A few years ago I paid Leo D’Angelo a couple hundred dollars for a suit. When I checked my closet this morning, I found a Mass card in one of the pockets of that black pinstripe suit I last wore to a first cousin’s funeral. That discovery alone illustrates the true value of the garment. I once bought a suit for $1,000 but rejected that outfit for the funeral. Instead I wore the suit I bought from Leo at LaSalle the Image Maker in Scranton’s South Side.
What Leo taught me over the years about style weaves a blessed design he sewed with golden thread into the fabric of his work as a master tailor and haberdasher who served his city, family and friends with unique style.
A handsome shock of thick white hair complemented his daily outfit. His suit matched his shirt that matched his tie that matched the puff sprouting from his breast pocket like a bright young flower in bloom. Dapper gentleman Leo D’Angelo carried himself with more old-world panache than any local moneybags lawyer, businessman, judge or elected official no matter how impressed any of them are with themselves.
Now, at 96, Scranton’s best-dressed man is gone.
Leo understood how a new “affordable” suit for a special occasion meant as much if not more than the $1,000 garb in which some men waltzed around town. The suits in which Leo outfitted me and countless others for a couple hundred bucks apiece made us more a part of the fiber of our city than any expensive suit from any pricy store. Let the pompous types scoff at an affordable suit. We know a snob when we see one — usually by his costume.
No better men’s store ever existed in Scranton than Leo’s. No place embroidered a better pattern of tradition onto the hearts of people who depended on Leo to meet the needs of proms, funerals, weddings or whatever other occasion that gives a man reason to get all dolled up. Leo might have turned me around a few times to fit me in front of the mirror, but he never turned his back on a customer.
Leo D’Angelo made every patron know he mattered as soon as he opened the door and entered the LaSalle fashion den cluttered with full clothing racks, antiques, display cases, nostalgic bric-a-brac and gadgets that filled the room. Downstairs, though, was where Leo worked his magic. Leaning over a sewing machine he could take an empty coal bag and turn it into a tuxedo, a master molding a garment like an Italian Renaissance sculptor in Florence molding a piece of clay.
Knowing his customers inside and out, inseam length and waist, sometimes from the time they were children, Leo offered his precious gift to anyone who bought a suit and felt the glow as soon as he tried on the jacket. Boys and men alike, people who didn’t usually wear a suit, left the store knowing Leo helped them dress for success, providing them with a bit more confidence walking out than they might have had walking into his men’s clothing emporium.
Leo knew I was partial to wide pinstripes. Clothes don’t make the man, Leo said, but they help. Telling me I was built for a particular size suit and making me feel like a dashing heavyweight champion, Leo understood the importance of presence. More importantly, he bestowed a fashionable street chic on those of us for whom he cared.
Other suits in my closet might have cost more money, but they lack the personal touch Leo gifted me and other customers that included members of the local New York Yankees farm team, a couple of real Yankees and the late famous actor and playwright Jason Miller who frantically flew home from California needing a suit when his mother died. Leo took care of Jason, providing swaddling comfort to Scranton’s sad savant.
My dad taught me to always fight one more round. Leo never quit, never retired, gave up or gave into the pressures of the toughest Scranton day.
Tonight, in Leo’s honor, I’ll put on my favorite black pinstripes for dinner at home. I’ll play Dean Martin music and cook macaroni in olive oil and garlic. And I’ll toast a man with flair who stood with me in my corner when others didn’t and who helped me get ready for whatever was coming my way.
“Nobody in Scranton ever had more class than Leo D’Angelo,” I’ll say when I raise my glass of red wine to my friend’s memory. “Nobody ever will.”