René-Paul Secondi, Ajactian tailor: "I cut flacchini" | Corsica Morning<

He is one of the last representatives of his profession, which he has practiced for 77 years. The Ajaccian tailor evokes this art profession that made the good years of Ajaccian society where elegance and good dress were daily concerns

The old Singer machine is like its owner. She still pricks the fabric with undiminished precision and energy. In his workshop on the first floor of 4 rue Maréchal-Ornano, René-Paul Secondi is busy as on the first day.

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Around a mannequin posed in the middle of the room, it still twirls around like a bee around its flower.

Here a needle, there a fabric. And that tape measure that's never far away. "He gave me work that one," mutters the tailor in front of a men's coat that a customer wanted fully lined in mink, with fur on the flaps and the ends of the sleeves.

The master has seen others. He will celebrate his 90th birthday on February 8 and he has been pushing the needle since 1946.

Seventy-seven years made to measure, at the service of elegance and clothing. A journey that began by chance, in 1945.

René-Paul was 13 when he left school. "I did like my friends, I didn't want to go there anymore, that didn't interest me. I wanted to be an electrician but it took a little more baggage," he confides. His parents accept that he is out of school but there is no question of remaining idle.

His grandmother Florine Secondi, who brought him up, was a laundrywoman at the military hospital which stood on Place Diamant, in place of the current Diamant II residence. "After the war, there was nothing left, so she provided a tailor's mother with old fatti di cutunacciu sheets, the scraps from which she used to make the interlining (the lining, editor's note) of the costumes. My grandmother mother told him about me and that's how I started the job," says the tailor.

The pre-adolescent pushes the door of the Laudato and Carcopino brothers' workshop, then located above the Laetitia cinema.

The blessed era concentrated in Ajaccio up to twenty tailors who made men's suits. Olmi, Vignali, Fornacciari, Doddoli were the main representatives and to learn their secrets, you had to get up early. In every sense of the term.

"Our day started at 6 a.m., develops René-Paul Secondi, and the first chore was to light the charcoal irons so that they were hot and without smoke at 8 a.m. The electric irons only arrived long after!"

The young boy then got down to tidying up the mess left by the workers who had sometimes worked until midnight. Before doing some shopping for one of the bosses who lived above the workshop. "He sent me to fetch milk and bread for his family," he adds.

René-Paul had to manage to get everything ready before the arrival of "i cacchi", the workers with golden hands. "They had a certain aura in Ajaccio but they didn't train us easily. So we got on well with one of them, we helped him by doing some shopping for him because the job had to be stolen!"

In the early days, you had to learn to hold the needle and stitch with the thimble. "It's the men's dice, he explains, while showing a copy, because we pushed the needle on the side, unlike the women who pushed rather with the tip of the finger."

"You could recognize the tailor at a glance"

In the capital of the monta sega, young apprentices did not escape hazing. “We were sent to the most unfriendly carpenter to ask for “a petra arruta l’aghi” (a stone to sharpen needles) and we were kicked out with loss and a crash, he says mischievously.

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Or we asked young people to get the velvet press from the tailor Doddoli. The latter, aware of the ride, was hiding to swaddle a large stone in a cloth, passing it off as the famous press.

He gave it to the young man and told him to go and ask another tailor for permission to borrow the press. The tailors were all in on it and like that, they asked the young man in charge of the heavy stone to go around all the workshops.

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When the exhausted apprentices finally arrived at the workshop and the laundry was opened, some of them flew into a rage in front of the hilarious workers!" René-Paul still laughs.

After a very busy week, work sometimes continued on Sunday. "The workers had the costumes delivered to us in the morning. We grumbled a little because we wanted to sleep, we were young. But we were very happy because the customers gave us the room to go to the cinema", slips the tailor, his eyes still amazed by Hollywood stars on the big screen.

"The tailor's job? You had to steal it"

At 15, he became a semi-worker, also made the suits "without touching the collars or the sleeves, because it was the hardest". And it was only three years later, at 18, that he was allowed to make a full suit.

There is the technique but also the spirit, specific to each tailor. "We gave the shapes to the iron, everyone had their own touch, through the use of certain fabrics as well", he develops.

And with experience, the then young man recognizes everyone's work at a glance. "On the large course and the small course, the men and women strolled around, each more elegant than the other. So with the colleagues, we trained to recognize the tailor for each suit that we saw passing by. And we were almost never wrong."

During the golden age, until the years 1960-1965, René-Paul Secondi made up to five suits a week. "I cut flacchini out of it!", Cowardly mocking the pure Ajaccien, in a subtle play on words, also an amateur, like all those of his generation, of "cutting jackets" at the expense of others.

At the start of the 1970s, fashions and society changed a lot.

The market overrun with mass-produced suits has sounded the death knell for a prestigious know-how. Sales plummet and tailors close.

In 1974, René-Paul Secondi's boss, Mr. Coggia, did not escape this but decided to open the unforgettable Port Glacier, an eternal reference for those who had the chance to taste their Strawberry melba and their Banana split.

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And now René-Paul Secondi follows the reconversion. "I went to Italy for six months to learn how to make ice cream. It lasted two years but I didn't like it. So I decided to set up a clothing clinic!"

Alterations in the service of the city's clothing stores will become his specialty, which he still practices today.

"In my day, the garbage collector put on a suit on Sundays, today even bankers wear stracci!"

With his wife Annie, whom he trained in making hems by hand, they no longer counted the hours.

"We worked for twenty-three shops at the same time. We got up at 3 a.m., we sewed until 6 a.m. before a break until 8 a.m. and we resumed until the evening."

Despite a crazy week, Saturday night was not synonymous with rest for the couple, who are big fans of ballroom dancing. "At 11 p.m. I would put on a tuxedo, my wife a dress and we would go out dancing the night away."

The Ajaccien of the party, the joy of living.

René-Paul's universe was all about elegance in all circumstances, with the only dress code being the suit and tie. To wander around the course, go to the casino, go out with friends.

“What now? Poor us! The men are dressed in jeans, t-shirts and down jackets all year round. today, even bankers are in stracci!"

The stracci, precisely. They designate fabrics that have "nothing more to do with what we had the chance to work with".

He tends to English samples of fine wool, mohair or vicuna - the most expensive in the world - in which he made suits "that lasted twenty years".

"A suit with these fabrics today can go up to €6,000, while the lowest suit costs between €800 and €1,200. They are not worth anything, but people have quickly made their choice."

He no longer makes the three pieces but continues, tirelessly, to alter the clothes entrusted to him with an immense know-how that many do not suspect.

Stop? This is frankly not the kind of house. "I would have the feeling of being finished," he says, sitting in front of his sewing machine.

His many customers, although fans of "jeans-tee-shirt-down jackets", still need him.