memiors past and present

Years ago….

Years ago, when the world was young, I was educated at a London college and at Isabelle’s the dressmaker place, learning the trade of a dress maker and fashion designer. It was just after the war. I enjoyed the cut and thrust of it all, and I hoped it would further my career at my grandfather’s firm, Debenhams. I used to make my designs in miniature on dolls, so that I could see the finished effect on the human (well almost) form. We used to boast that we could fit every figure in the shop. No matter what size they were, we would have something.

At Isabelle’s factory the mix of design and machining was fascinating, and fast. I learnt every machine that they had, working from table to table, I could take over any task and finish it whilst the machiner was away from their table.

As most designers do, I made many mistakes, and just before Debenhams sadly closed its doors in Norwich, I came across the very coat I had made for the college course, which asked for an integral scarf. I put it on. It surprisingly covered me, and I looked into the mirror and laughed. It was a puffer jacket, very bulky, and not flattering to any figure, and the scarf extended from the neck of the jacket in a bulky layer of fabric. It was awful. I left it behind.

About ten years after the brain surgery, my grandfather released my dolls designs, which I had put in a box in his office, as he rather liked them. He told me during the surgeries, that he thought that one day they would do very well, because they were young, and exciting. It heralded a day not yet come, the day of the liberation of the teenager — which in the 1940’s wasn’t yet due.   Young people had to work hard, and stay unliberated as to sex, due to the lack of birth control, and strong moral guidance on good marriages, effects of working hard, and two parent in a family etc.

We choose a name for me — then — for the designs, and he put them out, as Mary Quant. Let history, tell you of their success, as they caught the fever of that age.

Recently I moved back to Crowborough a town in East Sussex, almost by accident, as I was looking for an alternative home, and even the name gave me a good feeling.  It turned out to be again a place I lived in before. I used to have a few shops here, and one of them was a tiny place, which I wasn’t sure what to do with. I found myself working in it, on wedding dresses, it wasn’t that I wanted one, it was that I couldn’t make one very well. It was my stop point in design.

There are always two dresses on dummies in the window. Someone has changed them again. There are some marks of age on them now. 60+years old! I wonder who lives there now?

I always intended to return to Crowborough and take up the wedding dress shop, and see if I could run with them…   My return from the amnesia following the surgeries has been slow and arduous, I want to run before I can walk.  I want to think not stumble.  It’s as if my mind only releases information on my past when I am confronted by the past – not that I’m up to dealing with it – but only when it’s right in front of me, do I get the mental surge.  Will I ever be who I was?  I’m really not sure, I’m okay really compared to most.  I’m just not sure I’m whole.