I was inspired by an article I read in 2001 and immediately was captivated by the story and idea. I couldn’t tell you if the story was true, and to be honest, it doesn’t matter even if it wasn’t.
A young soldier during WWII was a trained tailor prior to his service during the war. After the war, he settled down in one of the European cities. He was financially broke but found some work with a local tailor shop. He convinced the owner to allow him to produce garments for his own clients after hours. Having no money and nothing but his gunny sack from the war, he was forced to find creative ways to gather his supplies. He decided to carve up his gunny sack into makeshift tags and hand-embroidered his initials on them, which he then sewed into his tailored creations as his own trademark.
Years later, he had his own shop. One of the tailor’s customers brought a jacket into his shop to have him repair it. It was one of the tailor’s original pieces with one of the original gunny sack tags. While there, the customer asked the tailor what the story was behind the stained label that he had sewn into his jacket years earlier.
The tailor replied, “That stain is the blood from my friend and comrade from the war. A bullet ricocheted off his weapon and hit him in the head. I dragged him to safety, but my best friend died that day. From that unfortunate scenario, the clearest memory the tailor had was opening up his sack with his blood-soaked hands. That was how the bloodstains got on the sack.”
The tailor offered to remove the bloodstained tag and replace it with a new one, but the customer asked the soldier if he could please leave it, as he liked the story behind it.
That story got out, and over the years, people began coming into the tailor’s shop with garments adorned with those original gunny sack tags, asking the soldier to tell them the story behind the tags in their own garments. Somehow, the soldier could remember every story behind every stain or imperfection and the details on every tag. He always offered to replace the tags, but not a single person took him up on his offer.
That story always stuck with me. I wanted to honour that story and the soldier, real or not. Our tags are intentionally distressed so that no two tags are alike. This is my tribute to that soldier and his story, and to those people who have stories of life-defining moments, like that of the tailor. In the end, those little extra gifts we give to each other are the things that build communities. Our intention for the Palmwood brand is to celebrate and hopefully be a part of those life-defining moments and the communities they build.
Thank you for your support.
Eric J. Stevens
President