Tailor-made Shorts

When my parents were in town, we went to a huge market where you could buy almost anything you can imagine. My mom was looking for material so she could have a qipao made for my sister, so we walked down aisles and aisles of little stalls selling hundreds of kinds of fabric. I began to realize that given how cheap fabric is, and how cheap labor is, that having clothes made would be really fun.

I wanted to have some shorts made because summer is almost here (it seems like just a few weeks ago I was complaining about a scarf not being enough, and now I wish I had an air conditioner in my room).

My goal was to have shorts that would make people in America say, "Cool shorts. Where'd you buy them?" And I'd say, "I didn't, I had them tailored." Finally I found the perfect shop and bought one pattern that had black Chinese characters written in cursive on a beige background, and other with white, old pictographic characters on black material.

I took them to the tailor, brought along the one pair of shorts that I had as a model, and that was that. I don't even know where you would find a tailor in America.

I went to pick up my shorts yesterday with a certain degree of trepidation. It's not expensive, but I still didn't want them to look horrible. I'm really glad that the shorts I showed her were ones that were really expensive (imagine, the only pair of really nice shorts I've ever bought, and I end up making two copies of it and adjusting it slightly to perfectly fit my build). The shorts look so sweet.

Check out the black on beige:

Here's the final tally:

Material for shorts: 18 kuai

Employing a tailor: 35 kuai

Having custom-made shorts that you think look really awesome: way more than $8-worth