Thelma Madine - Tales of the Gypsy Dressmaker

The Pineapple and the Palm Tree

I want you to make me a wedding dress like no ones ever seen before.

OK, I said, looking at the slim, blonde gypsy girl standing in front of me. Have you got any ideas of the kind of dress youd like?

Shed made an appointment to come into my shop, Nico, in the centre of Liverpool, so I was expecting her. I was also expecting her request all my traveller girls want to stand out, determined that their dress will be the biggest and the best, or both.

I want to be a palm tree, she said.

And Im going to be a pineapple, piped up the girl who was with her and who I realised straight away was her younger sister, and one of the most enthusiastic bridesmaids Id ever met. They were both pretty kids and I knew just by looking at them that they were from Rathkeale, the very wealthy gypsy community in Ireland. In Rathkeale the night-before outfits are just as important as the wedding dress. And these two were going all out.

A palm tree for the bride and a pineapple for the bridesmaid, I said, looking from one to the other. They were looking at me as though they had just asked me to make a wedding gown like Kate Middletons, their faces were dead straight, like any anxious bride and bridesmaid, determined that they had to look just right on the Big Day. Yeah, I said, we can do that, no problem.

Will anyone else have a dress like that? asked the young girl. Shes really worried that there will be another bride who wants the same thing as her, she said, touching her sisters arm, before turning to look at me again.

Oh, I think shell be safe with that one, I said, smiling at them.

I looked down at my sketchbook and started drawing.

Now, the first thing everyone asks when they meet me is: are you a gypsy? So nows my chance to put the record straight: no, I am not a gypsy. What I am is a woman from Liverpool who makes and designs wedding dresses. It just so happens that the people who have made my dresses some of the most recognised in the world are gypsies. And thats why Im now known, from Aberdeen to Auckland, as the Gypsy Dressmaker.

Nothing could have prepared me for the dramas that I have experienced since I started working with gypsies about fifteen years ago and, believe me, what youve seen on TV is only the half of it.

And thats one of the reasons that I was so keen to write this book fans of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings are constantly asking me to tell them more about me and my gypsy stories. Because, beyond the cameras, since I was welcomed into the traveller community many years ago, I have been lucky enough to get a rare insight into what really goes on in their world and to share in their secrets and dreams, their highs and lows and, of course, their laughter. And, honestly, there has been a hell of a lot of that over the years.

The other thing that people are forever asking is: how did you end up working with gypsies in the first place? Well, I suppose it was a coincidence, but you could say that it was a twist of fate. You know, in the way that my mum used to say things like, Everything happens for a reason, or Whats for you wont go by you.

It was in 1996, when I had my dressmakers stall in Paddys Market in Liverpool, that my first traveller customer approached me. I didnt even know she was a gypsy. I did realise, though, that there was something different about her because she looked very, very young. Too young, in fact, to ask me a strange question like Can you make Gone With the Wind dresses?

I mean, its not your run-of-the-mill request, is it? And its not the kind of thing that I imagine most dressmakers are normally asked for. The funny thing is, what that gypsy girl couldnt have known that day, when she looked at all the ivory and white christening and Communion robes I had hanging up, was that that great 1930s film about Scarlett OHara and the American Civil War was one of the main reasons I wanted to be a seamstress in the first place. Since I was a little girl I had watched that movie a thousand times. And yet, up until then, I had never thought to actually make Gone With the Wind dresses.

So the idea that the girl had in her mind for how she wanted to dress her kids, and the kinds of dresses that I wanted to make, came together at Paddys that day and started what would eventually become a phenomenon.

I could never claim to know everything about gypsies and Im not a spokesperson for travellers. Its just that, like most people, I am fascinated by their world, and I really do feel lucky that Ive been welcomed in by many of my customers as a friend. Not least because travellers tales are always packed full of drama, high emotion and laughs, and Im part of their story now too.

And that brings me to another reason that I am so fond of the gypsies I know. About ten years ago I went through something that most of us fear something that probably tops the list of things that you never, ever want to go through: I was sent to prison. And through it all, along with my friends and family, my gypsy customers supported me, and their support is something that I will never forget.

Of course, I know that some people will always judge me and my relationship with travellers and they are free to do so but if my time in prison taught me anything, it was not to judge others. And maybe thats why I get along with the gypsies so well: I treat them the same way that I treat everyone else simply taking them as I find them.

The past fifteen years that my gypsy customers have been coming to me to make their dresses have been some of the most interesting times of my life. And the fascinating stories that have grown from working with them have also provided the backdrop to my own life story, which I will be revealing in this book.

You see, like the gypsy girls, I also got married very young. I wanted the best wedding ever, the biggest cake, the most beautiful dress, and, most of all, to be happy ever after. Now we all know that, no matter how nice your life may turn out to be, happy ever after is just a dream, a fairytale. And no one knows that more than me. But then no one believes in fairytales more than a gypsy girl who is about to become a bride.

And, as the Gypsy Dressmaker, its my job to make her fairytale come true.