Bespoke tailoring

A garment made to measure comes about in a fixed order: el patrón, la hilvanada, la prueba, and only then the final seam. The very first word of that sequence is one English has to break into pieces. El patrón is the paper shape a garment is cut from — « the pattern ». It is also the person one works for, « the boss ». It is the saint a town is named after, « the patron saint ». It is the person in charge of a small boat, « the skipper ». And it is the fixed thing everything else is measured against: el patrón oro is the gold standard. Five English words for one Spanish noun, and the same idea under all of them — something that goes first and that the rest is cut to fit.