Description

• Em Jensen. Mar 14 2025.
• RUDOLPH Alagich's, a tailor and clothing store on Patton Street, has been stylishly dressing Broken Hill’s residents for almost eighty years.
• Store founder Mr Alagich, often called Rudi, was a tailor who began his career in the 1940s, when, according to his daughter Nancy Keenan, Broken Hill had 17 tailors and hundred of tailoresses.
• “Because there were no suits off the rack, everybody had tailored suits,” Ms Keenan said.
• “Mum and dad were married in 1943, and they lived in a house and dad had that as the start of his business. There was a garage, and that was the tailor shop, for ten years.”
• In 1954 they rented a shop on Patton Street down near where Pepe’s Milkbar is today, and expanded the business.
• “Dad started selling shirts and ties, along with the suits,” Ms Keenan said.
• “And then this current block became available in 1958, and they bought the block and built these premises.”
• Ms Keenan recalls Patton Street in the 1960s as a thriving shopping strip.
• “The South was very busy, there was a population of 10,000, just in the South, in the 50s and 60s,” she said.
• “We (Patton Street) had two fruit shops, I think three or four butchers and banks. And when they bought the block a few people said oh why didn’t you go into town? But they loved the South!”
• The Alagich family had immigrated from what was formerly Yugoslavia, and Ms Keenan said all the Slavs and Italians lived in the South as part of a close-knit community.
• In 1964, the Alagich’s began a hire service for weddings, debutantes and other occasions, hiring clothes from the city, along with their own suits, to Broken Hill.
• Many of their original clothes from between the 1950s and 1980s are still in the shop today, with a number of pieces available to rent.
• Ms Keenan said their clothes have been in St Patrick’s Day fashion parades since the event began in 1965.
• Though business has changed over the last 80 years, she said she still loves being at the shop.
• “It’s always been a drop in centre, ever since mum and dad were here, everybodies sort of congregated at the shop,” she said.
• “So I love the shop and like that contact with people. Business isn’t like it used to be, there are shops closing down all the time. But I still intend to be here a bit longer, hopefully a lot longer.”