The joy of fabric

Jacque Shaw

As often happens, S and I met for coffee in the weekend then found ourselves drawn like lemmings to The Fabric Warehouse.
I did a double take when one of the young assistants walked towards us in a dress made from the same fabric as one of S's dresses. S wore it in BA, and the fabric holds happy associations for me. But even without those, this dress and its wearer - Jacque Shaw - would have given me pleasure. Let me count the ways.
1. She looked gorgeous in it, and is a lovely young woman.
2. She made it herself - it was imaginatively conceived and so nicely sewn.
3. I love people who know what they're talking about, and those who employ them - Jacque is highly knowledgable, and helpful.
Which isn't surprising, since she's in the final year of BDes (Hons) in fashion at Massey University. You can see some of her work here.
S bought beautiful silk, printed as though hand-painted in watercolours, in deliciously translucent shades of dove gray, mauve-y pink and green, along with some perfectly matched pinwhale corduroy for a jacket.
I bought a length of green boiled wool boucle, enough for a high-waisted, below-the-knee pencil skirt. Its colour is what I think of as "Esprit green".
I don't care for Esprit at all as a label (too little-girly/sporty/tatty), but a long time ago - last century, in fact - I bought an Esprit tee-shirt because it was a wonderful shade of singing green. And I've been hooked on the colour ever since.

All that remains is to sew it up. Or will I find mere possession of the fabric enough?

Signs of life (1)



Global Fabrics, Garrett Street, Wellington



Second-hand rose



Student, Kelburn, Wellington



Imagine

On Monday (Happy birthday, Your Majesty, and thanks for the long weekend), S and I met for coffee at La Cloche then braved nearby Spotlight to buy me a nifty little tool for drawing pulled threads to the reverse of knitted fabrics.
S's particular horror of this place is the awful chemical smell exhaled by thousands of imported fabrics, linens, place mats and miscellaneous knick-knackeries. Mine is its acreage of garish colour, and the aisles of essentials for faintly alarming female hobbies, like scrap-booking and lampshade-making.
After that, we were drawn like moths to a flame into The Fabric Warehouse, in all sorts of ways a refreshing contrast, and where, tellingly, S is on first-name terms with the jovial proprietor.
I love this place because it's exactly what its name suggests - a warehouse, with a concrete floor and hundreds of rolls of fabric stacked around the walls and propped up in the middle. It steadfastly refuses to "sell" itself. And the customers, mostly but not all women, prowl about, eyes narrowed, one hand extended to sample weight and texture and general appeal. What they're really doing is imagining, and these days, in apparel as in other fields, that's something to respect.
The store has a glittery selection of buttons and trims that I would once have reeled away from. Tango now dictates otherwise.

And the proprietor has recently recently installed this splendid rogues' gallery of tailor's dummies, although the bloke doesn't fit in and is due for eviction, he says.

(I apologise for the quality of these last two images - they were taken on my new phone, which pretends to have a camera.)

Also spotted in the store, this wonderful pair of PVC - "my partner hates them" - boots.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The upshot of 30 minutes absorbed browsing was that I fell for a delicious length of blue and white silk to sew into god-knows-what, and S bought a dress's worth of stretchy teal velvet for a tango dress. I suspect, though, that we both had Buenos Aires in mind.