Hem

Two machines · behind the dry cleaner · nothing for sale

Trousers in twenty minutes, a coat in four days, and no counter staff

One person, two machines and an overlocker that is older than the shop. You will be measured by the person who does the sewing, which is the only reason anything here fits when it comes back.

The whole price list
A person working at an industrial sewing machine. A rail of hanging garments in a workroom.

What it costs

Trouser hem, plain£12

Trouser hem, original finish£22

Jeans, keeping the hem£18

Skirt or dress, lined£26

Sleeves, from the cuff£28

Sleeves, from the shoulder£48

Waist, in or out, up to 4 cm£20

Jacket, taken in at the back seam£38

Zip, trousers or skirt£24

Zip, coat, you supply it£42

Moth hole, rewovenfrom £30

Anything under five minutesfree

Prices include the fitting and the second fitting if it needs one. A button sewn on, a seam caught, a loop replaced — free, while you wait, and please do not queue politely behind somebody with a coat for it.

How long

There is a board on the wall with three columns and it is updated every morning. This is what the columns mean.

Knitted clothing folded on a pale surface.

While you wait

A plain hem, a button, a small seam. Come before four, bring the shoes you will wear with them, and sit on the chair by the window.

Twenty minutes

A person carrying shopping bags along a street.

Four days

Everything with a lining, a zip or a shape to keep. Dropped off Monday, back Friday, and you are texted the moment it is on the rail.

Four working days

A woman in a denim jacket standing outdoors.

Two weeks

Reweaving, a coat taken apart, anything where the answer to "can this be saved" is "probably, slowly". Quoted before anything is cut.

Two weeks, sometimes three

A long rail of clothes hanging in a bright room.

What cannot be done

Not to be difficult. These are the six things people carry across town every week, and the honest answer is no before you have paid for the bus.

A jacket made two sizes smaller
One size at the back seam, sometimes. Two means moving the armholes and the pockets, which costs more than the jacket and never looks right.
Shoulders
On a tailored jacket, effectively no. A shoulder is the one part of a garment that is built rather than sewn.
Stretch and knit, made bigger
There is no seam allowance in most of it. I will look, and I will usually hand it back.
Pleated skirts, shortened
From the waist, yes, and it is expensive. From the hem, the pleats stop being pleats and everybody can see it.
Anything I cannot fit on you
A garment dropped off for someone who is not coming in gets pinned to their old trousers and guessed at. I would rather not.
Wedding dresses in a week
Six weeks, three fittings, and I take two a month. Anything faster is somebody else's promise and somebody else's problem.

Anything at all, bring it in and I will tell you in two minutes for nothing. Half the job here is saying no quickly.

A man in a jacket and glasses, photographed in daylight.

Two machines and a pressing table

A straight stitch from 1974 that has never been serviced by anybody else, a modern machine for everything with stretch in it, and a pressing table that does more for the finish than either of them.

Twenty-two years of it, eleven in this room. Before that, four years in a factory making coats, which is where anybody learns sleeves.

Opening hours