Tales of the Gypsy Dressmaker. Thelma Madine

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СКАЧАТЬ what to do and where to get everything, but I really didn’t want to do big ones.

      Also, I liked the idea of having my weeks free and not having to be on the stall until Saturday, so that I could really concentrate on new designs. I loved studying to find new styles and it was great having time to have a really good look through all my history books. I’d study the costumes in them for hours, looking at every detail and the different braids and edgings, working out how I could apply all that fine decoration to my designs.

      I’d also spend days at the library, using their computers and searching the internet. Once I found some old hand-drawn patterns from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so I printed them out and took them home. I worked out how to scale them up, inch by inch, and made them into little kids’ outfits.

      Every night I’d sit and cut or sew, and I wouldn’t go to bed until I’d finished something, making everything look as perfect as possible and as near to the styles in the books as I could possibly get them. Thinking back, they were quite amazing. I really liked Henry VIII’s style of clothing, and I remember looking at the big flat hats he used to wear, and those tunics. I loved those, the shape of them – how they were straight but then gathered at the bottom, like a little skirt, because he was so fat. It was just the way the fabric flowed. I remember looking at a picture of him in one and thinking, ‘That’d be lovely for a kid.’

      So I made one in ivory velvet and designed a little coat to go over it. It was for a little girl and it looked really nice. It was so satisfying for me to do the kids’ clothes and try things out with the other girls that worked with me. Some of the ideas made it, some didn’t, but it was brilliant having the time to experiment. I really enjoyed that part of my job.

      But this was Mary asking. She wouldn’t take no for an answer and I just felt that I couldn’t let her down. ‘I’ve got to do this somehow. I’ve just got to do this wedding dress,’ I thought to myself.

      ‘Yeah, all right,’ I said. ‘What colour?’

      ‘White!’ she said, casting me a funny look, as though I was thick.

      Mary had brought a picture in with her. It was a bride wearing a dress with long sleeves, a tight sweetheart bodice, nipped in at the waist, and a really big meringue skirt. ‘OK, I said, that’s fine.’

      Only, Mary wasn’t going to leave it at that.

      ‘I want it a lot bigger,’ she said. ‘Three times the size.’

      ‘Bigger than that!’ I said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but I said OK, just hoping it wouldn’t come off.

      ‘I’ve got a deposit here. How much will it be?’

      I told her I didn’t know how much it would be. I’d have to have a think. Like I said, I’d never done a wedding dress to order before.

      ‘Look, just give me a price. Tell me a price. Just give me a price, go on, give us one,’ she kept on.

      ‘I really do not know what it will cost, Mary,’ I kept telling her. ‘I haven’t done a dress that big.’ But she just wouldn’t leave it. Eventually, I was so exasperated that I blurted out the first price that came into my head, even though I knew it was way too low.

      ‘Tell me your best price and I’ll give you a deposit right now,’ she said, apparently not having heard the price I had just given her.

      ‘I’ve just told you my best price, Mary.’

      ‘And I want crystals on it, real crystals. Lots of them,’ she said, putting her hand in her bra and pulling out some money. Then she started to walk away. As I watched her go, my head was spinning – I hadn’t factored crystals into the price I’d given her. Then, just as she was about to disappear around the corner, she turned and shouted, ‘Oh, and I want a big train on it, love, like that,’ pointing to an imaginary train behind her. ‘About thirty feet.’

      I called her back. ‘How long do you want your train?’

      ‘About thirty feet,’ she said again.

      ‘Thirty feet!’ I said, looking at her, surprised at the way she seemed to imagine that was a perfectly normal thing to ask for. I didn’t think she quite realised how long that would be. ‘That’s about from here to there, Mary,’ I shouted, pointing all the way along the path that ran by our stalls.

      ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That’s it.’

      ‘Well, it will cost you more,’ I came back, hoping that she would think again.

      ‘Ah, go on now! It’s only a bit of material,’ she said and was gone.

      The next week she came back to the stall with young Mary and six other girls in tow. ‘I’ve got Mary and some of the bridesmaids for you to measure.’

      ‘So you want bridesmaids as well, do you, Mary?’ I said.

      ‘Yeah, I told you. Eighteen bridesmaids.’

      ‘Eighteen!’

      ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And her cousin’s getting married the week before and she’s having a 100-foot train, so I want our Mary’s to be 107 foot now.’

      I laughed and pointed right towards the very end of the market.

      ‘Yeah, I know, it’s going to cost me a bit more,’ she said, dead straight-faced.

      The wedding was at the end of April. This was the end of January, so I was looking at making nineteen dresses in three months. ‘Oh my God,’ I thought, when I worked it out. ‘That’s just impossible.’ But I had taken the deposit and I just couldn’t say no to Mary. I wouldn’t – young Mary was so excited about the dress. Which, of course, was turning out to be absolutely nothing like the picture her mum had shown me.

      That week I remember just sitting at home. I sat for ages and I couldn’t think about any of the other orders I had. I came close to telling Mary that I couldn’t do it and offering to give her the money back. Then it occurred to me that because Mary knew so many people, if she told them I didn’t do it, there was a good chance that it might ruin my reputation with the other travellers.

      But what really persuaded me was young Mary’s excitement about the whole thing. I couldn’t stop thinking about this young kid getting married, and how it was all booked, and how she thought she was going to have the best dress ever with this massive train.

      It took me that whole week to work out in my head how to start. At first I just couldn’t understand what she was asking for. I’d never seen a wedding dress anything like that size. I kept thinking, ‘That girl’s got a lovely figure. Why would she want something this size? It’s ridiculous.’ Eventually, I thought, ‘I’m wasting time here. Just do it. You’ve just got to go for it. Just do it.’

      I couldn’t buy a commercial pattern because there weren’t any for a dress like that. So I looked at all my costume books to see how they pulled the skirt fabric into the waist. Also, young Mary, whom I’d measured by then, had a 24-inch waist. And she wanted the best satin, not any thin fabric; it had to be Duchess satin, which is really heavy. But that’s what I reckoned the Victorians would have used, so I looked at the way they did it and copied it. I also knew that there was only so much fabric I could fit СКАЧАТЬ