Classic Tailoring Techniques by Roberto Cabrera/Patricia Flaherty Meyers

In reading the book Classic Tailoring Techniques for Menswear by Roberto Cabrera/ Patricia Flaherty Meyers I found it very constructive. There is a second edition to this book as well that is by Roberto Cabrera and Denis Antoine. Although it does not provide much information about the authors and their background sewing, designing, tailoring I did find out a brief introduction to Roberto and Patricia. The author Roberto Cabrera taught tailoring techniques at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. His career has been balanced between professionally tailoring custom suits as well as teaching the principles. With over forty years of experience, he created this book as a construction guide for tailoring garments. Patricia Flaherty Meyers was one of Roberto’s students, and is a contribution to this book. Through researching Roberto Cabrera and reading the book, I felt they provided a large amount of insight and experience, as many others feel based off of their reviews as well.

With this book being a construction manual, it is not your average book with chapters and a plot. It is a book with detailed instructions and pictures demonstrating certain aspects of tailoring. It is not designed to read from cover to cover, based on what you need instructions for whether it be pockets, jackets, etc this book is split up as a reference. The beginning of the book has a table of contents split into categories such as tailoring, patterns, fabrics, alterations, pants, etc. It is evenly dispersed throughout the book between images and text instructions, next to majority of the instructions there are visual instructions as well. Although the pictures are in black and white and kind of difficult to see, it is nice to see real garments versus digital. There also is a lot of sketched visuals too similar to the professional sewing book. This allows diversity in showing sketches, real garments, and text instructions to assure the reader has a good understanding of not only how to make it but what it should look like as an end result.

This book is very instructive and clearly written. I would recommend it to those that have basic knowledge of sewing and tailoring so that the construction taught in this book is just reassuring basic concepts. It is a very direct book with instructions and visuals for home sewers and students of this material but if you do not know how to efficiently use patterns, stitches, or use a sewing machine it may be difficult. However, if you do know the basics of sewing and just need assistance in specific techniques, this book will be very useful as a guide. Although I did not purchase the book myself, I believe it holds true to it’s price value. It includes a few patterns at the back of the book along with all of the knowledge this guide has to offer. If tailoring or suits is something you desire creating, I highly recommend the investment in Classic Tailoring Techniques for Menswear by Roberto Cabrera and Patricia Flaherty Meyers.