Strasbourg: A Tailor in The City of Suits

Published on May 6, 2014

LifestyleEU-TOPIA: Time to Vote

Stras­bourg is the cap­i­tal city of the Al­sace re­gion in east­ern France. It's right on the bor­der with Ger­many and has re­peat­edly changed hands through­out his­tory. But now, thanks to 60 years of peace, the city is a thriv­ing, mul­ti­cul­tural cap­i­tal of Eu­rope.

De­spite being a very lovely city, it is not fa­mous for its peo­ple, mon­u­ments or food. Stras­bourg is fa­mous for the Eu­ro­pean in­sti­tu­tions.

One week every month, Eu­ro­pean politi­cians who usu­ally work and live in Brus­sels move en masse to Stras­bourg. This monthly mi­gra­tion fill the streets and ho­tels. Dur­ing this week Stras­bourg be­comes "The City of Suits".

Xavier He­do­ire is a tai­lor who lives in Stras­bourg. He came to the city with one thing in mind: to suit and boot Stras­bourg's main play­ers. More specif­i­cally, he wanted to tap into the suit sell­ing po­ten­tial of the Eu­ro­pean in­sti­tu­tions.

How­ever, life is not easy for a per­son who en­joys tai­lor­ing men's suits and wants to do it for a liv­ing: Stras­bourg is The City of Suits only seven days a month and it is hard to find clients who come back reg­u­larly.

When Xavier first came to Stras­bourg, there were no men's tai­lors who made to mea­sure.

But clouds loom large on the hori­zon for Xavier and his fel­low Stras­bour­geois.

There is talk of doing away with the so-called "sec­ond par­lia­men­tary seat". Some of Eu­rope's politi­cians want to abol­ish the Stras­bourg par­lia­ment and do every­thing in Brus­sels.

They com­plain about per­sonal in­con­ve­nience and the cost, but they spare lit­tle thought for the peo­ple of Stras­bourg, many of whom de­pend on the Eu­ro­pean in­sti­tu­tions for their liveli­hood.

Xavier, like most peo­ple in Stras­bourg, wants to keep the Par­lia­ment. For him it's not just an eco­nomic issue. Stras­bourg's Eu­ro­pean in­sti­tu­tions hold an im­por­tant sym­bolic mean­ing for the city.

Stras­bourg: A Tai­lor in The City of Suits, by Josep Gutiérrez

This ar­ti­cle is part of a spe­cial se­ries de­voted to Stras­bourg. It's part of "EU-topia : Time To Vote", a pro­ject run by Cafébabel in part­ner­ship with the Hip­pocrène foun­da­tion, The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion the Min­istry of For­eign Af­faires and the EVENS foun­da­tion. The whole se­ries will soon be avail­able on the home­page.