Looking for alterations in the Seaport is harder than it ought to be. The neighborhood went up fast, and most of the ground floors went to restaurants and lobbies. The small trades that fill in around older Boston streets never followed. There is no hem shop tucked under a triple-decker on Seaport Boulevard. Dependable Cleaners has been a family business here since 1944, and our tailors work on Seaport garments every week. The garments come to them by van.
Here is how that works.
Why is it hard to find alterations in the Seaport?
Rent, mostly. A tailor needs a small space and a long lease, and the Seaport’s retail was built for a different kind of tenant. The work still happens. It just happens somewhere else, and the garment does the travelling.
That is a fair trade once you have set it up. It is a nuisance if you think about it the night before you need the trousers.
What the neighborhood actually sends out
Suit trousers, mainly. The Seaport is a work neighborhood, and work clothes wear at the hem and the seat before they wear anywhere else. After that come dress hems, jacket sleeves that sit a half inch long, coat zippers that have given up, and buttons.
Then there is the September pile. People come back from the Cape and the Vineyard, open the closet, and find the good jacket does not sit right anymore. Some of that is the jacket. Some of it is the summer. Either way it is a twenty minute job for a tailor and a month of avoidance for everyone else.
Alterations are available at all twelve of our stores and through pickup and delivery. That second part is what most people in the Seaport do not know.
Do you have to leave the neighborhood to get something hemmed?
No. The Seaport is on our delivery list, along with South Boston, the North End, Beacon Hill, Downtown, Charlestown and Back Bay. You put the bag out, we take it, our tailors do the work, and it comes back on the next run.
Setting it up takes a few minutes. You sign up online or at any store, we text the evening before we are in your neighborhood, and you reply with a Y before 7am if you want a stop. Pickups and drop-offs run two days a week, either Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday, depending on where you are. Put a note in the bag saying what you want done, or tell the driver. It tends to be the same driver every week.
If you would rather hand it to somebody
Some garments are worth a conversation. A jacket that needs the shoulders touched. A dress for something that matters. Anything where “take it in a bit” means five different things to five different people.
For that, the nearest counters are 110 Newbury Street in the Back Bay and 1141 Dorchester Avenue in Dorchester. Courthouse station sits on Seaport Boulevard at Pittsburg Street, with elevators up to Thomson Place and Fan Pier Boulevard, and the Silver Line from there runs to South Station. World Trade Center station, at Congress Street and World Trade Center Avenue, is the other end of the same line. Bring the shoes you plan to wear with the trousers, or the hem is a guess.
All twelve are on our locations page.
What we will fix, and what we will tell you to let go
We shorten and lengthen hems. We take in and let out seams where the fabric allows it, replace zippers, move buttons, reline a jacket, repair a moth hole, and reshape something that fit differently two years ago.
We will also tell you when a repair costs more than the garment is worth. A tailor who says yes to everything is doing you no favors. A jacket with a fused chest that has bubbled is not coming back. A hem that has already been let down twice has no fabric left to give. Clothes built to last a season usually do exactly that.
Christa Hagearty is our president and CEO, the fourth generation of the family to run the company, and Dependable is certified women-owned.
The cleaning underneath the tailoring
Most alterations arrive alongside a cleaning order, and the order matters: clean first, fit second. A garment that has been cleaned hangs differently, and a hem set on a stretched, unwashed pair of trousers will be wrong by the time it comes back to you.
Our cleaning uses GreenEarth® technology, part of the EarthCare Cleaning Systems® program. The solutions clean, disinfect and break down naturally in the environment, and garments come back smelling fresh rather than of anything. The Mayor of Boston’s Greenovate Award came out of that work and the energy savings behind it. There is more on our green cleaning page.
The weekly things, shirts and suits and everything that goes out and comes back, sit under laundry and dry cleaning. The tailoring side lives on our tailoring and alterations page. If you want a source on fiber care standards that is not us, the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute is the place.
Frequently asked questions
Do you do alterations in the Seaport without a store there?
Yes. Our tailors do the work off-site, and garments reach them through free pickup and delivery, which covers the Seaport two days a week. You do not carry anything further than your own door.
How do I know which day you come to the Seaport?
We text you the evening before. Reply Y before 7am and a driver stops. Every neighborhood runs on either a Monday and Thursday or a Tuesday and Friday rhythm.
Can I send alterations and cleaning in the same bag?
Yes, and that is the sensible order. Write what you want done on a note, or tell the driver. We clean first and fit afterwards, because a cleaned garment hangs the way it is going to hang.
What if the fit is still wrong when it comes back?
Bring it back, or send it back on the next run. A first fitting on a waist or a jacket is often a starting point rather than an ending, and we would rather adjust it than have you wear something that does not sit right.
Is there a store I can walk into from the Seaport?
110 Newbury Street in the Back Bay and 1141 Dorchester Avenue in Dorchester are the nearest counters. The Silver Line from Courthouse or World Trade Center gets you to South Station and the rest of the network from there.