Chapter 5

Anjali and Panya’s company hired s small warehouse higher up the street. They used the space so released at the back of their shop to construct and equip a consulting room, with just enough girth to display garments, and just enough privacy to engage with the hoped-for customers.

This consulting room inevitably became cluttered with that equipment for tailoring that might just be needed one day. Even so, such clutter led to an environment for her client and garment interactions that Anjali found to be suited to its purpose.

There is a recognition that ‘things that look as they should, will inevitably function as they should.’ This rule is as applicable to the design of a garment, as it is to that of a tailor’s consulting room. Anjali’s cluttered consulting space, like any serviceable garment, was designed to an idea but soon wore into an exact and comfortable fit.

Threads of Arrow Streets’ new business approach was tailored to those who were most likely to be comfortable with Anjali’s need to get to the bottom of things. Her customers required an interest in – and a love of – clothing, as well as a little understanding of clothing’s intrinsic role in how others choose to see us. This much Anjali had identified during the sleepless nights that are the sure bedfellows of a tailor pondering a ‘possible opportunity, but potential distraction.’

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Neither woman behind ‘Threads of Arrow Street’ found it surprising that, just as in life, so as in fashion, everything is a constant challenge; what succeeds today might have failed in the past and may never work again in the future. The changing river of circumstance flows freely, and the best you can do is seize the present opportunity and make the most of it.

There were, it became apparent, few regular customers who were of a mind to embrace the opportunity of progressive fashion. Any spark of interest that might have existed was cooled by the whole town being in the embrace of an easterly wind, carrying late winter snow over the mountains and biting down onto the valley.

The ‘alterations consulting room’ consumed much coffee and fashionable biscuits but delivered little, beyond the snaring of some extra alteration work for which the profit was so thin it was see-through. The theory of ‘fashion through progressive alteration’ seemed to be an illusion and perhaps even a delusion. There were soon tensions tightening between the two business partners that threatened to tear open the seams of ‘Threads of Arrow Street’.

‘We are doing more work for no extra profit. That is not a motivator for me in this business,’ said Panya patiently over some chamomile tea.

‘Panya is so capable,’ thought Anjali. ‘Everything flows like cotton through a machine needle when she is running this business.’

A good garment is so designed that if there are tensions which could lead to a rupture, it will split across a secondary seam. Anjali realised that, as ‘Threads’ was indispensable for the future of her enterprise, it was she who must become that secondary seam. She must be the one that gave a little.

The tensions were eased by Anjali conceding a date by which there must be an agreed, detailed and measured amount of material progress towards her design.

‘Otherwise, I will return - as I promised Panya I would - to the alterations and repairs that we both know are the foundations underpinning Threads of Arrow Street.’