Daniel Bilalian of all elegances

Journalist Daniel Bilalian passed away on May 14th. In 2020, this great man, the son of a master tailor, wrote me a letter that spoke volumes about his commitment to elegance. Excerpts: "Every day, as I left school, I opened the door to my father's shop. He, leaning over the workbench covered with a large piece of fabric, drew a line with chalk, or followed this line, which he cut with enormous scissors that made a fine noise, slicing through the fabric without trembling. It was only once this exercise was finished that he saw me and kissed me. As you can see, my father was a master tailor, a profession that, until the 1960s, enjoyed a prestige that is now forgotten. It was in this atmosphere that I grew up. Honestly, I don't remember leaving the house as a teenager, and probably long before that. Every morning, my father, who was of more than modest origins, would leave "pulled at four…