A Tailor-Made Man

Inside a steam-saturated tailor shop, John Paul Bart presses creases into silk while worshipping the social sorcery stitched into every lapel; one purloined dinner jacket later, the hitherto invisible artisan slips past mahogany doors into chandeliered opulence where magnate Abraham Nathan—equal parts Midas and lonely demiurge—decides that this eloquent silhouette is the miracle his embattled docks require. From the catwalk of borrowed wool to the catacombs of waterfront politics, Bart negotiates mutiny, board-room bravado and Gustavus Sonntag’s serpentine envy, until the suit’s provenance unravels and the self-made prince is hurled back to the cutting tables. Yet capital, ever restless, reclaims its prodigy: Nathan returns, thread in hand, to stitch Bart permanently into the city’s fabric and into the affections of Tanya Huber, the tailor’s luminous daughter whose gaze first measured the man beneath the gabardine.