Thaindian News

New York, June 30 (ANI): An Indian tailor, who started off at his father’s clothing store in Ahmedabad, India, as a combination salesman/janitor, has now become a favourite with New York’s top jocks and political bigwigs.

Custom tailor Mohan Ramchandani, 60, was just 10-years-old when he started working for his father before moving to Hong Kong to learn the rag trade, and then immigrating to the US in 1972.

He became well known after retired basketball player Patrick Ewing’s mother called him up to get a suit made for her son.

“She said, ‘If you make his suit, you will be lucky in the future’,” the New York Post quoted Ramchandani as saying about the call.

At the time, Ewing, 47, was just a basketball star at Georgetown University needing dapper suits for his internship at Sen. Bob Dole’s office.

“I didn’t know who he was. I wasn’t following the basketball,” Ramchandani admitted.

Despite his reluctance to fork over 29 dollars for a People’s Express plane ticket to measure a 7-foot-tall kid in his dorm room for a 150 dollars silver herringbone suit, Ramchandani did it anyway and it changed his life, the Post said.

Once Ewing started playing for the Knicks, Ramchandani became his permanent tailor, and Ewing became the official face of the brand, championing it all around town.

NBA legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier, who has been coming to Ramchandani twice a year since the ’80s for new threads, has more than 500 eclectic suits made by the tailor.

“I’ve been voted best-dressed athlete a lot of times,” Frazier said.

“I come here and tell them to show me the stuff no one else wants. I know I’ll like it,” he revealed.

Ramchandani has styled former mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Ed Koch, along with Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, and his other clients include NFL player Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Gary Carter, Charles Oakley, Bernie Williams and other Knicks players.

Today, Ramchandani employs his 22-year-old daughter, Roma, as his bookkeeper and his 31-year-old son, Victor, as his partner. (ANI)