Just four days before the Baltimore Ravens go up against the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game, the mood around Charm City is electric but Greg Hardy’s studio is serene.
“This is one of the latest Ravens patterns and I think she’s about your size,” says Hardy, holding up a black fleece hoodie, the hood and pockets, though, feature the iconic purple raven head with its glowing red eyes.
It needs just a few last-minute touches.
“I have to put some buttons on it. And it's going to come with a purple scarf that you can flip around.”
Hardy has been a tailor and Baltimore designer since the late 1970s, with a career that has taken him across the state. He now operates his Sew What’s Up design studio out of the Sew Bromo space, a restored historic garment building in Pigtown. Though he does everything from suit alterations to wedding dress design and construction, he says making gear for Ravens’ fans, or “the Flock” is about 75% of his business.
“It was 2001 and I was down Fells Point with some friends and we were watching them [Ravens] beat Denver,” Hardy recalls, then a crowd of fans came into the bar wearing store bought merchandise. Looking at their scarves and shirts, he began to get an idea.
“I had a couple of beers and thought, ‘I can make something. All I gotta do is buy the fabric. You know, I'm a creative person….’ So I just had to go buy a bolt of fabric. And I started making vests.”
Once lawyers from the NFL gave him the “all-clear” he started making vests, then hoodies, scarves and anything else a fan could ask for. He now makes around 160 custom Ravens pieces a year.
Growing up in Sandtown-Winchester, Hardy has always used sewing as a grounding outlet. Especially after a run-in he had with the Baltimore police when he was 14.
“I didn't have anything to do with the situation that was going on. I was going home and then people started running past me. I stepped aside and they came with their billy clubs or whatever and smashed me off a wall and then threw me on the ground. They didn’t care, I looked like somebody I guess.”
Hardy says he was left with trauma, broken teeth and so much anger. But luckily for him, that year he began tailoring classes at Carver Vo-Tech where he could channel his anger into creativity.
And forget New York fashion week… he learned style right here.
“I can remember growing up on Pennsylvania Avenue, and watching the stars go into the Royal Theatre. You know, people like Cab Callaway, we would just stand across the street and just watch him,” he remembers.
He went to thrift stores, pulling apart the iconic clothes to study the construction. He says sewing kept him safe from drugs and violence on the streets — he lost two brothers to drug addiction.
Hardy went on to become a tailor at Nordstrom and for years taught in the prison system, teaching incarcerated people how to sew. A few of those people, now back in society, occasionally help Hardy in the shop.
Most especially, he taught after-school sewing to give kids outlets like he had. He said it was like “planting a seed.”
“None of them had to be tailors or designers, one is [now] an electrical engineer. And the few [students] that I have seen since then, and are doing pretty well. Some of them have got families now,” said Hardy.
Hardy, well into retirement age, isn’t slowing down. For next year’s football season, he’s got a line of Ravens capes.
