A wedding dress made properly takes eighteen weeks. Most brides who walk into Ela Elu do not know this. They have arrived with a Pinterest board on their phone and an idea — sometimes vague, sometimes precise — of what they would like to be wearing on the morning of, and they assume the work of getting there is something like a transaction. Eighteen weeks comes as a small surprise.
It comes as a smaller surprise once they understand what the eighteen weeks contain.
Alana McBain, who runs the atelier from a heritage shopfront on Pacific Parade in Currumbin, does not begin with fabric. She begins with a conversation, in two parts. The first hour is about the wedding — the place it is being held, the time of year, the light at that hour of the day, the family who will be there. The second is about the bride. What she has worn that has made her feel like herself. What she has worn that has made her feel like someone else. Whether her shoulders are something she would like to think about, or something she would like the dress to think about for her. By the end of two hours the conversation has produced more than the dress eventually will — a kind of agreement, between Alana and the bride, about who is going to show up on the morning of and what she is going to be made of.
The fitting room, where the eighteen weeks begin.
The sketch comes next. It usually takes a week. Sometimes longer if the bride has asked for a piece of architecture rather than a piece of clothing — a column dress, a sculpted neckline, a hand-finished hem that lays a certain way on a certain kind of floor. The sketch is sent. The bride lives with it for a few days. Sometimes she replies with one note; sometimes she replies with nine. Either way, eventually the sketch becomes a drawing the bride and Alana have both agreed to.
Then the fabric is ordered, and this is the first long quiet of the eighteen weeks. Silk from a French mill, or lace from a workshop in northern Italy, or — for a bride who wants something Australian — heavy cotton organdy from a Melbourne supplier. The fabric is paid for in advance and arrives in a flat box about three weeks later. Until it does, there is no dress, only the agreement.
When the fabric arrives, the pattern is cut from calico first. A toile — a fitting in unfinished cotton — is sewn. This is the eighth or ninth week. The bride comes back to Currumbin and tries on her dress in a sort of ghost form. Most brides find this fitting strange. The garment looks like a dress but is not yet a dress, and what they see in the mirror is a draft.
Adjustments are pinned. Then the silk is cut.
This is the moment of commitment in any made-to-measure dress, and Alana treats it with appropriate gravity. Once the silk has been cut, it is cut. There is no going back, only forward. The cutting happens in the afternoon, when the light over Currumbin is soft, and it happens once, in one sustained hour, and it produces a dress that exists for the first time as a future possibility rather than a present garment.
Alana McBain, in the second-fitting room.
The rest of the eighteen weeks is making the dress. Second fitting, third fitting. Beading by hand if there is beading. Lace applied with a needle if there is lace. Pressing. Hanging. The final week is mostly waiting and small alterations — a half-centimetre off the hem, a hook moved, a button reset. By Friday afternoon the dress is ready, and Alana herself usually delivers it, in a long muslin bag, to the place the bride is getting dressed on Saturday morning.
Eighteen weeks for a dress that is worn for eight hours. The ratio is the point.