Four Fires (54 page)

'Mike, I know why we're having dinner, it wasn't your idea, was it? Mr Stan's?'

Mike nods, 'But that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it, Sally. It's the first time I've been able to talk to anyone in the trade about how I feel about clothes design.'

Sally sighs. I'm enjoying myself as well, but yeah, all right, you work for Mr Stan and he wants you to flog the Collection 1961 summer range to Country Stores, that's about it, isn't it?'

Mike looks at Sally Harris sheepishly. 'Yup.'

'So tell me, Michael Maloney what is the major colour component of the Collection range?'

Mike blushes violently. 'Navy blue with a soupcon of white.' Now they both fall about so that the entire restaurant is looking at them, but they're so obviously enjoying themselves that Mr Luigi doesn't come over, and most of the people in the famous restaurant don't seem to mind. A waiter walks over and sees that the champagne bottle is empty. Mike orders another. The kid is learning fast but it may not have been the smartest thing to do.

Sally, still chuckling, glances sideways at Mike. 'Now, tell me about the Sarah Maloney label.'

The Sarah Maloney label has been going for more than three years and is the reason Mike can send Nancy five pounds a week. It's also paid for two professional Singer sewing machines, one for Sophie and one for himself, as well as for the fabrics that go into Mike's designs. It all started after Templeton was born and Sarah got her figure back, which was always slim, with long legs and a narrow waist.

Sarah had nothing to wear, I mean she was feeding her baby and her breasts were larger than normal and none of her old clothes really fitted her. Not that she had that many in the first place.

So Mike started to make her clothes, him and Sophie, with Mike buying the fabrics and doing the designs. At first he simply followed the fashions of the day but after about a year things started to change. It must have been about the time he went to the McCabbe Academy when he started to be different.

It began as a bit of fun, something for Mike and Sophie to do together. It worked real good because Morrie was working at the Age and Sarah would come home at night and look after Templeton so that Sophie could finish her piecework if the baby had kept her from it during the day. On the weekends, Morrie and Sarah would study together and Mike and Sophie would design a dress for Sarah or, if Sophie needed to catch up with her piecework, Mike would hop in and help her.

It was a crowded little house but somehow it worked. Tommy and John Crowe came down one weekend early in the piece and turned the back porch into a sleep-out for Mike, as well as a workroom large enough so that when they eventually got two professional Singers they would be able to work in it together. It wasn't exactly what you'd call spacious and Mike would laugh and say to Sophie, 'What are you complaining about, they're better working conditions than The
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Lane.'

Mike would look around while he was doing messages or things in TO Lane or elsewhere for offcuts, fabrics that were different. He might find a scrap here or a small length of cloth somewhere else and he'd offer to buy it. Sometimes the owners would let him have the scrap of cloth for nothing. The girls in the factory started scrounging as well.

Word would get around that someone was using a light wool in brilliant scarlet for the lining of a winter coat and, mysteriously, half a yard would be haaded to Mike by one of the factory girls, who said it had been given to her by a friend in another firm. Mike also discovered furnishing fabrics, beautiful brocades imported from Europe, cottons for curtains in colourful designs nobody would have thought to use in the fashion trade Even the tiniest scraps of velvets and other precious fabrics too small to be useful to anyone would be cherished for applique work.

The miracle of Mike's designs was in the use of scraps, bits of material inlaid or used as a contrasting pocket or a collar or even a belt. The result was that the fabrics used were of a very high quality and the clothes beautifully made but they cost much less than the expensive labels.

Soon Sarah was going to lectures at the university in a new dress or outfit every week. At first it was only the male med students who noticed, but being men it was more a matter of seeing how very pretty she was. However it didn't take long for the female students on campus to take notice. One thing led to another and Sarah would be asked where she bought the fabulous new dress. The first time this happened, it was a third-year student doing Arts, whose parents must have had a quid or two because she was always dolled up to the nines.

'That's a wonderful dress, what's the label"?' she asked Sarah.

Sarah, without really thinking, grinned and replied, 'Oh, it's a Sarah Maloney', gently sending her up.

'It's fabulous, where is the shop? Toorak Road? I simply must have one of her outfits.'

Sarah couldn't explain it's a joke but had enough nous to say, 'No, it's . . it's a private collection, I'm glad you like it, I'll tell him.'

'Him? I thought you said the label was Sarah Maloney?'

Sarah's got herself into a bit of a pickle. 'Yes, that's the label, the designer is a male.'

'Well, does he sell?'

I'll ask him,' Sarah replied.

And that's how it started on campus. Mike who knew one of the label-makers in The Lane, had him make up a roll of Sarah Maloney labels to sew into his garments. Morrie was roped in to do the measurements and each lunch hour in the little garden outside the Zoology labs Morrie would take careful measurements and Sarah would write these down along with the colouring of the student or any special feature, eyes, hands, shoulders, legs, if the student wanted an original Sarah Maloney. Otherwise it would simply be the dress of the week or of previous weeks made to a particular student's measurements.

Morrie, who would fuss around in his white lab coat, looked just the part of the busy little tailor as Sarah, looking beautiful in the dress of the week, wrote down his instructions and measurements on a notepad. They both loved taking the measurements, as it took them outside the Medical Faculty and where they could meet other female students. Sarah discovered she was already a bit of a hero to most of the female students, who now pestered her to stand for the student council. Sarah felt, with Templeton and her studies, it was more than she could handle, but eventually she stood as a third-year student and was elected, gaining every female student vote in the university and most of the Medical Faculty votes, although Engineering let it be known that they were voting as a block for anyone as long as it wasn't a female or Sarah 'trouble'

Maloney.

Mike's clothes aren't cheap because he uses expensive fabrics and they are so very well made and hand-finished. However they aren't beyond the means of some of the students from wealthier
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families. Some designs sell well and Mike and Sarah could make up fifteen garments in a week.

It worries Sarah that there are students who can't afford a Sarah Maloney even though they'd practically kill for one. So, for his Summer 1959 collection Mike designs a day dress in three styles made from tablecloth American gingham in the most outrageous fluorescent colours, pinks and lime greens, blues, purples and yellows. He got the cloth cheaply from the importer because none of the linen departments of the retail stores were willing to order the cloth, thinking it too bright for Australian dining and kitchen tables.

He also designs his 'watermelon' dress with the little bolero top and cummerbund for apres-beach and summer evenings. The summer dresses are priced at three pounds ten shillings and the female component of Melbourne University goes berserko kaperko! (Maloney word.) Over three weeks, orders for two hundred and seventeen fluorescent gingham dresses, which Mike has called 'Broadway Lights', are taken and also for fifty 'watermelon' designs, that sell for four pounds and ten shillings.

By rag-trade standards these are not big numbers, but what it is allowing is for Mike to build up a collection to ultimately show to the big buyers. The dresses that sell easily are photographed by a friend of Mike's, a young German photographer named Helmut Newton, toiles are cut so that the pattern exists, and one dress is made up for racking and showing.

The lovely thing is that Mike is also designing clothes for Templeton, which Sophie is making.

She makes up a few of the designs as samples and visits Toorak Road, pushing the stroller with Templeton in it as the model and with a whole heap of samples in a canvas bag she's made that is attached to the stroller. The designs are an instant success and Sophie starts to get more orders than she can cope with. Mike's infant designs are like his other clothes, lots of colour and imagination.

Next thing, Nancy and Mrs Rika Ray are hauled in to help with the applique work, smocking and embroidery. The little garments get sent up on the train to Yankalillee and are collected at Wangaratta by Bozo. Anyway, Sophie's flogging her kids' clothes and getting ridiculous prices for her Suckfizzle label. 'Suckfizzle' turns out to be just about the best name possible for infants'

clothes.

In 1960 the buyer from Georges in Collins Street asks Sophie to come in and see her, she wants an exclusive range made specially for Georges under the Georges label. It's a big temptation, Georges is the establishment shop where the rich and famous go. But Mike, following consultation with Bozo and Sarah, advises Sophie not to lose her label, her name is everything and what's to stop Georges from terminating her contract one day and ripping off her designs.

So Sophie says no to Georges, who are pretty miffed, because they're not accustomed to being turned down. Then Mike has this idea and Georges buy it. Sophie's label says 'Suckfizzle at Georges', which is to be an exclusive line not available elsewhere.

By the sixth year Mike, Sarah, Morrie and Sophie have been in Melbourne, which is 1961, and by the time Sally Harris and Mike are

having dinner at Florentino's, Sophie has three women doing piecework for her and she can't keep up with the orders coming in.

Nancy is now getting ten pounds a week from Mike, who is earning fifteen pounds a week at Style & Trend but is pocketing fifty pounds from his Sarah Maloney label and another twenty from the Suckfizzle kids' range, all of which, except for what he sends to Nancy and a bit for Sarah's and his lunches, goes into fabrics and building up his sample collection.

With the good money Sophie is bringing in, Morrie could easily give up his job as a lift driver at the Age, but won't. He says he's getting fluent in Australian, a language he recognises as quite different to English, and also he has lots of good mates dependent on him, who bring their families in with all their medical problems. In fact, some nights, the Morrie lift-clinic is so busy, the union is considering whether they should demand an assistant lift driver from Management.

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Besides, he says he can't study at home because of the din of the sewing machines, which he calls

'The second industrial revolution already!'

Sarah doesn't mind the noise. With Nancy and us kids, she's always had chaos around her.

Morrie, of course, is killing it at university, in fact, most days he tries hard not to be a smart-arse, because he often knows more than the lecturer about the subject being taught, but Sarah is also thought to be a brilliant student. 'It's not me!' she protests when she's congratulated on her results, 'It's Morrie, he drills me day and night until I know everything.' She laughs, 'It's not the university exams I find difficult, it's the bloody Suckfizzle ones I dread.'

All this is the background to Sally Harris asking Mike about his Sarah Maloney label.

Well, two bottles of champagne, a bottle each, is just a tad too much for Mike, who doesn't really drink and it's Sally Harris who orders the taxi and next thing Mike knows he's in this flat.

At the time he doesn't even know what suburb it's in, but the lounge room has a picture window that looks over the Yarra and it's pretty posh.

I'm not sure I should tell what happens next because I can't really put it in the right words. They should be good words because what happened Mike said was very, very nice. But I'll just tell what he remembered and told me, well sort of, because I can't get Mike's words exactly any more because he now talks differently, he knows things we don't and he uses words I don't use or even know.

Sally Harris talks to him about the Sarah Maloney label. She says she thinks she can get Country Stores to back him, for a percentage of the action of course. She wants to see his samples, but she thinks she knows enough and has seen enough to be pretty confident that she can sell her directors on the project. Country Stores will then launch the Sarah Maloney label as a winter range in 1962.

Mike's pissed but he can't believe his ears, the money to go his own way, to do the things he wants to do. He sits there pretty stunned, with the room sort of going round and the ceiling tilting and him trying to get what Sally Harris has just said fixed in to his champagne-soaked brain.

Thank you, Sally,' he manages to say. Thank you, but why? What can I ever do for you?'

Sally laughs. 'We're about to find out, Michael Maloney, come with me.'

She takes Mike by the hand and leads him into her bedroom. Even smashed, Mike remembers how it looked. Big double bed with this brilliant old-fashioned quilt, every colour in the world in the squares and all the other furniture white, with a large picture above the bed of yellow wattle blossom with rosellas frolicking among the blooms. I could have told him this was a most unlikely situation and the artist couldn't have known the bush very well. Rosellas like fruit and a bit of nectar, they're not going to bugger around with wattle blossom that's got neither. But I don't, because I want all the juicy details and I don't want him distracted from the main subject at hand.

Sally makes him stand at the end of the bed and she starts to undress him, kissing him as she removes his tie then his jacket and then his shirt, so he's standing in his strides. She's kissing him all over his chest and neck and on the mouth and Mike says she tastes of champagne and smells of rose petals, but it's really Chanel No. 5 that's worn out a little. Then he becomes aware that she's put on some music, or anyway there's music coming into the bedroom, something classical, soft and romantic. She goes down on her knees, unlaces his shoes and takes them off and his socks. He's got a hole in one sock, which he remembers too late.