Meet the Dressmakers

Fashion designers, retail operators, merchants or just common time travellers?

When word gets around that you are making a drama centred around fashion designers, you get inundated with submissions of actors doing the campy avant-garde, excess is king type we have seen in productions for a very long time. There is nothing wrong with that, that type of fashion designer is prevalent in the Zeitgeist. But in my younger years I worked in stores for some prominent Sydney based designers (The first dress I learnt to fit was on Kylie Minogue) and I came to know a more gritty, penny pinching, blue collar type operator. One of the designers I worked for was a cockney London type, who ran off with his employees Superannuation. I also worked for an Australian born designer of Italian heritage who did nothing but talk about her Italian roots and praise an emphasis on Italian excess and quality and yet was one of the most miserable and cheapest of people you had ever met, going so far as to snatch a coffee from a casual worker to give to a client and unthinkingly wiping the lipstick from the rim with her sleeve and then banning staff from bringing coffee to the store because of the stain she acquired from her own ill action. Yet, I never saw this type of designer depicted on the screen. There was no doubt in my mind when I penned the Dressmakers, that the grass roots con type fashion retailer was to be turf I stake my flag on.

My association with the great Surrey born theatre actor David Attrill goes back ten years, when I first had him in a pantomime type sequence set in Victorian times. I could tell he had a penchant for sinister and gritty types and thus called upon him to play the wicked Decavious in Quest for Steel. But he doesn't just play the 24 hour nasty type of course, he is able to breathe humanity into his darker roles to make you consider and perhaps even sympathise with his position and I have always like that type of actor. Of course David is nothing like this in real life. He is a loving father and caring partner to his wife and I had the pleasure of having them all over to fill the store with their fantastic transformed 1950's attired magnificence. David's daughter Winsome, aka Sugar Derramar came to set with an endless pile of fantastic 50's attire for her self and her mother, Jenny, which was welcome relief to my straining - almost overused costume department.

David got the character right away. A suspected time traveller, he played it like the street merchant scissorman I had envisioned. Coming to set with a variety of accents form different walks of gritty retail life, thus providing an ample choice. The outfit took some time to develop. At first you think about a flash suit, but David is an older man, look at that beard and white hair, this is a man who wears the same shirt and tie in and out, masked by an apron with gold chained magnifying glass on the ready, A master craftsman, a man weighed down by the excessiveness of the day and constant kneeling that comes with the duty.

Also, working in this gritty portrayal is that he is a suspected Traverser: A man of danger and this is what made me think of David. In Quest for Steel, he and his cronies have the duty of cleaning up after his master's stalk. The stalk in question usually refers to removing the dead from the labyrinth. But in this particular case, an unconscious female combatant has planted herself out front of the abode of these lechers and David's character says:

"Our job is to do the dishes,

but, when the rabbit finds its way out of the pot,

we make stew!"

So penning this character made me think of another ditty, which I call the Retailer's Theses:

it reads:

"If a customer inspects goods without purchase,

the retailer must play it nice.

But, if goods should be inspected, 4 times,

3 times or twice,

The customer must pay it's price!"

These two differing verses are birds of a feather to me.....

For the second Dressmaker, Phillipe Catcher, I wanted a somewhat different appearance. Still keeping with the gritty depiction, I wanted someone more Saville Row, but also street hustler. Gary was able to fit the bill perfectly.

I met Gary whilst auditioning actors for Quest for Steel and kept him back in my mind for roles and knew he would work really well for this one. Himself having worked in fashion retail and being the owner and wearer of a Gieves and Hawkes of Saville Row suit meant he was perfect for this part and I was really pleased with his performance.

Alas, these are the Dressmakers; scissormen, main antagonists of the piece.

Coming your way soon.