My grandfather started his own business after the First World War in 1920. He was a ‘tourneur’, somebody who took wornout garments completely apart, turned the fabric around and made a ‘new’ jacket our of an old one by just using the inside of it as the outside.
It was the first thing my grandfather did and little by little he made more and more half and full ready-made suits. He was the first one in Antwerp to start a kind of prêt-a-porter for men; this was something new, before everyone got everything made by a tailor. He built up a very big business after a while. In the end, he owned a factory with lots of employees and mills in the south of Belgium, where he also wove his own fabric.
—from Mono Kultur #20, 2009
