On Friday, 23-year-old Mike Santillo stopped into Modern Men’s Shop on 113 Broad St. to check on tuxedos for his grooms.  He is getting married next month.  He found his tuxedo here, with a longish jacket.

Looking for it now in the shop, Sal Dominello Sr. points to it hanging in the front.  “You’re wearing the Claiborne, the very latest thing.”

“Yeah, this is the one,” Santillo said.  “I tried other places but for proms and stuff the service is better than the malls.  They don’t just throw you in a suit.  They worked with me on my ideas.  He found a picture of the tux he wanted in a magazine and no one else had it in stock.

“I was recommended to come here by my father,” Santillo said.  Dominello puts his arm around Santillo – he has a pat on the shoulders for everyone he speaks with – before his son, Sal Dominello Jr., whisks Santillo away to work out details about the groom’s suits.

“And the punch line is ‘…you did my father’s wedding,’” the elder Dominello said, a true joke.

Somewhere in his mid-sixties – he isn’t saying his age – Dominello has outfitted many of Meriden’s men in business suits and tuxedos and at one time, general all-purpose clothing, in the last 50 years.

In a lightweight worsted wool suit, with his constant companion – a tape measure hanging from his neck – he passes a handful of hangers carrying slacks over to Beryl Bilger.  She has been bringing her off-the-rack size 6’s to Modern Men’s Shop for years to improve the fit.  The shop is very busy.

It carries tuxedos to rent or buy from infant sizes to men’s 72, big enough for a pro linebacker – they’ve had those too.

The shop also carries men’s and boy’s suits, in seersucker, worsted wools or Italian gabardines, even renting them.  It’s great for parents who don’t want to buy an expensive suit for boys who will grow out of them quickly, Dominello said.

Dominello has a reassuring way about him, excellent manners and an Italian accent that said: Surrender.  Italian tailors are the best in the world.  In 1988, the director of  “Jackknife,” filming a scene with Robert DeNiro at Modern Shop, agreed.  He let the actor playing the tailor go after meeting Dominello, who played the part.  In the scene, Dominello takes DeNiro’s measurements.  “We faked them,” he said of DeNiro’s dimensions.  The shop with the red and white striped awnings was in its home of 27 years on East Main Street.

The Modern Men’s Shop was founded in 1951 as a dry cleaning and tailorship shop in a small space at 155 Lewis Ave.  “It was busy right away,” he said of the shop.  Dominello was 14 years old when he went to work there after WWII.

He was born in Cabriola, Italy, and lived there with his siblings and mother while his father worked as a factory worker here to support them, traveling back and forth fairly often.  His father worked his entire career at International Sliver Co.  During the war years they were cut off from him and those years were frightening for a young boy living in Italy.

He remembers clearly his mother quickly grabbing his hand when the bomb alert sounded, and then the bombs exploding.  He remembers soldiers marching in and out of the village.  He describes as “heaven” the day American soldiers arrived, and eventually became one himself, serving a year in Korea.

Despite malls, off-the-rack buying habits, designer-discount stores and the hippie era, Modern Men’s Shop has thrived and expanded, opening two shops in the last 6 years in Southington at 474 N. Main St. and in North Haven at 144 Washington Ave., both called Modern Formals.

On Friday a steady stream of customers come and go from the Broad St. shop and orders waiting for pick up fill six rolling racks.

“Right now it’s all weddings We are doing 35 weddings a week,” he said.  That’s eight or 10 men each; including grooms, best men and ushers.

“When it’s proms on top of weddings it’s crazy, easily 20- 21-hour days,” Sal Dominello Jr., 27, said.

Technically, the elder Dominello is retired.  His sons John Dominello, 30, who runs the Southington shop, has taken to the marketing and executive functions, and Sal, who has become heavily involved with operations as well as working in the Broad Street shop, are taking over the business.

“I try to stay in the background,” their father said.

He and their mother Rose Dominello, a skilled tailor, find it gratifying that their boys decided to carry on.  While studying business at Albertos Magnus College in New Haven, John Dominello told his father he loved business and wanted to continue it, his father recalled.
They are aggressive and business minded, Dominello said.  “it’s just a pleasure working with them.”

Since John took over, the company also expanded into the uniform business, supplying employees at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington, the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Meriden, the Sheraton in Waterbury and other businesses.  They also launched a Web site, www.modernformals.com, which is averaging 15,000 hits a month, John Dominello said.

They expect to expand with new shops in the next ten years.  Both sons say they wish to triple the number of shops in the next ten years but their biggest challenge is finding the right employees.

“Keep in mind, we take pride in our work.  We can’t just hire a kid to sit in the store … just ringing up sales at the register,” Dominello Jr. said.

The sons, who grew up around the shop, seem to have inherited their father’s secrets – well, most.

“He’s a man of his word,” Sal Dominello Jr. said of his father.  “You can call him old-school but it’s the right way of doing things.  What boggles my mind is some days we are dogging it and he keeps going and going.”

-Jane K. Mills, Record-Journal staff

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