Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Jan 11 2009
Couple at tailor shop trying to stay upbeat despite fewer customers
By Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writer
Updated: 01/11/2009 12:11:29 AM PST
A partially clothed dress stand. A makeshift dressing room. Tables
strewn with tops and skirts. A rainbow of threaded spools and sun
cascading onto sewing machines.
This is where seamstress Amy Petrosyan performs alterations and
heavy-duty custom work, inside D. Fragomeno Tailors, which she owns
with husband Ed.
When gold prices jumped over the moon in 2007, Ed joined many downtown
jewelers who were thrown from their jobs. When the stock market
stumbled, their tailor shop took a nose-dive.
"If we don’t do more business, we won’t be able to make our payments:
the mortgage, the cars, the insurance," Ed Petrosyan said.
It’s a similar refrain among their small-business neighbors along the
15000 block of Ventura Boulevard, where businesses have been hammered
by the recession.
But enter the Petrosyans’ cozy corner and you won’t see frowns about a
worsening economy or a 30 percent drop in business.
Not from Ed, 45, who as a jeweler repaired rings worn by Janet
Jackson, Barbra Streisand and Mr. T and now helps his wife. And not
from Amy, 46, magic hands of the hemline, waistline and custom-made
suit or dress.
"You need the room to move your arm," she directed a client, adjusting
the folds of a tailor-made "sexy top" in silver taupe lamé, which
highlighted the bosom.
"Because I’m petite, I like custom-made things. We work on the designs
together," said Diana Armenise of Sherman Oaks, admiring the look in a
three-way mirror. "She’s great.
"If you’ve seen her work, you would bring your pants to her, too – and
get a sexy bottom."
Tailoring was in Amy’s life as a girl known as Armine in Yerevan,
Armenia. When not waiting in long lines for meat or vegetables at
state-run markets, her mother and father worked in a Soviet factory
sewing uniforms for Red Army troops.
They also moonlighted as tailors at home, where Amy learned to make
clothes for herself and design for her family. And when not studying
to be a midwife, she would dream of life in America, with a dream
house and a dream shop to go with it.
"When I read the books about the U.S., I thought it was like
Disneyland, with houses like little cottages, with little fences in
front," she said, running a bright red blouse through a beefy Brother
sewing machine.
She and Ed landed in L.A. in 1989, dazzled by a city of lights. She
worked for a tailor in Van Nuys. He worked for jewelers in Beverly
Hills and downtown. Eight years ago, they bought a 1,500-square-foot
Hollywood home with hardwood floors.
After scouring the San Fernando Valley but finding few affordable
places to open a tailor shop, they bought a business from Domenico
Fragomeno in June, 2007, with a client base stretching back
decades. For a year, things were fantastic. Saturdays were packed. And
roughly two dozen customers a week streamed in for alterations or
tailor-made outfits.
Ed, or Yervand, had lost his job before his jeweler boss closed up
shop, and he helped Amy by doing sleeves or opening seams.
Amy would sit at her machines up to 10 hours a day, thinking of her
23-year-old son, Mihran, who’s studying architecture, or her
22-year-old daughter, Diana, who’s studying environmental health.
Jayne Meadows, wife of the late Steve Allen, would enter beneath the
store’s forest-green awning with a handful of alterations, as would
Frank Stallone, brother of the "Rambo" actor.
For about a year, life as shopkeepers was good. Then, as the economy
darkened, customers started cutting back.
Men with baggy pant waists said they’d tighten them with
belts. Eighty-dollar sales turned to $20. Fifty-dollar jobs became
$15.
And then the door opened less and less, with five to 10 customers
dribbling in each week. And Amy began to fret about how to pay the
$1,500-a-month rent.
"Now I am even giving discounts to customers who say, `My husband lost
a job, I’ve lost a job.’ I say `OK.’
"I feel very depressed. I feel so bad, because I’m here to work, to
make some money."
In this business climate, any lull can provoke worry. Friends without
work compound the concern. A contractor friend drops in; when pressed,
he said his price for materials has quintupled while he’s lost 80
percent of his residential roofing business.
A longtime customer comes in for some alterations; when asked about
the downturn, he gloats about paying $100 at an outlet store for two
pairs of New Religion jeans worth five times that.
"You gotta get religion," said Gilbert Calhoun, 62, of Sylmar, who
owns a court translation business in Studio City, when picking up his
jeans. "I’m starting to cut back. It’s affecting everybody. I’m
shopping and looking for deals."
Amy, who refuses to sit idle, makes clothes for herself and family
when business turns slack. Ed, quick to brew Armenian coffee for
visitors, muses about work, about fulfilling his American dream, about
hope that the next president can do something to save it.
"It’s a very tough time for small business. Our American dream was to
get the house, raise the kids here, make them good people for
society. We’ve almost reached our dream. I’m happy here with a
family. I’m hoping that we can live like we’ve lived before.
"(But) I’m considering selling the house. It’s time to think about
doing something as a backup, to go to McDonald’s and fry some fries or
something."
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