ELLEMemoir
62 ELLE.COM/UK September 2O19
spare room, moulded to her precise measurements. When my mother
was invited to a ball at Oxford in 1968, my grandmother went to Borovick
Fabrics in Soho for pink silk – it is still there – and stayed up sewing for
three nights on her Singer sewing machine, which she operated with
a pedal. At the end of her vigil, she produced a full-length evening dress
with full-length evening coat. ‘It had 4O satin-covered buttons,’ she
would tell me, as I clutched her and knew that fashion, for her, was love.
But I got fat and fearful and, about
15 years ago – at exactly the same time
I gave up alcohol, which had driven me
mad – I stopped loving fashion. Rather, it
became something to taunt me, even if
it was my decision to abandon it. I didn’t
want the power to change and enchant.
I didn’t want to bloom in the eyes of men.
It felt dangerous, for I had too many
men when I was drinking, and it was hard
enough being myself. I gathered the fat
into a cloak that could not be penetrated
and settled into my ‘style’, which is, I now
realise, modelled on the fictional nerd
Jane Eyre. I wore black always, and
sometimes a white collar for emphasis
of the vulnerability of my neck. I looked
like a Victorian ghost child mourning
for herself, which is exactly what I was.
I could not be hurt any more because I did
not exist. Advertising said so.
After my birthday, a university friend- clever, kind – suggested a holiday.
In May, I found myself on the island of
Hydra in the Saronic Gulf with a suitcase
full of stained T-shirts and unironed skirts
from Marks & Spencer, with the hems
all fallen down or, worse, partially fallen
down. I knew I couldn’t actually travel
without clothes. They just had to be very
ugly clothes. I had a good straw hat
but, typically, I’d given it away with the
excuse that it meddled with my peripheral
vision, and I needed my peripheral vision
for work. I was the same with high heels.
I did not wear them in case I needed
to run away for work. I did not know
what to expect, but I certainly didn’t
think that I was about to rediscover fashion, and a part of myself
I thought was dead and unmourned.
Hydra has only one settlement: a village on a harbour, which
climbs up to the hills. Leonard Cohen lived here for most of the 196Os
and wrote. It is a place, then, for dreaming; for becoming yourself
again. There were no cars; donkeys climbed the hills with toilet rolls
on their backs. I liked them in their toilet roll gowns. I empathised
with them. I would wear the contents of Lidl on my back if I could.
I would dress as a bin bag or a bar of soap.
There were perhaps 2O independent boutiques by the harbour.
They were not famous brands, which I had learnt to fear. This is not
Capri, or ‘Crapi’ as my husband called it, as he looked for a supermarket
and found only a branch of Valentino. They gathered because
pleasure boats spit out tourists who shop like maniacs and are gone like
dust. Hydra was fashion island. I had no idea and, initially, no interest.
I am a size 18. I cannot remember the last time I was happy in a dress
shop. I usually associate them with the disappointment in my mother’s
eyes: how can I have done this to myself? I did have beautiful things.
I had a black Louis Vuitton dress, which did not fit me, Marc Jacobs
shoes with navy ribbons (I gave the red pair away, of course), and
a black cashmere cape from Venice,
which my husband bought me when we
fell in love. But they were shuttered away
in the cupboard with my shame. They were
mine, but they were not for me.
Even so, I found myself in every
shop on the quayside, tearing through
the rails with something like hunger. My
friend was the same. We found we liked
doing it. We decided, between us, to
try on every dress in Hydra. We were
possessed. Was it because we had
been removed from our mothers, and
their critical eyes could not see as far as
the Saronic Gulf to say – ‘too low, too
high, sleeves, no yellow, bra’?
There were also other explanations.
One is that the clothes actually FITTED us.
Even in Hobbs, which I have stayed
faithful to for too long, you can often only
buy a size 18 online, as if fat women are
ill-starred and must not sully the actual
shops; rather, we must shop in the
darkness of our homes.
Another is that a fashion sprite
with wonderful taste lived on Hydra.
It was like a museum of fashion where
everything was available; everything
I have ever found lovely was there.
There were silk pyjamas in gaudy colours
and bias-cut dresses from the 193Os;
there were New Look-styled dresses
from the 195Os, billowing like tutus;
linen shift dresses from the 196Os in
acid colours; cashmere twin sets; capri
pants; sea goddess gowns of such life
they seemed ready to jump off the rails
and assume a narrative of their own.
I particularly loved the cheesecloth maxi dresses from the 197Os, the
decade of my childhood – always sunny in my remembrance – in which
I communed with my mother and grandmother in fashion. These were
the dresses my mother wore when she was young, and I touched them
and felt close to her because they evoked my eternal summer.
I waited for the enchantment to lift and the image in the mirror to
assume its ordinary form – a monster – but it didn’t. I felt only joy and,
after circling them for days, I bought two dresses: a formal black silk
dress and a blue lace empire-line dress. It even exposed my legs! I left
Hydra very happily and threw my stained T-shirts in the bin. They were
a defence I no longer needed. Whatever I mourned had taken its
sacrifice and was replete. I could love fashion again. I felt as if something
I wanted – and had always loved – had been returned to me at last. St yling: Hélène Renault- Kohn. Photography, this page: Courtesy of Tanya Gold.THE AUTHOR
Tanya Gold’s relationship with her
body changed after having her son“IT WAS LIKE a MUSEUM
OF FASHION;
EVERY THING I HAVE
E VER FOUND
LOV ELY was THERE – SILK
PYJA MAS IN GAUDY
COLOURS ... SE A
GODDESS GOWNS”