Your host for the course
You may know Reza from his famous photograph in which he wears his navy blue suit with Pagoda shoulders or his 46 episodes of Tailoring in Conversation Podcast. He is the founder of AKEILÄ€ and International School of Tailoring. Both are companies with a mission to serve the bespoke tailoring industry with work that inspires, educates and innovates. He will be your host for the "How to Make a Bespoke Jacket" coat-making course on YouTube.
Follow Reza on Instagram @hotneedleandburningthread
From refugee to founder
In the cold month of October 2000, 9-year-old Reza left Iran with his parents to walk through the dark forests of Bosnia, hoping to reach Italy by foot along with a group of 20 strangers, all risking their lives for a better future.
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After a month of 8-hour walks during the night, often sleeping in farm stables, he reached the Netherlands where he would spend 7 years in a refugee camp, awaiting his citizenship.
Reza in Iran, 1997.
"The refugee camp was filled with people from at least 30 countries. Miraculously, all these different cultures found a way to get along, with the occasional conflict. How was this possible? I think it was our identity. We were refugees!"
School from the refugee camp, 2001. Reza stands left to the boy wearing red in the middle. The girl in the light blue t-shirt on the right side of the photo is Mowgli, his partner who films and edits the video lessons.
Inspired by the creative achievements of others, Reza experimented with rap music, sound design, game design, photography, and film making. In 2013, a friend introduces him to a tailor. This introduction changed Reza's course of life for good.
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"My friend sold me the world with his toothless tailor. After 9 months, I received my first-ever bespoke jacket. It was a disastrous spectacle that can't be described in words. Fuelled by anger and frustration, I went to my mom. I asked her to show me how to set up a sewing machine. Two months later, I was an intern at Chittleborough & Morgan on London's Savile Row".
The disaster jacket that got Reza into tailoring.
Reza at 2017 Golden Shears Awards.
"I spent 5 years observing everything around me, from the way clients shook hands with my boss to which interns actually got the job. I saw myself do strange things. One morning, I boiled the kettle and put it in the fridge!
But I also observed the limitations of our workshop and that of others. Questions rose to my mind to which no satisfactory answer was given. I wanted to solve problems, so I launched AKEILÄ€ and later International School of Tailoring."
Example of Reza's work as an apprentice at Chittleborough & Morgan, Savile Row. Instead of padding with ordinary white basting thread, he took the initiative to use colours and forms to create themes that reflected details of each client's life.