but a costume. They don’t want to look like the most beautiful version of themselves on their wedding day, they want to look like someone else entirely. Nothing should reflect their normal day-to-day lives or chime in with any sense of style that they might usually stick to; they want to take on a different personality entirely, to be something ‘other’ than usual, not ‘better’.
Sometimes the girls want to use brands that they associate with wealth, such as Swarovski, Christian Dior or Baby Phat, but sometimes it’s just brands with logos that the girls like. In the past we have been asked to incorporate brand names or logos onto the wedding dresses themselves, but we always try and change them a little so as not to infringe copyright. I don’t think the travellers really want to persuade people that those are the brands they’re wearing; they just want to make the point that it’s where their taste lies. One of our biggest requests is for the exotic pink wedding dress from the 1980s Eddie Murphy film, Coming to America. It might seem like a bizarre reference but if you look closely, that dress, with its gold headdress and huge pink swagged skirts, is something truly spectacular. I have made ones like that for weddings, proms and First Communions – it’s an all-time favourite.
One of the other inspirational superstars as far as these girls are concerned is Barbie – but not just any old Barbie, really specific ones. Where non-traveller girls might idolise ‘Safari Barbie’ or ‘Swimming Barbie’ – you know, the Barbies who actually do something – the traveller girls focus on two classics: ‘Bridal Barbie’ and ‘Barbie of Swan Lake’.
Neither does much beyond looking pretty and they don’t come with any kit or accessories, unlike some of the more action-focused ones, but both wear really traditional, floaty ballgown-type dresses.
The traveller girls play with Barbies a lot when they’re little and they also spend a lot of time drawing them, even when they get a bit older. When small cousins and sisters come into Nico with their older relatives – perhaps if they’re going to be bridesmaids or even a mini-bride (see Chapter 3) – they always seem to have colouring books with them, and often they’re Barbie ones.
Now we all know that Barbie’s proportions are not normal, they’re cartoonish, but it’s that extreme femininity that the travellers go for – a tiny waist with the corset pulled in as tightly as possible, boobs as high as they can go and huge hips created by my now-famous skirts are the order of the day. These days, I almost don’t trust a traveller girl if she says she just wants a slim-fitting skirt!
I am frequently surprised to see that some of these girls don’t have automatically pointed feet just like Barbie when I’ve finished getting them ready for their big day.
Perhaps as a result of all this colouring-in, I often get really creative designs sent to me from the brides-to-be. It’s not unusual for them to have been keeping a little scrapbook of images for years, so when they come to place an order for their wedding dress they will bring in their own sketches of how they want it to look, complete with directions on what fabrics they want to use or how the skirts should hang.
I love seeing those images as they give me an idea of what is driving the girl’s dreams, who she really wants to be on the day and how I can help her to be that person. Sometimes I can even work out where a bride’s priorities lie just by looking at how firmly the pen has been pressed into the pad in different areas on the page – there’s nothing like direct access to a customer’s original idea to help create the perfect dress.
But there’s one brand name that influences designs even more than good old Barbie: Disney. Every time there’s a new Disney heroine out in the cinema, I make it my business to check what she looks like as I know I’ll be making versions of her gown for the next couple of years. Since my own little girl Katrina was born eight years ago, I often find myself taking her to the cinema for a ‘treat’ only to head down there with a sketchpad and pencil, keen to see what the lines on the dresses are.
After one Disney film came out Katrina was given a Disney doll, but I stole it to keep in the office for showing brides. It was too good to resist, and has proved every bit as useful as I’d hoped in helping to explain ideas to traveller girls!
The most recent Disney production to make a big impact was The Princess and the Frog (2009). That film led to us making one of our most memorable wedding outfits ever. Everyone wanted ‘Princess and the Frog’ dresses that year. From the month the film was released I was inundated with images printed off the Internet of the now-familiar green-and-pastel-toned dress. It’s a gorgeous gown, with folded petals around the bodice and big swooping skirts – a real fantasy look. But there was one traveller girl who wanted her entire wedding to look just like the movie, and that was Joleen Quinn.
Joleen first came to see me just before the film was released. It was before My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding had aired so the shop was much quieter than it is now and she just walked in and got an appointment there and then. She was a lovely girl – very dark, with striking features and gorgeous big green eyes. I immediately warmed to her as she seemed to have a lot on her plate, with lots of younger brothers and sisters around her that she was keeping an eye on. Despite this she had a real air of calm about her; she was lovely and mild-mannered.
‘Your time will come soon,’ I remember her saying to one of her little sisters, who was watching everything with great big saucer eyes, transfixed by all we did. Visibly excited, she grinned back. I imagine her own scrapbook of ideas is filling up nicely now.
That first time, Joleen was stuck on a Spanish theme for her wedding. She ordered a pink Flamenco-style dress with a very tight-fitting bodice and a huge train. Full of ruffles and Latin detail, it would have been extremely dramatic. The plan was for a 22-foot train with 40 3D sparkling lilies cascading down the back of it. She was to be accompanied by eight bridesmaids and four page boys between the ages of six and two. And her mum was to have a dress made by Nico as well. Everyone in the bridal party would match the Spanish theme to spectacular effect. This was a big order and they were going all out.
What usually happens after this initial meeting is that we draw up sketches of what was discussed with us in person. These are a combination of the girl’s original plans and our input regarding what’s technically possible as well as any other ideas that may have come up when the customer became inspired by the atmosphere and details in the factory. Leanne is great at these sketches. Not only can she draw what seem like incredibly intricate dress designs at the bat of an eyelid, she also has a wonderful eye for detail too, making the girls in the sketches have gorgeous floaty hair and dramatic sweeping eyelashes. We send these to the bride-to-be and her family then wait to hear back about any amendments that need to be made to accommodate either their taste or budget. After this comes the request for the deposit to make sure they’re really serious. Then, a month or two before the wedding, we start making the gown.
At the beginning of every week we have a meeting to discuss what we’ll be working on next in the factory. Sometimes we come across a folder for a girl that we haven’t heard from in a while, or maybe a girl for whose gown we haven’t even had a deposit. That’s when the queries begin.
Such was the case with Joleen. When it came to looking at her file again, we realised that we had not heard from her in a long time. It’s not that unusual for a girl to go quiet for a while – after all, these people lead lives dictated by travel – but this seemed odd. She had first come in to see us in October with a view to her wedding being the following March. Now it was January and we needed to know whether to get going with Joleen’s dress or to abandon the plans; we were just at the point of abandoning hope of ever hearing from the girl again.
To be honest, I had given up on her and was really only humouring the team on it. As far as I was concerned, either this girl had gone with another designer or love’s path had not run smoothly for her.
Without telling Leanne or her mother Pauline (who is also my ever-trusted manager at Nico), I took the folder out and put it to one side. After all, it had been a year.
I didn’t throw it away, though, as we always keep the files. Some girls have different reasons for not