From wedding gowns to a handmade 1930s evening dress, four women share their families’ tailoring traditions
ast year I had something custom made by a local tailor. I was overcome by nostalgia as she took my measurements, moving around my body with her tape measure. During childhood my mum made my ballet costumes, and my first communion in primary school was preceded by a visit to a dressmaker. But as I stood in the tailor’s studio I realised it had been decades since someone had taken my measurements, to make something just for me.
Thespina didn’t speak much English so Park would show her images or sketches, and Park’s mother would interpret as needed. “It’s super cool,” Mahbub says. “Especially in a country like Australia where there are a lot of cross-cultural and interracial marriages happening all the time. The dress belonged to Strikker’s grandmother, who was born in New Zealand in 1914. She made it herself sometime in the 1930s. “My gran died when I was one, so I never knew her,” Strikker says.
Strikker, who now runs a yarn shop where she also teaches knitting and crochet, ended up wearing the dress to three parties.Stephanie Jay and her sister used to play dress-ups in their grandmother’s wedding dress. “She got married in December 1943, so her dress was in a box in storage for a long time,” she says. “We got it out occasionally. I’ve got photos of us as 12-year-olds wearing it.
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