Carl Ulysses takes exact measures on his A-list, A-Town clients.
A master tailor for entertainers Usher, Jeezy, Ne-Yo, Ludacris and others, he says he pays attention to their personalities to give them looks that complement their images, usually while wearing a stylish crocodile holster carrying his sewing tools.
The Atlanta-born seamster worked on wardrobe for Usher’s Super Bowl halftime show. He not only altered costumes worn by the roller-skating performers but also crafted the viral outfit worn by producer Jermaine Dupri, whose Louis Vuitton short set and white socks became a trending topic on social media.
The fashion ensemble may have stirred controversy and a fair number of laughs but Ulysses also says it made people curious about his tailoring and alteration talent.
“It puts something else under my belt where I can feel even more confident about what I do. It was stressful but worth it,” Ulysses says.
Ulysses has tailored and altered costumes on more than 50 films and television programs, including “The Color Purple,” Jamie Foxx’s leather pants ensemble in “They Cloned Tyrone,” Will Smith’s tattered attire in the movie “Emancipation, and “Black Panther.”
He believes his focus on precision plays a large role in his success. Good tailors check behind themselves and pay attention to detail to eliminate errors, he says.
“Sometimes it’s best to take more measurements than you really need so the fitting can be just right.”
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Born Carl Ulysses Bowen in Riverdale, Georgia, he grew up watching his grandmother make hats and studied his mother’s impeccable style. He began drawing murals on his school walls and sketching outfits, shoes and handbags in his notebooks.
A star pitcher and third baseman on his high school baseball team, Ulysses thought he was destined to become a professional MLB player until a senior-year rotator cuff injury ended his major league plans.
He enrolled at Morehouse College with plans to become a pediatrician. But scenes he witnessed the summer before his junior year, while participating in a medical education program at Duke University, changed his medical career plans.
“Someone got their head bashed, and it just broke my heart. I just knew I couldn’t do that for the rest of my life,” Ulysses said.
After the program ended and Ulysses returned to Morehouse, a friend and fashion major at Clark Atlanta University saw some of his designs, and encouraged him to take a fashion course at the neighboring campus.
He cross-registered into a freshman garment construction class, telling his professor he wanted to design and model a suit, and made the garments despite being told he couldn’t because of time constraints. He credits the project with teaching him the basics for tailoring and alterations, and the level of commitment required.
“It was a lot of sleepless nights, getting mad at the sewing machine, and paying attention to the small details. I didn’t study anything else because all I did was make that suit,” Ulysses said.
In 2007, the late designer Mychael Knight asked Ulysses to create a double-breasted leather vest for his birthday, after seeing a fashion show featuring his creations. Upon receiving the vest, Knight, a stylist for then-unknown singer Janelle Monae, asked him to tailor some of the tiny entertainer’s trousers.
Ulysses says he was Monae’s go-to tailor for two years. The self-taught clothier says working with someone of Monae’s petite size led him to begin taking numerous measurements of his clients. The experience also helped him overcome imposter syndrome, he says.
“It did a lot for my confidence, because I didn’t know what I was going to do or how good I was [and] because I hadn’t been formally taught. I just knew I was talented.”
In 2009, a friend convinced Ulysses to move to New York City, to pursue a career in fashion. He took his last $350, booked a one-way flight and briefly slept on a sofa in a friend’s basement.
He met tailor Kevin Mayes after he arrived. When Tyra Banks, Mayes’ main client, relocated her productions to Los Angeles, Mayes referred all of his clients — stars like actress Jessica Biel and Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal — to Ulysses.
He would work overnight on tailoring for clients, while working during the day as a suit salesman for Hugo Boss at Macy’s in Herald Square, and an assistant buyer in bedding for the retail chain Ross Dress for Less.
In 2013, Ulysses got a call from Mayes about moving back to Atlanta to tailor costumes for film and television. He took the offer and worked on his first feature, “Barely Lethal,” and the television series “Drop Dead Diva.”
Not long after, Ulysses was invited to work at Tyler Perry Studios as an assistant tailor on TV shows “Love Thy Neighbor,” “The Have and the Have Nots,” and “Too Close to Home.”
It wasn’t long before he was promoted to head tailor and working on garments for Perry himself.
Ulysses says Perry’s hectic production schedule taught him to work fast under tight deadlines.
“Mr. Perry is very particular, so everything has to be on point. The time to make costumes and do alterations was cut in half, so I learned a lot of things really quickly.”
Getting a call from Marvel to work on wardrobe for “Black Panther” in 2016 was the first time Ulysses interviewed for a job. Upon being hired he became the youngest tailor on the wardrobe team and spent eight months working 15-hour days on costume creation, including robes for late actor Chadwick Boseman and melded metal armor for the Dora Milaje, at the request of Academy Award-winning costume designer Ruth Carter.
Boseman’s black robe trimmed in kente cloth is Ulysses’ favorite piece he’s worked on, despite it being a challenging time for the young tailor.
“I had to cut the blocks to make it symmetrical and fit right under time constraints,” he said. “It was one of the most stressful times in my life because of my issues with my ex-fiancee, but I grew the most during that period.”
In 2017, Ulysses opened a showroom to alter, design monochrome accessories and suits in Buckhead. He closed the shop in 2021 and relocated the showroom to his basement in Mableton.
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
A year later, Ulysses was hired by Jeremy Haynes, Usher’s stylist, to make robes and leather pants for the singer’s second Las Vegas residency. Ulysses continues to serve as one of the singer’s tailors.
Having achieved his tailor-made dreams, Ulysses says he wants to use his influence and network to create pipelines for other up-and-coming Black tailors.
“We have some really talented people here that the industry doesn’t know about,” Ulysses said. “You’re not truly successful if you can’t help someone else out.”
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Ulysses says he’s currently working on costumes for Mariah Carey’s Las Vegas residency, as well as the wardrobe for famed Atlanta vocal quartet Xscape’s “Queens of R&B” tour, and the third season of Starz series “P-Valley.” Appreciating the career heights, he still defines success as receiving encouragement from his family to continue pursuing his passion.
“Success is going through a lot of things before you get there and being with that process,” Ulysses said.
“All I need is for my two brothers, my mom and my wife to say that I can do something, and I’m going after it.”
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