Any tailors here? Garak is. I wonder, how do tailors feel about DS9 when it's making fun of their profession. Tailor lines towards Garak are little jokes, but lines like "why don't you go to your shop and sow something" are in some way demeaning.
I imagine that real tailor Star Trek fans have an extra incentive than the rest of us to see villains get their commupence when villains sneer at Garak for being a tailor.
Quick search on Youtube didn't find it, but it was Dukat who said that to Garak in 'The Way of The Warrior', if memory serves...
For what it's worth, people were always very complimentary towards Garak's work as a tailor, and Garak always did seem proud of the work he did, though naturally people had to have a chuckle about the fact that this once ruthless member of the Obsidian Order who was a spy/torturer was now just... a tailor. A regular joe schmo. I never thought the writers ever did the profession any injustice or insulted it, though.
The only time anyone insulted Garak's profession was in comparison to the prestige of his old profession.
A spy turned tailor. That reminds me of the title of John le Carre's novel "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy".
I always though that by the 24th century, being a tailor would be a job of utter pretension. Clearly, with access to replicators, one wouldn't need a tailor to make or alter clothes. You simply program in your exact size and get what you want. So, going to a tailor would be even more of a vanity/luxury than it is today.
Part of the tailor's job is measuring in the correct way to get your exact size. Another part is how to fit every variation or irregularity most smoothly. Another part is design, being able to help the customer create a look they like. I'm sure a replicator could do as well as an off-the-rack suit, but nowhere near a bespoke suit.
Sure, a replicated garment wouldn't be as good as bespoke, but I think it would be much better than today's off-the-rack.
Part of the tailor's job also is to go beyond simply having something that fits, a gunny sack can fit. You go to a tailor to get something that falls and drapes in a fashionable way, something that moves with you. You wear it, and it wears you. It doesn't take much to spot the difference between a tailored suit jacket, and one bought off the rack down at Walmart.
All true. Still, I think that being a tailor in the 24th century is a job with a very select clientele. I think it's less needed than it is today. But I love that Garak is a tailor - it so suits his personality: egotistical, ostensibly humble, and a bit smarmy. Robinson plays it so well. Any other second-career choice would probably have flopped.
I never saw Garak being a tailor as mocking real tailors. Anything Dukat said to Garak would be mocking, because he didn't like Garak - it had to do with Garak, not tailors.
I don't know if Dukat ever said anything of the kind to Garak. But another one of Garak's fellow Cardassian did indeed make an insulting remark like that. It was Gul Toran. He told Garak, "Go back to your sewing kit, tailor." The episode was "Profit and Loss". I happened to catch the episode on the H&I channel yesterday. Earlier in the episode, Toran walked into Garak's tailor shop, and he mocked Garak by telling him, "How the mighty have fallen." He wasn't making fun of tailors. It was more like he was poking fun at how a mighty spymaster had become a mere tailor. There were plenty of references to Garak's tailor business in the episode. I think that Garak sometimes brings up clothing and tailoring to the person that he is talking to as a means to deflect attention from his shady reputation.
I always found it ironic that Garak was actually a very good tailor, which made his previous job all the more amazing.