Chapter 4
Anjali’s new assistant was entirely as her uncle had advertised. Her junior partner, Panya, quickly asserted herself, managing the varying workload and even finding two capable part-time assistants to cover weekly and annual business cycles: the windy weekends, the private functions, the festive celebrations, the parties of the early spring.
The pressure and worry displaced by Anjali’s new and capable assistant provided further opportunity to design her own garments, rather than rescue the remnants of someone else’s.
‘I need to construct garments from a scribble on paper to the complete structure that enhances the human form and presence,’ Anjali pitched to herself as she sat at the shop’s kitchenette table, a tap dripping effortlessly in the background. ‘Threads will not thrive unless we can offer a comprehensive tailoring service.’
This thought was attractive to Anjali and, being attractive, seemed correct.
Such a statement is no sooner released into the world, then it is seized upon by doubts and misgivings. A succession of barriers and blockages surfaced ahead of her; she could not conceive of a realistic way through all of them. The demands of the growing business, the watchful presence of her uncle, the customers that wanted no more than a precisely defined alteration or repair, all seemed to confirm that designing garments in this damp and remote valley was a hapless pursuit.
****
When mired by the drag of willow branches and obstructed by looming boulders, a river will still find its way through to the sea.
The way through came one morning, before the shop was open, when the two women were reviewing the growing list of things that needed to be addressed. Panya, at the same time, was unpicking some stitches on an embroidered dressing gown.
In a rare moment of frustration Panya remarked, ‘I find it is often better to make smaller stitches than bigger stitches. You can adjust as you go along with small stitches, whilst the occasional errors from big stitches most often need to be unpicked.’
She gasped in exasperation and set the garment down on the counter.
‘I find this a most painful process - tiptoeing backwards when there is so much work in front of us.’
****
This statement of Panya’s returned to Anjali’s thoughts, as she stared at the ceiling of her bedroom that night. The clarity of flowing thought to be found in the early-morning hours caused her to reason in this way: ‘Consecutive alteration is like a river that flows finally into design. Every alteration is a step in the fashioning of a garment but broken down into smaller steps. Alteration would be a worthy ambition for a fashion designer. Small steps should be taken towards a tailored look and feel of a garment. Clothing should be fashioned by alteration. It will then become a better fit for the role it is playing by the refining design of each consecutive alteration.’
She wrote in her bedside notebook by the light of a pocket torch.
‘It is the business of the fashion designer to extend the reach of the garment, making it supportive of the widest needs of its wearer. A progressive measure has always delivered a more creative and practical solution than the leap of blind faith that is the new fashion collection. It is surely better to provide what people need, rather than try to convince them of what they should wear for one transitory season.’
****
Each day that followed brought her a new idea. Her thought process shifted through minor adjustments, and by compiling these changes in a fresh notebook, she set up the framework for what – she was certain – would be a thriving business.
She explained her ideas to Panya over the hum of a sewing machine and the insistent hiss of an iron.
‘The type of clothing that one takes to a tailor for alteration or repair, is the type that has accompanied one through the difficulties of life,’ she said to Panya on the first day. ‘Any piece of clothing that has provided such comfort and support, for such a period, is bound to show its scars. People are as their clothing; they are creased and become misshapen and torn in the same way. The successful tailor can see beyond the hemline and the cuff. If you begin by addressing the person - the wearer - then you will come to understand what will make them feel good in their clothing, and what clothing will look good on them. I cannot look at a summer dress that stretches and hangs handsomely, and then see a head that is stained, faded or snagged that sits above it’.
On the second day, as a customer left the shop with a folded jacket beneath his arm, she said to Panya, ‘I want garments that, like their wearers, are durable and do not easily unravel in the most abrasive of occasions. Given the right level of attention a garment will speak generously about a person and will wear comfortably enough to obscure the occasional imperfection. But you cannot expect a garment to lie; it is beyond its capability. You cannot expect to exploit a garment, it will protest and it will do so loudly.’
On the third day, ‘I must find the time to understand what it is that our customers must face in their lives. There may well be a need for the alteration of a garment, but only when the fault lies with the garment.’
Panya continued working, her sewing machine cutting out the end of Anjali’s sentence.
‘I am listening,’ she reassured Anjali.
Anjali waited until Panya’s sewing machine had settled itself.
‘We can advise what alterations will be needed, so that a garment offers a fitting level of support given the customer’s situation. But we must be honest with customers. Sometimes - often I think - the customer needs time to catch up with the garment.’
‘We are tailors,’ said Panya.
‘I have known people who could pour sophistication out of a flour sack,’ replied Anjali. ‘We alter the clothing to suit the needs of the person and alter the person to more neatly fit the real potential of the clothing we alter for them. It is a question of neither the clothing nor the person being stretched beyond the capability of the material from which they are made.’
‘And how do you expect a tailor to do that?’
‘One alteration at a time. The right material, the right confidence. The right colour, the right attitude.’
****
Over the next two weeks these filaments of ideas were spun together into a long and profitable yarn.
‘I remember,’ said Anjali to Panya, typing an invoice into the computer as she spoke, ‘what my uncle told me on one of his many visits. He said the wealthy tailor adds value to every alteration.’
‘So?’
‘So, we should encourage a person to understand what is realistically achievable from a single alteration. Then we go further, and we reveal what the next alteration can achieve. We give the customer the time, and the support as required, to catch up with the altered capabilities of our garment.’
The invoice she was working on disappeared from Anjali’s focus and, instead, the end of her struggle came into view.
‘Alteration becomes a journey, Panya, not just a service. Fashion design becomes a process of successive alteration, consecutive steps in the dance of what the designer can create and what the customer will wear. The customer and garment will blend like cotton and wool; each promotes the performance of the other.’
Anjali pressed the return button on the keyboard with the flourish of a difficult job at last completed.
‘I think you need to do this Anjali,’ Panya said suddenly through the steam rising from a commercial iron. ‘If your suggestions work, we are both better off. If they don’t, then I will at least have managed to press these trousers.’
****
Later, with the evening’s saucepan of masala chai heating on the gas cooker, Panya voiced her considered and final view on Anjali’s designs.
‘This idea needs to be given some time - but not too much time,’ she said with Panya precision. ‘There are opportunities and there are distractions. We need to find out quickly what we are fashioning here. This little business will not survive for long if it miscalculates. Remember Anjali. Measure twice, so that you may cut just the once.’