's work and start over. Sooner or later, Flenner brings everything to Sauro, seldom bothering with the free alterations that come with the price of a new suit.

"Great piece of fabric," Sauro says through pins clutched between his lips, while Flenner stands elevated on a wooden riser before the triptych mirror.

"Don't know why it sat in my closet for so long," says Flenner.

"Why did it sit in your closet for so long?"

" 'Cause I have 40 other suits!"

Sauro, a short man with a hearty laugh, re-pins and re-chalks. Flenner has been coming to him for 25 years. They banter about family, the Redskins, Thanksgiving. A man's relationship with his tailor, as with his doctor and his bartender, verges on intimacy.

When Sauro, who turned 67 Sunday, announced plans to retire by the end of this year, the sartorial presence of everyone from President Bush on down was imperiled. Imagine a sudden outbreak on the Sunday talk shows of suit collars gapping from the neck; renegade fabric ballooning between shoulder blades on K Street; side vents promoting exaggerated posteriors like pumpkins for sale on Capitol Hill.

Then when Sauro reconsidered and decided merely to "semi-retire" -- it's hard for an old-school Italian maestro to hang up his thimble all at once -- there were sighs of relief.

On the wall of the shop on 19th near L Street NW is a picture of Sauro, his wife, Gail, three of their four children and several grandchildren standing with President Bush in the Oval Office in July. The president invited the tailor's family when he heard Sauro was retiring.

"Mr. President, I have a large family," Sauro recalls warning his client.