Angelo’s Bespoke Clothing Tailoring & Alteration Shop.
Angelo DePergola has been in business in Tampa Bay since 1970
To walk into Angelo’s Bespoke Clothing is to take a trip back in time to the sea-kissed streets of coastal Italy when clothes were made by hand with care to ensure the perfect fit.
Master Italian tailor Angelo DePergola has been making custom business attire for 63 years – almost 43 of those in Pinellas County – and he offers a wide variety of services from handcrafted custom suits to personalized ready-to-wear clothing that looks custom made.
Have you always struggled to find something distinct that no one else is wearing? Angelo will guide you through choosing the right fabric and design, helping pick from a large assortment of swatches and shades to ensure that your new outfit accentuates your skin tone and complexion.
Have you never been able to find that perfect suit or shirt in stock because of height or weight? If Angelo doesn’t have it in stock, he can help you pick from his vast catalog, guarantee the measurement, place the order and have it in store and ready to wear within four days.
Working with a budget? Angelo’s offers ready-made suits for half the cost of custom-made and alterations on any item bought in-store are always free.
Working late throughout the week? Angelo’s offers after-hours appointments Monday to Friday and Sundays upon request for that personalized experience.
Custom-Made Suits: Average turnaround four to six weeks.
Ready To Wear Suits: Average turnaround two to three days, alterations included.
Sports Coats, Shirts and Pants: Average turnaround of four to six weeks.
Women’s Business Attire: Available Upon Request
Alterations: Available for older clothing that no longer fits properly. Free with in-store purchase.
When you want that personal touch from a lifelong, master tailor, why go anywhere else for your business attire needs?
Angelo DePergola was just 10 years old when he chose the career that would become his life’s passion.
It was 1950, the Second World War had ended, and Angelo and his family were living in Bari on the southeastern coast of Italy along the Adriatic Sea. He had just finished grammar school, and he had an important decision to make.
His parents walked him up to the town square where families would socialize after dinner. Once there, they pointed to a group of young men and women – college graduates, they explained, and unemployed.
“My mother and father said, ‘You have two choices in life, either you learn to be a tailor or you learn to be a barber. I picked tailor.”
It was a trade that Angelo already had experienced, having helped his sister, a dressmaker, when she used to design and sew for customers at their home. He got a job at a little shop in Bari, Piscitelli Custom Tailor, reporting each morning at 7, six days a week, and working until 10 each night with two half-hour breaks per day. He worked for free, the experience his only reward.
“In those days, everybody wore custom-made clothes. There was no such thing as ready to wear. Every mile there were maybe two custom tailors across from each other. In order to learn to be a tailor, you had to be very young. You had to learn discipline.”
By age 11, he knew how to make a pair of custom pants. At 13, he could make a full suit with matching top coat. At night, after 15 hours in the shop, he would work on his own at home, making clothes for a handful of customers he cultivated on the side.
Angelo arrived in the United States in July 1956 when his parents and five siblings moved to New York City. He got a job in a shirt factory, enrolled in night school to learn to read and write English and then spent four years at a design academy.
By 1970, married with three young children, he moved to Pinellas County where his uncle lived. Jobs were scarce or just didn’t pay well – $1.00 an hour or less as a designer. He took a position making clothes for $150.00 a week at a clothing store. But it still didn’t fill his need.
After a year of toiling six days a week and being denied a raise, Angelo made the second biggest decision of his life – to go into business for himself – and Angelo Men’s Clothing and Tailor opened on Central Avenue at 72nd Street in St. Petersburg.
That same year, he coined the slogan that still backs up his work to this day: “The quality is long remembered after the price is long forgotten.”
The store has changed locations in Pinellas County three times in 42 years, but the quality has never wavered. As times have changed, so has the business. Angelo now offers “off the rack” suits, shirts and pants in addition to custom-made, but with his own unique twist. He does alterations for free so each customer still gets that perfect fit.
“When I’m through with them, they look like it was custom made for them.”
Customers travel to his small Palm Harbor shop from Tampa, from New York City, even from Italy – many referred by word of mouth.
“The reason for that is because they get quality workmanship and fitting from me.”
Angelo, now 73, understands the need for large retail chains that sell business attire. He just wishes more people thought to consider a tailor first. For those that do, it shows.
“Not everybody can afford a Mercedes or a Ferrari. If a customer wants something that’s going to last and fit good, they come see me.”
More than six decades since he made his first pair of pants, his voice still can’t hide the excitement that he feels for his life’s work.
“I love what I do, my friend, I really do. It’s a passion.”
He believes as strongly today that he was always meant to be a master tailor.
“The soul picks the body,” he says, “and the soul already knows what you’re going to do.”
