You can't judge a book by its cover - or maybe you can after all. Take the cover for the new edition (by Serpent's Tail) of Rosalie Ham's The Dressmaker: actress Kate Winslet is proudly standing in a field wearing a long and stylish dark coat accessorised with a wide brimmed cream coloured hat worn to the side. She is carrying a small handbag in one gloved hand and a wooden case, protecting her loyal Singer sewing machine, in the other. Dark eyeliner highlights a fierce gaze staring at the distance, while red lipstick adds a note of sensuality. This image of Winslet as Myrtle "Tilly" Dunnage in the screen adaptation of the novel, tells us a lot about the talented and mysterious dressmaker protagonist of this gothic story.
After spending many years working in Melbourne, Spain, and France, Tilly returns to Dungatar, her small town in Australia from where she was banished when she was just ten years old and was involved in an accident that indirectly caused the death of young bully Stewart Pettyman. Her main plan seems to be checking upon her frail and mentally unstable mother Molly, but she eventually decides to stay. Though hated by most people in Dungatar, Tilly manages to cast a fashionable spell on the local women (and on some men as well...) thanks to her dressmaking skills.
Having learnt this art from the Parisian ateliers and in particular from great masters of couture such as Vionnet, Balmain, Balenciaga and Dior, Tilly radically transforms the rural women of Dungatar through her striking designs into elegant and refined beauties. As the story progresses and readers discover a past of suffering and pain, Tilly briefly finds a new reason to live through a romance with Teddy, the local football star, and a friendship with an unlikely ally, Sergeant Farrat, the town's only policeman, a man with a passion for fabrics and cross-dressing. Tragedy will strike again in Tilly's life, but she will eventually find the strength to enact her final revenge upon those ones who made her suffer.
One interesting point is the division of the story into four sections, each named after a different fabric - gingham, shantung, felt and brocade. The different textiles symbolise new stages and developments in the plot: from Tilly's return and her position as official dressmaker of the village to the discovery of a past that interlocks the lives of different characters together, like the short wool fibres interlocked with steam, heat and pressure to form felt, and to the final catastrophic representation of Macbeth, staged by the Dungatar inhabitants. The play represents the climax of the story that helps taking to completion Tilly's revenge. The four divisions may also point towards the human emotions that characterise Tilly's malicious, manipulating and controlling antagonists: Tilly changes their exterior looks, but their views and perspectives remain untouched by the luxurious fabrics yet deeply altered by hypocrisy, bigotry, prejudice, vanity, suspicion, malice and constant resentment.
Just like in Shakespeare's play love, hate and revenge could be considered as the main themes of The Dressmaker, but fashion has an even more prominent role. Tilly knows that a proper dress can alter the body shape and silhouette, making the wearer feel empowered and transforming their frame of mind. The local obnoxious and gossipy women bloom in Tilly's stylish and perfectly fitting designs and one of the society balls turns into a proper fashion show with couturiered ladies wearing pastel blue silk crepe dresses cut on a bias; sculpted black crepe gowns and silver lamé halter-necked backless gowns.
Born and raised in the southern New South Wales town of Jerilderie, Ham wrote her debut novel inspired by her own mother who was a dressmaker working in a small country town. The author has definitely got a talent for writing descriptive passages and for portraying ordinary characters with absurd and comical twists about them.
The novel was first published in 2000 in Australia, becoming an instant success and you can bet that the film adaptation directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, shot entirely in Victoria and starring Winslet, Australian two-time Oscar nominee Judy Davis as Molly, Liam Hemsworth as Teddy and Hugo Weaving as Sergeant Farrat, will be a great occasion for readers to see on the screen not just the geography of this compact village with Tilly and Molly's cottage, Miss Dimm's schoolhouse, the Pratts' department store, the chemist shop of vile Mr. Almanac and Teddy's caravan, but also get a final chance to marvel at Tilly's frocks (the film costumes were designed by Marion Boyce, while Margot Wilson created the gowns and dresses donned by Winslet).
The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham will be published in the UK by Serpent's Tail on 22nd October 2015, while the film will be released on 20th November 2015 in the UK, and previewed next week at the Toronto International Film Festival and in October at the Adelaide Film Festival. Perfectly timed releases for all those fashion fans who will be suffering by then from fashion week withdrawal symptoms...
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