playing with scissors (part two)

in which the almost-zero-waste dress is bundled, dyed and revealed (or, the proof of the pudding)

I sewed my almost-zero-waste-dress together with a very fine silkymerino yarn and hemmed all the bits that looked a tad scruffy. While I stitched, I listened to a splendid audio book “Ladies in Black” (Madeleine St John 1993), the opening paragraph of which transported me to a time in my life that I thought I had expunged from memory, a period best forgotten sandwiched between my abandonment of architecture studies (one of three major regrets in my life…you don’t need to know what the others are) and securing a position as ‘exhibitions trainee’ at the Adelaide Festival Centre Gallery. I had taken a position as a sales assistant at a women’s clothing emporium on Rundle Mall and am still mystified as to why they hired me given the clothing was marketed at sassy young fashion-conscious things and I attended the interview clad in a shapeless tartan sack more suitable to Miss Marple’s distant Scottish aunt, my hair braided around my head and sturdy boots on my feet.

Looking back I am still somewhat embarrassed by this brief interlude in the fast fashion world, just one of the many frayed threads in “life’s rich tapestry of loose ends”. Happily it only lasted six months or so and was not completely wasted as I (perhaps surprisingly) learned a lot about the industry, certainly enough to be able to calculate (by working backwards) just how much the seamstress on a flash frock in a department store was likely to have been paid. Clue :: not a lot.

Long story short, I was allocated to the upper level of said establishment where they sold their “higher end house label” along with their gownless evening straps (family euphemism for cocktail wear). We were expected to be on deck five minutes before the doors opened, so as to load the tills (in those days people still paid with cash or cheques…plastic cards were yet to be introduced in Australia). They paid us to work from 9am to 5.30pm but woe betide the girl who punched her card after 8.45 or before 5.45. On Friday evenings the store closed at 9pm. You worked alternate Friday nights and Saturday mornings unless you were the floor manager in which case there was no punching of cards or extra hours. Accidentally leaving a security tag in place on a garment (the sort that make a howling sound when they are carried past the sensor) meant instant dismissal.

At the end of each day we took it in turns to reconcile the days takings with a boxful of tiny coded cardboard pricetags (the ‘kimballs’) half of which was left attached to the sold garment and the other half removed at point of sale. The kimballs were sorted into piles of the same value, and added up. The notes and coins were totted up down to the very last gleaming cent. We learned to be cautious when accepting a cheque, noting driving licence numbers and addresses on the reverse along with the name of the person responsible for accepting it as the management had impressed upon us that any ‘bouncers’ would be subtracted from our pay packet.