Urban Tailor opens: Yang has fitted Bernie Sanders
The Enterprise — Elizabeth Floyd Mair
Outside the box: Pauline Martin of Bethlehem brought in a blouse that was large and boxy, and Yang trimmed it down and added seams to give it a more fitted waistline.
GUILDERLAND — Euni Yang taught herself to sew as a child, when she wanted clothes for her Barbie dolls; she would look at pictures in magazines and copy them, she said.
A few years after arriving in the United States in 1994 with her husband, who came to study theology, she began sewing professionally.
She worked as a tailor for 10 years at Men’s Wearhouse in Colonie, working her way up to head tailor, before opening her own shop this month in Guilderland.
She had just three days off between resigning from Men’s Wearhouse and opening her new shop, Urban Tailor.
In the shop located at the side of Star Plaza at 2050 Western Ave., Yang works on everything from suits and casual clothes to prom dresses and wedding gowns.
She can take clothes in or let them out to fit an individual wearer’s body shape or make something old fashionable again, as when she removes the pleats from the front of a decades-old pair of slacks.
One of Yang’s customers, she said, was a young woman who wanted a suit jacket that had belonged to her late father cut down to fit her. Another customer, who stopped by this week, brought a scarf that was too bulky for her taste and asked Yang to make it narrower and finish the edges.
Over the years that she was with Men’s Wearhouse, Yang picked up some well-known repeat customers: She made a number of custom suits for Captain Richard Phillips, for his meetings with President Barack Obama and various dignitaries after an incident in which his ship was hijacked and he was kidnapped by Somali pirates. She has also done many alterations for former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Yang’s husband, Charlie Yang, stopped by at the beginning of a recent interview to lend his wife support, he said. He wanted to stress that Euni Yang had studied art in college and had a wonderful eye for color balance.
Charlie Yang is pastor at McKownville United Methodist Church, which he joined recently after five years at the Voorheesville United Methodist Church. The couple lives in Guilderland has two children, one still in college and the other a recent graduate.
The younger, a daughter, is named Grace, which Yang says is the meaning of her own given name, Euni.