NEW YORK, NY.- In a small workroom on Pell Street in Chinatown in Manhattan, Evan O’Hara bent over a scrap of skin from an alligator’s leg and used a large cotton swab to dab it with electric orange dye. Nearby, Janos Papai was pushing a hulking, ancient-looking machine over another scrap of bleached alligator, stitching on a zipper.
O’Hara, 39, is a leather craftsman whose exclusive custom creations range from $1,800 pickleball racket covers to purple ombre McLaren racing car seats. Papai, 68, is his mentor.
The two men met 15 years ago when O’Hara was a junior employee just starting his career and Papai was a factory owner in the garment district making leather fashions for designers like Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs. O’Hara began hanging around Papai’s factory, asking the veteran craftsman questions and watching him work. Soon, an informal apprenticeship began.
“He was a young kid, curious and polite, and I wanted to help the younger generation,” said Papai, who immigrated from Romania in 1984 and started out sweeping floors before eventually buying the factory where he once worked.
O’Hara is a member of a burgeoning generation of “makers” who eschew new technologies like 3D printing and computer-generated designs and instead embrace old-fashioned handicrafts like leather-making, millinery and lacework. In recent years, as skilled artisans like Papai retire and close their factories, O’Hara and others like him are working to glean their knowledge before it is lost. Some are using these new skills to open ateliers, or small custom garment-making studios, in pockets like Chinatown and Brooklyn’s Industry City.
There has been a “resurgence of interest in craft” since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, said Fiona Dieffenbacher, an associate professor of fashion design at the School of Fashion at Parsons School of Design.
“There has been this emphasis on materiality, with more students wanting to weave their own fabrics, and growing popularity for classes like shoe construction,” she said.
O’Hara’s wife, Gigi Burris, is a milliner whose atelier shares a space with her husband’s workroom on Pell Street. Burris uses hand-blocking, a centuries-old technique whereby material is stretched over hand-carved wooden blocks, then manipulated with steam and rope, before being set in an oven.
In 2022, inspired by Papai’s mentorship of her husband, Burris launched a nonprofit, Closely Crafted. “We are in a crisis,” she said. “These crafts, the ability to make things, is on a dramatic decline.”
Closely Crafted educates young artisans and next month will launch a pilot apprenticeship program, with the selected applicant working at a multigenerational factory in the garment district, Tom’s Sons International Pleating.
New York City has traditionally been known for old-school “rag men” who supervise cavernous garment factories churning out mass-market fashions. Europe, however, particularly Paris, has long been considered the epicenter of couture, with generations of seamstresses celebrated for hand-embroidering costly custom gowns.
There is now growing demand here for these skills, experts said. “There are a lot of jobs available, a lot of opportunities for artisans,” Burris said. “It is luxury fashion, yes, but the jobs aren’t luxury.”
Part of the disconnect comes from fashion schools that emphasize design skills, such as sketching, at the expense of the crafts that bring those designs to life, she said.
“There is an aging workforce nearing retirement and a generation of younger people who were conditioned to want to get a higher education but not to want to sit at a sewing machine,” Burris said. “Not everyone can be a designer.”
Dieffenbacher of Parsons said this mindset is shifting. The school opened its Making Center in 2016 and has reimagined its undergraduate curriculum to better integrate design with making.
“We got rid of this hierarchy,” she said, “and are framing making as design.”
Still, there is more to be done.
Christy Rilling, Michelle Obama’s former dressmaker and the designer behind Guild of Hands, a Manhattan atelier, often relies on a whisper network to find skilled artisans, she said. Her clients include Bruce Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa Springsteen, and the tour for Paul McCartney. She employs a dozen workers, including an embroiderer, a textile designer and a patternmaker. Many of them are older and not American-born.
“It is such a specific skill set,” she said. “Americans typically don’t learn how to sew or make clothes, and there is a gap in ages of people who have those skills.”
As for O’Hara, the relationship with Papai has been foundational. “Even when Janos was at the height of his career and so busy, he would always help me,” O’Hara said.
It was a fortuitous relationship, not only in terms of O’Hara’s career. He met his wife at Papai’s factory. She was there working on a project for Parsons, where she was a student. Burris said that when she spotted O’Hara, “I asked Janos: ‘Who’s that? He’s so cute! Can you get me his number?’”
O’Hara, a Florida native who used to be a vegetarian before working with alligator skins, often hunts the animals himself. A chance meeting with a seafood wholesaler after a hunting trip spurred his commitment to the leather.
“I told him I only wanted the skin, and he just wanted the meat, so from that day forward, my life changed,” O’Hara said. “I began upcycling all the skins that he was throwing away.”
Each alligator skin is unique. The most desirable part is the belly, which has a bigger scale pattern, but O’Hara also uses the legs and tail. Leather is a particularly challenging medium to work in, because it is thick and less malleable than fabric, and is far less forgiving.
“You cannot make a mistake because if you redo the seam, you will see the holes,” Papai said. “With fabric, you can just sew it again. With leather, you must be perfect the first time.”
To work the material, O’Hara takes what is called the “crust” — tanned leather that is bleached white — and marks a pattern. He then cuts and dyes it himself in a laboratory he set up in the basement of his home in Brooklyn. After the dye has dried, depending on the desired product, he might use various techniques, including sanding and oiling the material to soften it.
“I taught him step-by-step how to do this,” Papai said. “In school, you don’t learn this. In school you learn paperwork.”
In 1996, after working for his boss for a decade, Papai purchased the business from him for $30,000. For a time, he worked exclusively for Ralph Lauren, manufacturing all the designer’s leather, suede and shearling. During the pandemic, business slowed. Papai manufactured masks and gowns to donate to hospitals, but eventually, the Papais — his wife of 40 years, Stefanie Papai, runs the financial side of the business — decided to close their factory and retire. They purchased a place in Tennessee, where they plan to move after selling their Brooklyn home.
When he closed the factory, Papai sold his materials and tools to O’Hara, including a rare machine that makes fringe and was used to create the iconic Ralph Lauren Western-inspired jackets. It has been a rewarding experience, he said.
“It is wonderful to see Evan learn, and now make his own way,” he said.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
