A 90-year-old Italian immigrant
tailor will dress Vice President J.D. Vance for Donald Trump's
second inauguration as American president on Monday.
The suits, shirts and ties to be worn by Vance at the
inauguration ceremonies were hand-made in the Cincinatti shop
founded by Romualdo Pelli, who immigrated from Italy in the
1960s.
Vance has been a long-time customer of Romualdo's. "Are you
kidding? A country boy who came from Italy from a town of less
than 15,000 inhabitants. I would never have dreamed of it," the
tailor told a local TV station in the Ohio capital recently
Steered by a family friend who had deemed him too fragile for
other professions, Romualdo has been sewing since he was eight
years old and lived in Formia, on the Tyrrhenian coast between
Rome and Naples.
In 2008, the Wall Street Journal listed him among the few
"master tailors" left in the United States, tailors who learned
the art through a long apprenticeship and still appreciate the
importance of tailoring by hand.
Today, given his age, he limits himself to "supervising" the
orders of celebrities like Vance who come to the shop whose
ownership he sold a few years ago.
Pelli's other clients have reportedly included the first man on
the moon, Neil Armstrong, the actor Robert Redford and Henry
Heimlich, the inventor of the noted first aid technique used to
treat people who are choking when food has gone down the wrong
way.
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