When I was little, I dreamed of being a Fashion Designer. Well, a Fashion Designing Ballerina to be more exact. I was shy and tiny, and oh so creative. My first hand-me-down sewing machine & my ballet slippers were my most prized possessions.
I have this memory of this white doored cupboard at the start of the hallway in the “good” part of the house (the part where we weren’t supposed to run; where the furniture was so beautiful & so old. I’d sit for hours at the dining room table imagining other little girls who’d sat on these chairs 400 years ago: what they were like and, most important, what they wore). Along with the day-to-day linens, this cupboard was full of treasures: beautiful pieces of handmade lace I can still picture in my head and feel in my hands; old as the hills heirloom linens with beautifully handcrafted embroideries in such pretty colours. Irresistible to this 4 year old. It was one of these fine cotton embroidered linens, a pillowcase, that proved to be my first downfall. Strangely, no-one appreciated how beautiful my precious doll now looked in her new dress. She was a vision!
The next time I recall a monumental scissors events, which I prefer to remember as pure creative genius, was when I was around 6. I was told one night that my little cousin was coming to visit us for the very first time. I bounced downstairs bright and early the next morning, to a very quite house and a blonde vision at the bottom of the stairs. Surely this beautiful creature, with her long, straight, shiny, blond hair was a doll (major case of hair envy being curly frizzy & mouse brown). Taking a second look, I couldn’t help but see how much my 2 yr old cousin, with her waist length perfect hair, looked like my sisters doll Velvet… almost. All she need was a fringe. Clearly she recognised creative genius because her answer was an unreserved YES! And away I cut. I don’t think I’d seen grownups cry before that. Or understood shame. Still, she did look stunningly fabulous in the somewhat lopsided fringe I cut and the matching cut-out bits in the bulk of her hair. She was a vision!
The years in between I remember trying on toiles, cold fingers, broken needles & pin pricks as I honed my skills under the guidance of my mum. Most of my skill I learnt from my mother who used to look over seas for inspiration long before anyone else here did. She’d create our outfits with a confidence “but I will be in fashion soon” and it always was. She was a beautiful sewer with exquisite taste…. all except for the time she decided I needed a calico (yes, calico!) outfit complete with Elizabethan-like cream cluney lace at the drawstring neck & the hem of knickerbocker pants. Not quite the vision I was after.
When I was around 14, my sister got her first paid job. She was so grown up at 16! One Friday she came home with a new dress… drop waist & baggy. Soooooo fashionable! She was so proud of that dress; her very first purchase with her very own money she’d earned. Gosh I wanted one. Next morning, I was sooooo excited to wake her up. “Look!!” The look on her face didn’t spell happiness. Opps. Took me years to understand that one. I just thought she’d see how clever I was. Not quite the vision she was after.
From cut-up heirloom pillowcases to flowered muumuu’s redesigned into flares to wear with my vintage Givenchy jacket, some of my best work has come from my mistakes. In dolls circles, 4 yr old me was a legend…. a veritable visionary!
Welcome to my very first blog.
Design Development...
You’ve gone backwards & forwards, balancing colours & designs, and next comes the glorious time when walking past a shop window makes you say “oooohhhh” and go scrambling in your handbag for your notebook only to get distracted by the beautiful trim on the side of your bag and “oooohhhhh” comes forth again and your heart starts to beat a little faster as you jot down ideas and little thumbnails (tiny little idea sketches). 
Sitting ankle deep in fabrics & trims, sketches and little mock-ups, laptop beside you, sketch program open, your favourite music playing, pins in your mouth as you do the original style of “pinning” (omgosh I have a whole blog on this later) – the art of pinning fabrics to your stand (mannequin) as you try different fabrics & trims together in the endeavour of creating a combination that sings in harmony.
