I’ve just come out of a wedding dress fitting with a bride who loved her dress bit now wants me to restyle the neckline of her dress because the priest (Catholic, if it’s relevant) conducting her church ceremony asked her:
Not my actual bride in question, just another badass.
“How revealing is your dress?”
Consequently, she has gone from loving her dress and feeling confident with the V-neck illusion panel (ie skin-toned translucent tulle) to being paranoid and wanting to add approx 4″ of lace to conceal her cleavage.
I’m not religious so wanted to get perspective(s) on whether I’m right to be feeling angry on her behalf. I feel the priest is policing her body, was sexist to ask her this (he didn’t ask the groom) and what she chooses to show of her own body at her own wedding is no concern of anyone else.
If it even makes a modicum of difference to the priest, should he even be a bloody priest? If he’s worried about what other people think, that’s irrelevant. If he’s worried about being distracted himself, or having “impure” thoughts provoked, that’s a him problem, not a neckline issue.
If he’s concerned about some epidermis causing a distraction, I’ve offered to dance at the back in a bikini.
I realise this is technically none of my business either but I’m feeling invested now after seeing the effect his probing has had on the bride.
Me: Always choose a couture bridal specialist to work on your wedding dress. The skills they have over your aunt’s friend or your own DIY efforts if you’re not a pro are worth every penny.
Also me: I’m not spending £8 – eight whole pounds – on that Hobbycraft kit when I can make one myself for my children’s birthdays.
I broke my wrist last Thursday. My right, and I’m right handed, at the start of what are typically my two busiest months of the year.
Sad, tired face; lumpy bent wrist
I was booked solid with alterations, bespoke creations and embroidered veil orders and one split-second stumble backwards rendered me on my arse in every sense. I have a Colles distal radial fracture, more technically known as A Proper Number.
By Friday lunchtime, I’d found that I could accomplish many routine tasks with my left hand, even if brushing my teeth was more like punching myself in the face. Crucially I could still sew, with the exception of some techniques, BUT I couldn’t cut fabric.
The largest scissors I could wield were my tiny stork-shaped embroidery scissors which barely nibble fabric, and I couldn’t exert enough pressure on my rotary cutter to get the blade through even the lightest tulle.
So, painstakingly (and painfully), I typed out a message with one thumb, dropping my phone on my foot a couple of times, to the A-Level student I’d told the previous week that I couldn’t take him in for work experience.
Krishal the wunderkind
Krishal came over almost immediately and I liked him even more quickly than that. Actually, everything was speedy. He’d said he was a fast learner and I threw him in at the deep end with techniques he’d never used; he swam with them all. Rotary cutter, narrow-hem machine foot, seam ripper: all nailed first time.
Get this: he’d never used a seam ripper (aka stitch unpicker, the Ctrl+Z of sewing) because he’d never needed to. He’d never sewn a thing wrong. Ever. Including on his first A-Level project, an ambitious cocktail mini-dress with crinoline underskirt in fabric he dyed himself.
Not only that, but he’s taught himself French and Japanese, because he wants to work in Paris and Tokyo. And he’s a gifted musician. And tennis player. And 5,000m runner. Oh, and he’s been approached by a modelling agency.
We’ve been geeking out about sewing AND linguistics AND Disney films (these are a few of my favourite things 🎶) and I think I want to adopt him.
True, I do ❤️ yoga.
A week on, I’m sustaining fewer facial injuries while cleaning my teeth and I can now cut fabric again. Far from simply shadowing and observing me on work experience and making cups of tea, Krishal has been doing skilled work for which I have paid him the rate I would receive for the same jobs.
He is clearly someone who will go far. If his mum and dad refuse to surrender their parental rights to me, I at least hope that one day, while jetting between his Paris and Tokyo ateliers, Krishal remembers me and that he was once – literally – my right hand man.
I just posted some pics of a veil I made for a bride, Kira, getting married today in Sydney. Seconds later, I saw she had published a video on Instagram of her (still in her veil and wedding dress) and her husband from an hour previously, STRANDED in the middle of nowhere.
I can’t (and won’t) post Kira’s video because of her privacy settings but it seems that they had switched their accommodation some time ago, but no-one told their driver. By the time they realised they were at the wrong cottage – because it was locked and no-one was around – the driver was gone.
And there was no phone reception. The video shows John some distance away down the shiny wet road trying to find a bar of network to call for rescue.
“I’m not happy,” Kira stoicly comments, adding that this isn’t quite the wedding night she had imagined.
In the time it’s taken me to type, they have posted an update from their actual accommodation, so I’m pleased to report that they have been rescued from the arse-end of the outback. However, despite it being a lukewarm autumn night, they arrived to find the aircon on full blast.
Seeking refuge from the frigid room in a nice hot shower, they’ve discovered only cold water streaming from every tap.
I’m sure they’ll think of something, but what a start to married life! The best is yet to come. Or at least it had bloody better.
Kira’a bespoke Australian wildflower embroidered veil featuring the couple’s initials and wedding date
“We recently attended a wedding and the bride wore THE DRESS I brought to you a few months ago. I could have screamed!!”
So began an email from one of my brides whose dress I’m altering later this year. Imagine. You’ve just spent more money than you’ve ever spent on one item of clothing that you’ll probably only wear once, on arguably the most significant day in your life with all eyes on you… and someone has beaten you to it.
I imagine the feeling must be similar to that felt by Captain Scott’s Antarctic party when it finally ended the near 900 mile expedition at the South Pole over a year after setting out, only to find a note from their rival Norwegians informing them they’d beaten them to it by 35 days. But without the prospect of imminent death from hypothermic exposure.
You get me. Edward Adrian Wilson, Robert Falcon Scott, Lawrence Oates, Henry Robertson Bowers (photo credit) and Edgar Evans at the South Pole.
Shop closures reduce choice
The closure of many traditional bridal boutiques – all but one within three miles of me in the last few years – is limiting choice for brides so the chances of buying the same dress as a friend or relative has increased.
Brides usually come to me for bespoke dresses because they have a good idea of what they want but it doesn’t exist in boutiques. A secondary reason is that they want the peace of mind that no-one could possibly have the same dress (or whatever) as them. But I digress.
This bride is actually the third customer I’ve had in this predicament, although hers was all the more galling because the dress in question was already the third one she’d bought and had to return. The silver lining is that she now has a new dress, completely different, but absolutely stunning, and we’re working on incorporating some of the meaningful details she loved.
Each of my other brides handled the predicament differently. The first asked me to completely restyle the back of her dress, removing most of it and dropping the flare point of her fit-and-flare skirt section (below). That made it sufficiently different from the bride with the same dress, plus there wasn’t a lot of crossover of guests attending each wedding.
The other bride’s dress doppelganger was closer to home: her new sister-in-law. This meant that a lot of guests – my customer’s entire family – would attend both weddings.
However, she decided to wear her dress anyway. You know how people complain that wedding dresses look completely different on the model? My bride reasoned that their different body types, flowers and accessories would make enough of a change that not many people would notice, and she didn’t mind too much if they did.
My first sewing machine, dusted off to list for sale
Why can’t I part with it? Yellowing, with a spool holder thick with layers of glue, it’s still in perfect working order. This little Singer Tradition sewing machine isn’t the byword in Vorsprung Durch Technik. It has a fiddly front-loading bobbin, I’ve never managed to get the needle threader working reliably, and it clatters along well below the top speed of my later machines.
It’s not even my most cherished machine. That accolade resides with the early electronic machine I inherited from my beloved grandma, with the once-working metal toy machine used my mum a close second. I also have two beautiful, decorated handle-wound antique Singers, both in need of a good service (and me a good lesson in how to actually use them).
With one of my ornamental antique Singers that I wouldn’t know how to use even if they still worked.
After several years lying fallow under my desk next to a further two spare machines, it was time for this one to find a new home. But I couldn’t do it.
This was the machine my parents, grandparents, siblings and in-laws had clubbed together to buy me for Christmas over a decade ago. The machine two of my best friends from my NCT commune, Siân and Fiona, had taught me to use. The machine that accidentally changed my career and a fair chunk of my life.
I’ve been sewing since I was 5 but sewing machines terrified me. All those sharp things hammering away, grabbing and tugging at your precious fabric. No thanks. My grandma ended up making most of my GCSE Textiles project because I just couldn’t get my head around the machines (she got an A). So I did everything by hand.
I had time and it was just a hobby. Then another great friend had a knicker-making workshop for her hen do. We only had a couple of hours. There was no avoiding using a machine. I took a deep breath, winced a bit and my tense, clawed toes nudged the pedal. Bbbrrrrzzzz. Done. Elastic in.
I did it! That was so easy! That was so quick! It wasn’t me that had been the problem; I just hadn’t had the right machine! It went straight to the top of my Christmas list. I remember thinking this was going to change everything.
The Fabricland Massive: me with Fiona and Siân
Siân and Fiona taught me everything. How to thread it, rethread it when I snapped the thread again, why I kept snapping the thread in the first place, how to change the feet, the stitch type, stitch length and tension. I could run up outfits for my toddlers while they were at preschool in days; dresses for myself once they were in bed.
Friends asked me to make things, then friends of friends, and before I knew it, I had a viable business. A year later, Siân also started her own sewing business and we continued learning together: new techniques, overlookers, coverstitchers, embroidery machines.
More machines have followed in the eight years since and I’ve realised I’m far too sentimental to sell the one that started it all. I do need the space though, so my yellowing Singer Tradition is now on permanent loan to a the mother of a very good friend, whose daughter is going to teach her to use it. Her daughter, my very good friend, is Siân.
Anitta in the infamous “vintage*” Atelier Versace gown in Sarah Hambly’s video that had me spitting my tea. *Or is it..?
This week’s tea-spitting moment was brought to me by the otherwise utterly awesome dressmaker Sarah Hambly casually mentioning in her Grammies fashion round-up that Anitta’s Atelier Versace look was, “Vintage, from 2003.”
Here’s a confession: I believed she was right. I’d assumed that ‘vintage’ stemmed from the French word for 20, ‘vingt’. The uproar in the comments prompted me to check my facts.
I was wrong.
Or possibly not because I can’t find an actual, to-the-year, official definition.
A good year
My beloved dictionary of etymology informs me that ‘vintage’ is actually born of the pre-1425 Old French ‘vendange’, meaning a yield from a vineyard. A grape harvest if you will, as evidenced by going even further back to the Latin ‘vīndēmia’, which itself is formed from ‘vīnum’ (wine) and ‘dēmere’ (to take off). You can see where we also get our words ‘vine’, ‘wine’ and ‘vintner’. And why we talk about wines having a “good vintage” (or not), first recorded in 1746.
No mention of any age, 20 or otherwise. Oops.
Despite the word being used for nearly 100 years (since 1929) to describe something being of an earlier time, I can’t find a firm definition for how old something has to be to be be officially ‘vintage’. At least, not one with universal agreement.
Cheers to vintage
Contrast this with ‘antique’, which seems to enjoy broad acceptance as meaning aged 100+ years old. Just a quick Google of definitions of ‘vintage’ throws up anything from 20 to 93 years or more.
Cars
It also depends on what we’re talking about. Cars have clearer definitions, with only those manufactured specifically between 1919 and 1930 considered vintage, regardless of how old they are at any given time. At odds with the above, cars are officially ‘antique’ at just 45 (11 more months to go for me then), and ‘classic’ at 20.
My dad c1983 in his Lotus Europa, which would now be an antique had he not totalled it in 1984, and a family heirloom had he not sold what was left of it to fund flying lessons shortly before he died (in unrelated circumstances) in 2020. I’d love to know who has it now, to buy it back.
Clothing
For clothing specifically, it depends whom you ask. I suppose traders have a vested (pun intended) interest in maximising the critieria to allow them to sell more so it makes sense for them to include items as young as is credible, albeit tea-spittingly so. Other sources (e.g. Farm Antiques) says most antiques dealers consider 40 years to be vintage.
I have been contacting fashion and textile historians this morning for more authoritative clarity but have had no luck yet; I’ll update the blog when I can.
UPDATE: 10 February 2023
I’ve had a response from the V&A’s assistant curator in its Textiles & Fashion department Claire (no surname offered). She tells me: “Apologies in advance not to be of more assistance. As far as I’m aware it’s not a term we have a specific working definition for at the V&A.”
That’s actually helpful in itself and good enough for me: ‘vintage’ seems open to interpretation.
While spitting my tea was the appropriate initial reaction, I can wipe down my cutting mat and go back to enjoying a fresh cup. 🫖☕️
One of Duolingo’s favourite sentences to throw at me to translate (I’m trying to learn Italian) is this one: “I want a perfect wedding.” Another is “Are my shoes electric?” for some reason, but I digress.
Every time I have to translate Voglio un matrimono perfetto, I twitch a little at the casual but crushing pressure on soonly-weds to create an unattainably perfect day, whatever that means for them.
I have heard of a wedding that did run precisely according to the times in the meticulously prepared to-the-minute spreadsheet, but I only did the wedding dress alterations and wasn’t there on the day. The bride admitted that such was the fastidiousness of her planning in Excel, the wedding could have run without her being there.
So, I will say here what I tell all my customers who’ve fretted to me about things not going to plan on the day: I have been to a LOT of weddings, and have yet to go to one where everything ran exactly to plan, but I have never been to a bad wedding either.
I’ve seen the vicar forget the bride’s name, the best man get so drunk that he had to be held up by the bride’s parents to give his speech and the evening disco not show up.
And I include my own wedding in that. Booked for the 9th of August and taking place in a glorious lakeside location, we planned the entire day around being outside. We bought lawn games, booked a bouncy castle and a bungee run, planned reportage photography of leisurely walks around the lake, chose cream rather than dark suits for the groomsmen to thwart the beating summer sun, and included a sachet of SPF50 suncream in the bag of home-made rose petal confetti on each seat, lest the entire congregation be wiped out by sunstroke before we could cut the cake and cut to the disco.
You’re probably way ahead of me, and yes, despite glorious sunshine the day before and the day after, it absolutely dicked it down on our wedding day.
But – and I can’t stress this enough – it was still the best day EVER.
We turned the bouncy castle and bungee run away on arrival, the lawn games stayed in their packaging and my bridesmaid exemplified next-level selfless friendship by holding her umbrella over me, the bride, while her freshly straightened hair succummed to the rain. But huddled in the bar sipping cups of tea instead of iced drinks in the sun, we didn’t care. The day unfolded in raucous laughter, eating, drinking, dancing conversation and love.
We were surrounded by our favourite people and we had just got married. Which is exactly the point. If you end the day married to the person you intended to, everything else is just detail.
Nearly fifteen years, two children and a house move later, I still find the odd, unused sachet of that suncream every now and then.
Have you ever been asked to work for no/less money? How did you respond and how did you feel afterwards?
The Un-Wedding posted this on Instagram today, and it chimed with some recent conversations with fellow designer-dressmakers who have been asked for discounts, or even to work free in exchange for “exposure”.
I’m either not famous enough or too scary looking to have ever been asked to work for nothing by an influencer or celebrity, and the vast majority of people do recognise the value of what I do. (Actually, one influencer didn’t even tell me about her YouTube channel until after she’d booked me).
Who even does that?
However, on the odd occasion I’ve been asked for a discount, it’s been for wedding dress alterations. This tends to be the last thing to be paid for when planning a wedding, because alterations typically happen as close to the big day as possible so your body is the size and shape it will be on the day.
I’ve become a lot stricter – nay, assertive – about discounts, because every single time I’ve agreed, I’ve resented the customer, hated the work, and gnashed my teeth with every stitch. I’m not out to rip anyone off or obsessed with making as much money as possible; I’d have stayed in corporate PR if I were.
I’ve become more assertive about discounts. Sorry, not sorry.
I usually do put in a lot more work than agreed for the sheer fun of it, and on the odd occasion I’ve even waived my fee entirely just because I wanted to.
Top ‘reasons’ people have expected a discount
Below are the reasons I’ve been given for why I should agree to a discount and my response to each:
1. “We’ve overspent on everything else and run out of money.” (Three instances of this)
Think back to before you booked a single thing. Would you have called me – a stranger – and asked me to buy, say, your cake, or pay for the extra flower arches? Because that’s effectively what you’re asking me to do now.
2. “The alterations are costing more than half what I paid for the dress!”
Your dress was an absolute steal but is three sizes too big for you, eight inches too long and will need to have most of the lace removed, replaced and re-beaded by hand.
3. “If I pay that much, I will cry.” (Actually the same person as 2, above)
The work you need will take me around three days in my busiest month of the year when im already starting work at 5.30am and finishing around midnight, and if two of those daysare unpaid, I will show you bloody crying.
4. Calling me after the fitting: “Can we round it down to £xxx if I give you cash?”
Err, oh. OK. I was caught off, in a flap and acquiesced. But why should cash necessitate a discount? It actually creates work for me because I have to make a trip to a real-life bank to pay it in. Plus I’m far too socialist to not declare any income on my tax return.
This particular person had also given me an unwashed dress to take in that she had worn clubbing and needed for her hen do (lots of fiddly work to the underarm section) and was condescending to her lovely sister in every appointment.
She also spent one fitting on the phone boasting about how much money she’d got another supplier to come down by. I agreed to the discount but hers was the only name I’ve ever made a mental note of to never work for again.
Same same but different
There are some inquiries that might sound or feel like asking for a discount but aren’t, so please don’t feel afraid to ask (and vendors, please don’t feel offended of you encounter them). Asking for a starting price or rough estimate isn’t rude and neither is surprise when finding out the cost.
Not many people have ever bought anything wedding-related before they plan their own so it’s not reasonable to expect anyone to know what things cost.
Manners for makers
A discount means a compromise on fabrics, my time or both, and you can’t do that with couture. Moreover, I’m not willing to do any of those and still put my name to the result.
Even MORE-over, asking for a discount is rude. Either you value my work or you don’t.
Aah, that was cathartic. Therapy I didn’t know I needed.
Fifteen years ago, I was excitedly, a little smugly and absolutely bloody FINALLY making my betrothal to my favourite human official: I changed my relationship status on Facebook to ‘Engaged’.
The effect was immediate. In addition to the flattering influx of likes, comments and messages of congratulations, the adverts in my newsfeed changed. Wedding dress boutiques, honeymoon destinations, venues, and, most noticeably, ways to lose weight. This diet, that meal replacement, hashtag ‘Shredding for the wedding’.
The algorithms that determine the ads you see on social media might be more sophisticated these days. When we changed our relationship statuses again to ‘Married’, I started getting ads for fertility treatments and nursery furniture; my husband to ‘Meet hot singles online in your area.’
However, these algorithms remain slave to market correlations, including that planning a wedding also often means wanting to lose weight. A highly unscientific poll I’m running on Instagram currently says two thirds of people saw more weight loss ads after they got engaged.
Reasons for deliberately changing your body are complex and personal so this isn’t a post about whether ads for weight loss treatments are right or wrong, nor whether anyone should or should not lose weight.
But the issue is close to my heart. Brides sometimes come to me because they dread – or have had – horrible experiences in bridal boutiques. In my own case, I have come through eating disorders so it would have been good to have not had to see these ads.
TIL how to stop weight loss ads on Instagram
So, I thought it would be useful to share a tip I learned today to avoid seeing weight-loss ads, on Instagram at least:
From the menu on your profile page, go to Settings > Ads > Ad Topics. If you’ve not done this before, it’s quite interesting to see what The Algorithm thinks you’re interested in based on your Meta (i.e. Instagram, Facebook, Messenger) activity. If your list was anything like mine, it should also reassure you that the social media companies actually know bugger all about you.
Tap on one you’re not interested in (my first one was Stargate 🤷♀️) and you’ll be given to options about it: ‘No preference’ and ‘Show less (sic) ads about this topic’. Even if its slovenly grammar makes you twitch as much as it did me, tap the second option and that should do the trick.
You can then also search all of the ad topics; the one you need is ‘Body Weight Control’. Choose the second option again and you should hopefully start seeing the adverts diminish, rather than your mental health.
