The room is colder
than the garment.
An unheated upper floor with three windows facing north. Concrete floor, painted white, scuffed gray by ladder feet. Two rolling racks. A single garment is pinned to the wall before it is photographed; the others wait in muslin bags.
We work in silence between five and nine. The kettle is electric, the radio is broken. Patterns are cut on a long oak table that was once part of a refectory in Ghent.
- i. Cut on the bias, never on the grain.
- ii. One garment per week; no exceptions.
- iii. The lining tells the truth before the surface does.
- iv. If a piece cannot survive a wash, retire it.