The Boston Globe
October 2023
“The last of the great Boston tailors.”
In a city that has lost most of its old craft houses, Barrett & Sons is a quiet counterexample. Ninety-five years in the same room, doing the same thing, well.
Our Story
Beacon Hill neighborhood tailor.
My grandfather Walter Barrett opened the shop in 1928, a short walk from the Boston Athenæum, and cut for many of its members. He believed a suit ought to outlast its first owner, and taught my father, and my father taught me.
We remain a small house: three cutters, an apprentice, and the same address on Charles Street we have kept for the better part of a century. Much of our work is quiet: a jacket taken in, a lapel restored, a father's dinner suit made to fit a son. Some of it is a new commission, cut from English or Italian cloth and finished by hand. All of it leaves in the condition we would expect for ourselves.
We have long been fortunate in our clientele. In recent years we have opened the book a little wider; new clients are welcome, and are treated no differently from those we have dressed for forty years.
Thomas Barrett, Head Cutter
