There’s a small building behind Texas Gadget Company on Highway 290 that doesn’t look like much from the outside. Step through the door, and you’ll likely say the same thing everyone else does: Whoa. I had no idea this was back here.
That reaction is exactly what Chris and Wendy Bykowski are going for.
Their shop, Bykowski Tailor & Garb, is a singular retail experience. It’s part bespoke tailor, part vintage firearms gallery, entirely unlike anything else. The fact that it’s tucked behind a former feed store in the Hill Country only adds to the mystique.
The story starts back in 2009, when Chris couldn’t find a suit he actually wanted to wear. The mainstream options were ill-fitting and painfully generic. Chris couldn’t find slim, European-inspired tailoring. So he and his bride, Wendy, decided to do something about it.
What began as a pop-up in Austin grew into a full shop downtown. For over a decade, Chris and Wendy built a clientele drawn to their specialty: vintage-inspired, impeccably fitted custom suits. About half of their work skews vintage, the other half toward weddings.
The custom process is fundamentally different. “Seventy percent of why something fits is the body type itself, not just the measurements,” Chris says. At Bykowski, patterns are cut to the nuances of each individual before being sent to expert tailors in the United Kingdom. Fabrics are sourced from mills across the United States and Europe. The result is a suit that exists nowhere else in the world.
When the coronavirus pandemic shuttered their downtown location, Chris and Wendy moved the business to their home in Dripping Springs. Chris converted his music studio into a fitting space and created a mezcal bar. Clients made the drive for fittings under the oaks. The community welcomed them. And when the old feed store space became available, they jumped at the chance.
In 2017, they added a second dimension to the business: firearms. Chris, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq in 2003, had always been drawn to ornate, vintage guns. Bykowski Tailor & Garb’s collection includes World War I and II-era pieces, fully engraved custom pistols, and much more. “We just like beautiful things,” he says simply.
Wendy puts it a little differently: “I like my guns the way I like my jewelry—antique gold, some pearls, a little gaudy.”
BykowskiTailorGarb.com | @bykowskitailorgarb