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Shrewsbury with Ramroop as she tries on Princess Diana’s coat.

CHRISTINA SHREWSBURY / COURTESY

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Grace Cardinal, Editor-in-Chief

Current Manhattan University student Kevin Nipal, ‘25 has teamed up with MU alumna Christina Shrewsbury, ‘19 to create a documentary following world-renowned tailor, Andrew Ramroop.

Nipal graduated from high school in the Bronx in 2013 and shortly after began working in Locke’s Loft Dining Hall on campus. Now, 12 years later, working part-time in the O’Malley Library and spending the rest of his free time on the documentary, Nipal is graduating from the university. 

Interested in men’s fashion for years, Nipal initially began following Ramroop online. He identified closely with the tailor’s story.

“I came across a video of a tailor named Andrew Ramroop,” Nipal told The Quadrangle. “As I was looking closely into the video, I was like, wow, he’s a person of color. He owns a shop on Savile Row, and he has a Trinidadian accent. So I was like, wow, my parents from Guyana were his neighbors. As I was reading about his story, I was inspired by it. He left his hometown of Tunapuna, Trinidad and Tobago in 1970, he hopped on the ship and he embarked on this journey to Savile Row to work for the tailor that made suits for James Bond.”

Ramroop worked his way up on Savile Row, going from being forced to work in a back room due to the color of his skin to owning his own world-renowned shop. 

The first time the team met Ramroop in person was in New York City, while he was visiting doing a trunk show. Nipal had made plans to have his suit fitted by Ramroop, and brought the idea of a documentary to him. Shrewsbury spoke to The Quadrangle about her memory of the initial meeting with Ramroop, which sticks with her clearly, even three years later.

“Kevin reached out to us and was like, ‘Hey, there’s this Trinidadian tailor, he’s coming here from London, and I would love to maybe do a documentary on him,’” Shrewsbury said. “[He said] I’m getting my suit fitted by him, and I would love if you guys came along and you would meet him with me, because I think we should do a documentary on this guy…We go into his [Ramroop’s] room, and he’s so statuesque. He’s very composed and very polite and very stoic, and he speaks very gently…We got to talk to him a little bit, very briefly about the documentary. He was very interested…He had other clients coming, and he said, ‘come back tomorrow. We’ll have breakfast and we’ll talk more about it.’”

The night after their initial meeting, Shrewsbury remembers the team working tirelessly to come up with a plan. The next morning, they showed up to the Kimberly Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, ready to make the project happen. 

 “We got very excited, we knew that this was much bigger than we thought,” Shrewsbury said. “Vito [Di Maio] and I and Kevin pulled up dressed to the nines…and we sat down and had breakfast with him, and we all talked to each other about our lives. I told him [Ramroop] how my grandfather was a tailor as well. We got a little bit more educated on what bespoke tailoring actually is…He’s worked with Princess Diana and the royal family, Samuel L. Jackson, and the list goes on and on…After we started talking, he got to know us more, then he just looked at us. He was like, Alright, let’s do it…And for three years, we have been following him, and we’ve just concluded our last interview with him.”

The documentary’s story begins visiting Ramroop’s roots in Trinidad and Tobago. 

“We began the documentary with, we arrived in Trinidad and Tobago,” Nipal said. “It was a perfect time, because it was his 70th birthday. So I was like, Andrew, we’ll film your 70th birthday. We’ll go around the island. We’ll film the island where you’re from. We’ll see your childhood home. And it was a remarkable journey, and we got connected with so many people from the island and got to feel his home country.”

From there, the team, including Nipal, Shrewsbury, Vito Di Maio, Ethan Edwards and Guito Galindo connected with some of the many tailors Ramroop has trained.

“He’s trained 500 tailors worldwide, and few of those tailors are big time tailors in New York, like Yosef Tiffin Brown, he’s a rabbi, and he’s a tailor, and he’s in Williamsburg, and we filmed him,” Nipal said. “We went to his studio. We filmed him, and he talked about his experience working with Andrew, because Andrew gave opportunities to so many people. Doesn’t matter what gender, color or whatever, Andrew gave the opportunity so people could become tailors. But we filmed in Brooklyn. We filmed in London. Actually, we went to London last year, and we filmed Savile Row…There is so much history, even where the Beatles last performed was on Savile Row. So there was so much to dive into and be enriched with all the history of the street.”

During the London visit, Shrewsbury was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only try on one of Ramroop’s works, but one made for none other than Princess Diana herself.

“When we were in London, he showed us the coat that he made for Princess Diana, and when we cut, he allowed me to put it on,” Shrewsbury said. “And so he took it off the mannequin, and he slid my hand through it, and slid my other hand through it, and then put it on me. I did not expect to become as emotional as I did, but you just feel her energy. And it was like she’s wrapped around me. She’s the queen of girls. We all get her because we’re all a little bit of Diana…And then, to add another layer to that, I hugged him to thank him. And when I hugged him, I was wearing the coat, and he just looked at me. I think he had an emotional break of a moment with that too. And he looked at me, he was like, “you have her hug” And I was like, Wow. That’s very profound. That was a very profound experience.”

Producing a documentary of this quality, caliber and magnitude is no easy task. Director on the project and Shrewsbury’s fiancé Di Maio spoke to The Quadrangle about the difficulties of the post-production process the team is now in.

“[In] film in general, you make three different films,” Di Maio said. “The one you write, the one that you shoot, and then the one that you edit. So, I think documentary is very difficult, because the biggest obstacle is time and finding the story…looking over years of footage and having to go back in time, we have an idea of where we want to go with it, but I think every cut that we make, it’s coming to life on its own. I think at some point, the documentary will kind of edit itself in that way.”

As for the future of the documentary, the team hopes to submit it to festivals and one day have it available on streaming platforms worldwide. They intend to do premieres in Trinidad, London and New York when the film is completed. 

“I just want to make sure that we tell the story of Andrew Ramroop and give it justice and eventually travel with it,” Nipal said. “I want to make sure that we can go to film festivals. My goal is to get it towards a distribution like HBO Max, which is my dream.”

While the three-year project has been no easy task, the team is focused on the reward ahead over the challenges faced. 

“The most rewarding part has been being able to work with people that you love and that you trust, and building relationships and meeting people,” Di Maio said. “I think, in general, that’s the most rewarding part of this industry is just meeting people – meeting people as grandiose as the prime minister of a country to meeting you, building these webs, these connections, and having that human interaction, I think that’s the most rewarding thing.”