Designs and dreams

I dropped by my clothes designer’s store last evening on my way home and found her in her usual welter of fabric and instructions and clients. Even as she hugged me in greeting and welcomed me into her office, she yelled at one of her girls about cleaning up, yelled at one of her embroiderers to change the colour of the thread he had used and yelled at the tea boy to stop putting so much sugar in the thick brew he boiled up every few hours. Between all that noise, she asked tenderly after me and mine, offered me tea and instructed someone to bring over the clothes she had ready for me to take home. And she insisted on climbing over the heaps of plastic bags crammed with textiles to show me some of the new bolts of fabric she had brought in the previous week, telling me how I really needed that swathe of silk or this bolt of brocade.

And I prowled, delighted in what could possibly become a serious addiction and is close to that stage already, I touched heavy silks with that unbeatable sheen, crisp cottons with the freshly starched crackle, intricate weaves that caught on the rough spots on my fingertips and soft mulls that almost seduced me into diving headfirst into them for a long and luxurious nap. On my way around the store I patted a tall pile of velvet cord and brushed past a tottering edifice that was all chiffons and slithery satins that threatened dire, soft, silent collapse.

She showed me colours that had my head floating away into dream-filled worlds and my sense of greed grinning ghoulishly at my bank account. Gorgeous jewel-toned raw silk - in ruby red, jade green, ivory-cream, brilliant scarlet, vivid sapphire blue...my hands reached out instinctively, wanting more, wanting it all. A stack of twill-textured silk weaves invited me to unfold and lech, my heart beating just that tiny bit faster as I opened out a wonderfully sheeny deep turquoise, block printed in pastels with a tinge of gold. And there were the whites, pure, clean, crisp whites, in linen, silk, cord, cotton, chiffon, lycra...after red, and sometimes even before it, white is a favourite colour, especially for shirts and kurtas.

With some difficulty, I prised myself away from all that and finished my business with my designer. And left soon after, my head abuzz with silks and satins, twills and taffetas, linens and line drawings of all the wonderful clothes that I would create with the cloth I had fiddled with…