You could say the tailoring business is in Julius “Eddie” Lofton’s blood. As the owner of JC Lofton Tailors in Washington, D.C., he’s continuing a family tradition that began in the late 1930s, when his late grandfather, Josephus C. Lofton, whom the shop is named for, opened Lofton Custom Tailoring and became the first African American to own a tailoring shop/tailoring school in the district. “Tailoring gives me gratification,” Lofton said. “Somebody comes in, and something is torn or burned, and we fix it, and the customer is like, ‘Wow. How’d you do that?’ I’m never going to be a millionaire, but I can tell you a million stories.”
