Maria Care(y)s in More Ways Than One

One of the great joys of teaching has been some of the gem students.  There aren’t hundreds of them, but I treasure the few brilliant and funny ones.  Perhaps half the reason I am not a ‘real’ academic is because I actually like teaching and students so much (no, not that way. I’m not casting no first stones thank you very much).  One of those rare gems happened to be on Maria Island over the last few days (and some others were house sitting – thank you Hannah and Holly!).  

Matt, the girls and I were at Maria Island unwinding for three nights in the penitentiary huts.   

 

 
So was Jess, a postmodern Brideshead Revisited vision.  He’s one of those people straddling the divide between theory and art, having done his Honours thesis on colonial men’s waistcoats and he’s just finished first year TAFE fashion design (I’m sure that course has a proper name but I don’t know it).  He gave me lots of scarf/clothes support and THIS WEEK I am ordering. 
 

Anyway, we were talking about the colours on Maria. If I were the Project Runway EP (why aren’t I anyway?), I’d have a special Maria Island episode where the contestants had to spend a week working on a Maria-inspired design.  There was an overwhelming amount of inspiration: all that burnt colonial brick,  English pines and Tassie dark green bush, flat planes of grass, bright blue sea and white sand… So if I were a contestant I’d focus on an outfit based on the weird, ancient looking Cape Barren Geese. Flouro green beaks, light grey bodies, red stocking legs and black ‘shoes’.   

Although I’m not planning to work with colours other than grey, black and white, I’m often pondering various combinations.

God I love Tasmania. I really do. (I’m giddy with east coast sunshine and no tv). There’s always someone with an answer close by.  In my last post I wrote about how tricky it was to sort out the printing of the sword at the front.  The problem is perhaps solved: another art/stitching person Leonie was on the verandah at Maria Island and has given me a name and number to make everything better.  Fingers crossed.

Are You there Blog? It's Me, (Yvette) Margaret

I know it’s been too long since I’ve written – I’ve been busy and frustrated with the dress design.  I can’t get the sword printed in the right spot on fabric and it looks like I’ll have to screen print. Damn, another skill I don’t have.

It’s Christmas.  If I lived in America and knew the Griswalds I’d be surrounded by Christmas jumpers (sweaters) and various disgusting Christmas outfits.  The closest we get to this in Australia are horrible Christmas earrings.  I hate Christmas clothing, even with irony in mind.  We all know it’s Christmas – don’t wear it.   

 

Now Maggie Tabberer has an interesting way of controlling the family Christmas: she makes everyone wear white.   

There’s something about (Holy) white at Christmas that is much more appealing than green and red, especially in Australia (though not Bob and Blanche style).  Then again I’ve completely contradicted myself by saying I hate Christmas themed clothing but it’s okay because it’s white.  Good thing this is a blog and not something to be marked.

I realized I was making something Christmassy when I put two white muslin baby wraps together and made a draped nighty the other day.  It’s a bit like a shroud.  Or an outfit for the baby Jesus.

The shroud nighty got me wondering about what I would wear to my own funeral. I'm fun that way. What would be good enough to wear to be buried in but not good enough to be passed on to my children/grandchildren? Hopefully that decision is a long long way off.  (But anyway, a good nighty is probably an excellent compromise.)

Clothes of the dead are vital for memory and history, especially when they belonged to an old friend, an old aunt or grandfather.  So many clothes get turfed after someone dies and I’m always the one shoving them in a garbage bag and putting them under a bed.  Some clothes I wear, but mostly they’re too small (Nan Blackwood) or too tall (Aunt Nell).  When I first carried Aunt Nell’s small handbag I could actually feel her long thin fingers in the worn strap. 

The body with its warmth and life breathes its shapes into clothes – bumps, asymmetry, curves and dents.  That’s how clothes are actually alive.  I have some really exquisite vintage clothes bought when they were affordable.  So often I wonder who died in this, who lived in this, who had this made.

For these reasons clothes ARE sacred things.  I’m so annoyed about not being able to get on with the dress I think I’ll simply start ordering fabric for scarves and hand-hem them. Fingers crossed they can be sacred objects too.

Why not sew much in film?

Coco Avant Chanel was a film I longed to see because I thought it would be full of the early years of Coco hand stitching away, putting new things together for the first time, creating those suits, those jackets…  But it was such a disappointment.  There was just one scene of Coco repairing something.  She rolled out a wonderful cloth sewing kit and threaded up, but that was about it. 

I can’t really articulate why I want to see stitching in films.  Perhaps it has to do with possibilities, or watching skill on screen.  Perhaps it’s the same reason some people enjoy seeing painting happening in movies.

Joan Didion has written that when she looks at her ancestral quilts from covered wagon days, she can see that the women had stitched through their pain – the cold, the babies that must’ve died along the way, the homelessness…  I’m not sure we can ever expect to have that quite captured in film but I know it can be an intense, concentrated moment in time.

I think I watch Dial M for Murder time and time again just for the scene where we see Grace Kelly’s mending basket in its blue satin glory. Oh, but also for that little red handbag (I will write a post on Hitchcock and handbags another time - there's too much to say).

There’s narrative in stitching and stitching in narrative.  I’m doing lots of hand sewn toys in front of the telly this Christmas, like every other.  So often the little toys I’m making are infused with what I’ve been watching, so when I look at them I see film or tv.  A navy blue cat has been doused in Luther season 2.  A sweet brown horse has elements of Dexter, a black swan – Sex and the City (again). 

I digress.  The magic of the screen has in fact given me the confidence that I can really produce some clothes. Project Runway (Season 8) was the best reality show I’ve seen since Fashion House (where we witnessed the rise of Gareth Pugh).  Project Runway was bitchy, funny but most of all it showed SEWING.

Life is better with a scarf

Fiona and I saw Stevie Nicks in Hobart last night finishing her tour (and yes, her old stuff is better than her new stuff).  She did not disappoint when it came to dragging her fashions around.  The witchy sleeves, the 80s knee-length tiered, long sleeved dresses and the waist long blonde hair puffed at the top, side parted with a fringe. Part of me has complete respect for finding a look and sticking with it through thick and thin, travelling unaffected through the magazine world that tells you to update every five minutes.  If you love a dress, you should love it through time.  The other part of me finds an aging rock star hanging on to looking twenty a bit sad.  I don’t want to be someone who thinks that a woman in her 60s should cut her hair, but really 30cm off would be good, Stevie.  

One piece of clothing that can travel through one’s lifetime is a beautiful, large scarf.  And there’s the advertorial: one of the original ideas for Matt Coyle clothes came from hours of stalking vintage Hermes scarves on eBay and desperately wanting one but not really being able to part with $300 in the one moment.   Scarves with drawings, with narrative, are timeless.  Hopefully some of our favourite drawings can end up as a scarf.  Soon!  One of my English lecturers from the olden days said “Life is better with a scarf”.  He was referring to a woollen winter scarf, but it is just as true of a silk one – not too light, not too small.  A scarf of substance.  Surely this image, 'Still Life' is a scarf print:

©Matt Coyle 2010

Speaking of substance, the absent presence at the concert last night was Annie Lennox. Dave Stewart performed before and during Stevie’s songs and he brought out some of the great Eurythmics numbers – Miracle of Love, Sweet Dreams… 

Ahhh Annie Lennox. Twenty years ago (yes really!) I saw my first concert at the DEC (Derwent Entertainment Centre) – the Eurythmics.  I can still remember drawing a long breath when Annie appeared, all white flesh and hair, rocking a red satin slip.  Grunge at its most perfect.  (BTW, when is grunge coming back??)  Annie wasn’t there last night   She’s moved on.  As a feminist I should be celebrating Stevie for sticking to her look.  But I just can’t.  Maybe it’s because whilst her clothes, dancing, and voice reflect her past, her frozen face does not.

Time Out Dress

In my mind this blog has been written many times.  Many entries, much discussion.  Annoyingly the writing has happened when on walks or sitting in the car during school pick-up.  But here it is in the flesh. 

And it starts with a sword.  I’ll tell the origin story of the Matt Coyle Clothes another time, but for now here is an introduction to the Time Out Dress.  It’s a funny thing to introduce as I haven’t even done the mock-up (or the toile) yet, but it’s so clear in my mind I partly think, why aren’t people already wearing it?  

There's always that deadly space between inspiration and action isn't there.

                                                                         ©Matt Coyle 2010
Time Out dress is for day and night.  It’s knee-length, probably sleeveless, off white with black/grey Matt Coyle images.  The back has the Time Out picture, and seeing that picture for the first time made me covert one of Matt’s pictures more than any other.  Ironically we still don’t have a Time Out in the house, but one day…

I was worried that the dress would be all back, with no connection to the front.  I needed a little image for the front, but I didn’t want a kind of stamp collection tattooed dress. 

So that’s where the sword comes in.  This sword (a plastic toy really) features in another of Matt’s drawings, held by the doll featured in Time Out (we call this doll Anna Pushkin).  Something about Anna Pushkin’s hooded top makes me think of Joan of Arc.  Who doesn’t love a soldier-inspired piece of clothing?  And especially a medieval holy soldier in disguise?  I also watched the whole first series of Game of Thrones last month and oh, the soldiers, the fur…  

So many meanings, such a little plastic sword.  I imagine it will be about 4 inches long and will sit on the top left or right side of the dress like a printed broach.

                                                                             ©Matt Coyle 2011
This is the sword hot off the press.  Look Ma, pencil marks!  There’s something also a little bit nun-like about having a t-shaped image on the top of a dress.  Or nursey.  A holy, feminine warrior.  Heck, I have been watching too much tv (how unusual).