Before clothes came off a rack, the tailor made them to fit.

The restored sign above Austin Street remembers L. C. Etalides — Ladies & Gents Tailor, advertising 35 years experience and promising that all work was guaranteed.

Behind those few words was a man whose life had already taken him from the eastern Mediterranean to Western Australia, through several country towns and a surprising collection of occupations before he returned to the trade he knew best.

His craft began long before Cue.

The Austin Street sign boasts 35 years experience.

If that claim is read against the sign's 1937 establishment date, Etalides would have begun learning or practising the tailoring trade around the beginning of the twentieth century — before his arrival in Australia.

That fits the broader historical record, which already identifies him as a tailor when he arrived in Western Australia in 1911.

He bought the store — and apparently got the telephone exchange with it.

The local history of Miling records one of the more human episodes in Etalides's remarkable working life.

When he purchased the store, responsibility for the post office and telephone exchange came with it.

The arrangement reportedly lasted only a few months. The historical account says Etalides had considerable difficulty with both the language and operation of the telephone exchange. A skilled Armenian tailor had somehow found himself running rural telecommunications.

From successful tailor to heavily invested farmer.

A later newspaper report gives a remarkably detailed account of Etalides's years at Miling. It describes Leventis Etalides as a native of Constantinople who had done well as a tailor and said he had made about £6,000 making suits for men before moving into storekeeping and farming.

According to the report, he came to Perth in 1911 and ran tailoring shops in different parts of Western Australia. In 1926 he bought a general store at Miling for £770, and the following year took up about 5,000 acres under conditional purchase arrangements.

He cleared and improved about half the property and bought approximately £1,900 worth of machinery. Poor seasons, wheat prices, debt and business difficulties followed. The article provides important context for why a successful tailor eventually found himself before the Bankruptcy Court.

Eventually he returned to the trade he knew best.

By the late 1930s Etalides was established in Cue, operating as a ladies' and gentlemen's tailor.

The building is remembered in Cue's municipal heritage inventory as Penn Chambers, with Etalides Tailors among the businesses associated with the premises.

The sign's promise — “All Work Guaranteed” — emphasised the selling point of an experienced craftsman in an era when tailoring relied on reputation, precision and repeat customers.

Another Austin Street building with several lives.

Etalides's tailoring business formed part of Penn Chambers, an early group of Austin Street commercial premises dating from around the turn of the twentieth century.

Cue's heritage record documents several later uses of the premises, including commercial activities and, at one stage, use of part of the building as a nursing post. Like many buildings in Cue, its story continued long after one business moved on.

Etalides remained a Cue businessman until the end of his life.

Lavrentios George Etalides died at Cue on 29 November 1949, aged about 69.

His probate record described him as a “Tailor and Business Proprietor, late of Cue” — neatly linking his official record with the occupation remembered on the Austin Street sign.

He was buried in Cue Cemetery, leaving the town not only his business history but a permanent personal connection with the place where the final chapter of his remarkable journey unfolded.