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Published: December 16 2011

FT. LAUDERDALE, Dec. 16 -- Suppose you have an expensive suit. It hangs well on you, compliments your odd frame, and was made with the best materials, to last.

Alas, there’s a small rip on the pants seat. You could have any number of tailors or seamstresses back the tear with a patch, sew the rip shut.

“Bull,” says Myshka Athenisou, proprietor of Stychin Tyme Women’s and Men’s Alterations & Custom Design. “That won’t last. You need to reweave it. It’ll cost you more, but that’s what you need to do.”

Reweaving. Mysha takes a small segment of matching cloth snipped from a hidden part of the suit, then painstakingly, eye-achingly even with a magnifying glass, reweaves the ends of individual threads one by one with a needle, a kind of crochet in miniature, to make the rip disappear. Seventy-five bucks, but the suit is good as news.

“It’s an art, a lost art,” says Ester Ferreira, one of Myshka’s partners.

“I’m not a seamstress or a seamstress,” Myshka says. “I’m an alterationist first, a designer and a bespoken tailor.”

Myshka, born in Greece, inherited her skills from her grandfather, who she said tailored for the Russian Czar. She has done work in Hawaii, Japan, China – all over, in her 80 years. She opened this small shop, in a tiny former motel right off Las Olas, about 10 years ago.

Myshka, Ferreira and Dorothy Jones work here as a team, stitches flying, scissors snapping, sewing machines abuzz.

Their clientele is wide ranging, including some rich and famous, who need designer clothes recreated on a budget, who need heirloom clothing copied or repaired, who need special fittings for less-than-perfect bodies.

“We’re the only the store that guarantees everything out the door,” she says.

Myshka keeps it all moving, with boundless energy, a barrage of good-humored insults for staff and customers alike, and all of it salted with the more than occasional profanity.

“I say what I think,” Myshka says.

“Some days I want to throw her out of the room,” Ferreira said. “Most days she’s just a lot of fun.”

“She’s one of a kind,” Jones says. “Thank God.”

No computers here, no email. Bookkeeping is done by hand, in ledgers. Very little advertising; Myshka’s reputation is word of mouth.

“I’m honest,” she says. “I deliver. It’s quality. I do it all with a sense of humor and I don’t give a…”

Myshka’s, and all the people there, are a great find.

Stychin Tyme

Myshka, Inc

233 SE 12^th Ave.

Fort Lauderdale

954-712-8887

Monday through Friday, 7 a.m to 6 p.m.

Saturday 7 a.m. to 4; Sunday by appointment only

{gallery}Myshka{/gallery}

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