Let’s start from the very beginning.
I used to be very wild as a little girl. My hair was always
cut quite short and even if my mother persisted to comb them and put pink clips
on them, my hairdo was always weird. Something in between a splendid princess and
an orphan right out of a Dickens’s novel.
Almost same problem with the shoes. I’ve never understood why
they had to be so small and narrow compared to my feet and above all, why I
always had to wear those terrible white cotton socks. I’ve always suspected
that one of my direct ancestors had been one of Cinderella’s half-sisters and
now and then, when my mother could’t see me, I took off the shoes. Walking
barefoot was always a relief.
Besides those little misadventures, I wouldn’t say that my
childhood was bad, but, and that’s a fact, I always felt different and totally
out of place. I remembered that the only thing that could calm me down was
climbing up the big pear tree in my grandpa’s garden. Watching the sky from
above. Reading a book among the fronds. Feeling like on the top of my vessel.
Finally free.
My father used to be a book restorer, so I always saw needles
and threads scattered in my house, piles of different materials, cardboard and
paper collected untidily, waiting to being used. Books everywhere. Books were
also a salvation for me. Sewing was part of my DNA, that just came out
naturally, by trial and error, I guess. Nobody taught me how. I was 7 when I
started and I used to sew really simply things. Small blankets for my sister’s
stuffed animals. Tiny dresses for our dolls. My mother was so worried that
accidentally I could have hurt myself, but it never happened. It was also in my
DNA to be disobedient.
A couple of years later, I was in a
physiotherapistic clinic, waiting for my mother’s visit. Bored to death, I took
a fashion magazine lying on a small table, right in front of me and started to
leaf through. My attention was suddendly captured by a photo, so I tore out the
page, I put it in my pocket, intending to draw inspiration by it. No
revelation. Maybe a vocation. I would say a big intuition, yes. I sewed my very
first big "thing“ when I was almost 12. I had no sewing machine, but a lot of
those big needles that my father used for sewing his books. I could barely
handle them. At home I had a couple of old jeans and I decided to use them to
make me a skirt. With some small scissors I unstitched every part of them and
then I put them back together again. I used a pair of big scissors that my
father gave me to shape the material, trying to make a flared skirt. I adorned
it, cutting round some small pieces, using the belt loops to make a sun with
its sunshines. I also cut a moon and some stars. I sewed every day. All summer.
I also began to draw my own collection and I read a lot of books about fashion
that my father found for me at the library, always being inspired by styles
from the past. Every day a little step more. They were really exciting days.
Unfortunately I never had the chance to wear that skirt, but I always kept that
particular emotion in my heart. Creating, being inspired, was the best thing
that could ever happen to me.
