The Dressmakers of London

Chapter One

Chapter One

November 12, 1941

At the age of twenty-eight, Izzie Shelton should have been able to twist her damp hair into pin curls in the dark while hanging upside down and singing “God Save the King.” However, she and her hair had never seen eye to eye. For years, she’d hardly cared to battle it morning and night and simply wore it pulled back into a low ponytail tied off with whatever scrap of fabric or ribbon happened to be lying around. However, six months ago, she’d resolved to make more of an effort with her appearance. This change had prompted Miss Reid, her mother’s longest-serving employee, to raise her eyebrows and make a pointed comment about silly women primping for all the soldiers, sailors, and pilots passing through London. If the truth had been something as simple as seeking male attention, Izzie might have blushed and packed up her pins, resolving not to bother. However, there was far more at stake than that, and so the pins remained in a little dish on the tiny wooden vanity in the corner of her bedroom, taunting her.

That morning, her pin curls had actually come out, but it was the imitation tortoiseshell combs that were giving her all manner of problems. She ripped out the one that was already beginning to slip from her left temple and jammed it back into place, the plastic scraping against her scalp. She winced but soldiered on, twisting her chin from side to side to check that her left and right combs matched. Deciding that they were approximately in the same place and likely to stay for at least as long as it would take for her to ensure the shop was ready to open, she rose from her vanity and glanced at her watch. It was already half past eight.

She was late.

She pulled on a chocolate-brown cardigan and straightened the edges so they lay neatly underneath her white cotton shirt. Then she crossed her bedroom, opened the door, and paused to listen for sounds from the flat’s kitchen. Nothing.

She frowned as she peered down the short corridor to Mum’s room. The door was closed, and there was no light visible underneath. There had been a time when, if she couldn’t hear the teakettle whistling or Mum humming while generously buttering thick slices of toast, Izzie would have guessed that her mother had gone down to the shop floor early. However, these days, butter and tea were on the ration and Maggie Shelton was not her old self.

Izzie did up the mother-of-pearl buttons on her cardigan as she walked toward the kitchen. Sure enough, it was empty and neat, as it had been when she’d done the washing up the previous night.

Mum wasn’t awake.

Izzie filled the heavy kettle and put it on the hob to heat. Then she carefully measured out one mug’s worth of tea leaves into the blue-and-white-striped teapot with the chipped spout. There had been a time where the idea of brewing anything other than a full pot of tea would have been unthinkable in the Shelton household, but that had been before the war. Now, waste was akin to a sin, so if Izzie was only making for herself, she would use just enough precious tea leaves for a brew, leaving the dregs for Mum to pour fresh hot water over if she wanted a cup when she rose.

After waiting for the tea to steep, Izzie poured out her cup and grimaced as she added a bit of powdered milk. Then she made her way out of the flat she’d called home since she was seven years old, clattered down the stairs, and opened the bottom door that separated the flat from the shop downstairs. She took a right down the narrow corridor that ran the length of the shop, and emerged into the world of Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions.

To some, the reception of the dressmaker’s shop might have seemed rather unremarkable. It was a wide, open room with a big window looking out onto Glengall Road. For as long as Izzie could remember, a dress form had displayed whatever Maggie Shelton thought would entice passing women, and on that morning it was a blind-hemmed coat in black wool with a low closure near the left hip. The workmanship was undeniably fine, but the moment Mum had put it on the dress form, Izzie had known it was wrong.

“What do you think?” Mum had asked, standing back to admire the coat.

“It’s beautiful, Mum,” she’d started cautiously, “but I worry it’s a little old-fashioned.”

“What do you mean?” Mum asked sharply.

“Oh, nothing really.”

“No, let’s hear it. You said it, so you obviously believe it.”

Izzie’s heart pounded as she struggled for the most diplomatic way to tell her mother the truth, because these were the decisions she wanted to be entrusted to make. To prove herself.

“I think it’s the cut,” she finally said, deciding that the unvarnished honesty was the best policy if she really wanted her mother to take her seriously as the shop’s future proprietress. “It’s a bit boxy for the modern silhouette, and Vogue hasn’t featured dropped waistlines for some time.”

Mum’s lips twisted. “It is a good coat for a woman who wants to invest in clothes that will last. The women who shop here want quality, not fashion, and they will see quality the moment they lay eyes on this coat.”

“I just think we might try something a little different,” said Izzie, reaching under the shop counter for one of her sketchbooks that were never far from hand. She flicked through the pages to a coat she’d sketched just the week before. “Something like this.”

She watched her mother scrutinize the design, taking in the princess seams that would fit snugly to a woman’s body before giving way to a slightly flared skirt. There were no embellishments, just clean lines making for an undeniably chic look. For a moment, hope flickered in her that this would be the garment Mum would finally agree to let her add to the shop’s offerings, but then Mum shook her head.

“It’s not right for Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, Izzie,” said Mum.

And, just like that, Izzie’s heart plummeted back down to earth.

Now, as Izzie walked around, sipping her tea, she tried not to resent the coat Mum had chosen over hers. Instead, she checked for smudges on the window and door. She tidied up a few papers on the shop counter, which discreetly hid the till, and then brushed the nap on the pair of velvet chairs where customers sat to view Mum’s drawings, discuss color and fabric, or wait for their fittings.

Satisfied that the shop floor would stand up to even her mother’s discerning eye, Izzie let herself through the white-painted door on the back wall that led to the fitting room. Three of herself reflected back at her from the room’s huge triptych mirror. In the center of the room was a circular platform with tufted velvet sides that customers stood on while Izzie and Mum performed the real magic of a dressmaker: the fitting.

Growing up, Izzie had loved watching Mum tuck, pin, and transform a garment until it fit each customer’s unique shape. After having caught her peering through the door one too many times, Mum had told Izzie that she could join her so long as she was helpful. That meant fetching fabric samples and bits of trim, pouring cups of tea, or retrieving pins and bits of chalk as Mum kept up a steady stream of questions and conversation with a client. Finally, Mum would step back and declare the fit was “perfection,” and Izzie would watch the woman on the platform turn to the mirror, her expression melting into one of satisfied pleasure at the sight of her beautiful garment.

When she’d left school at fourteen, she’d become Mum’s assistant. Her older sister, Sylvia, should have had that role, but Sylvia had no real talent for sewing and was relegated to doing the bookkeeping, deliveries, and odd jobs.

Izzie had secretly relished the responsibility of her new position and her mother’s attention that went along with it. It had started with jotting down customer measurements and then taking the measurements herself, handing her mother pins and then pinning hems, cuffs, and shoulders on her own. Then, once a customer left, Mum would teach her how to translate those measurements to a pattern that would achieve a perfect fit. Mum then helped Izzie learn the various techniques to create those garments, demanding she redo any work that was not satisfactory before she moved on to anything new until, when Izzie turned eighteen, Mum decided she was skilled enough to call herself a seamstress in her own right.

For years, Mum treated her just like Miss Reid or any of the other seamstresses employed in the workroom. However, gradually over the past two years, Izzie had begun to take over the running of other aspects of the shop. Mum spent more and more of her time holed up in her office, poring over paperwork as the war furrowed everyone’s brows a little deeper, and Izzie began to conduct fittings alone, only bothering her mother when issues arose. Then Izzie found herself sitting across from customers on the shop floor, Mum’s heavy sketchbooks full of the garments the shop offered on her lap as they flipped through to try to find something that would suit each woman’s needs. Once they chose a design, fabric, and color and Izzie had taken measurements, she would fetch her mother for a final look.

It had all been thrilling, this new responsibility, but as the months had stretched on, Izzie had found herself wanting more.

Standing in the fitting room that morning, her fingers itched for her pencil and her sketchbook, but she knew that if Mum came downstairs and found her drawing rather than opening the shop, she’d be swiftly told off for wasting time. No. She would sketch later when Mum was safely behind her closed office door and Miss Reid’s Singer was whirring away.

A knock at the shop door pulled Izzie out of her thoughts. She looked up and drew in a bracing breath at the sight of Miss Reid frowning on the other side of the rain-spattered glass.

Izzie unlocked the door and stepped back to let the seamstress in. “Good morning, Miss Reid.”

“I don’t see what’s so good about it. It’s been pouring since I left Paddington,” Miss Reid said as she shucked off her soaking mac, spraying the shop’s wooden floor with rain. “It will be a wonder if anyone comes in today.”

Izzie stifled a sigh at the likely truth of that as she followed the older woman through to the passageway.

“Where is Mrs. Shelton?” Miss Reid asked over her shoulder as she passed into the workroom.

“I haven’t seen her yet this morning.”

She suspected that Miss Reid, who had an opinion about everything related to Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions—and the world, really—would certainly have an opinion about that , but the older woman simply sniffed.

Irascible as she could be, Miss Reid was a fixture of Mrs. Shelton’s, having the distinction of having been Maggie Shelton’s first employee. Now, almost twenty years later, the seamstress was still firmly ensconced at the sewing machine closest to the back wall of the workroom. Even after the Allies’ retreat from Dunkirk last spring when Miss Bell and Miss Parker had both left to be WAAFs in the Royal Air Force’s women’s auxiliary branch, Miss Reid had continued to sew on. Izzie begrudgingly couldn’t imagine what they would do without her.

“Who is coming in today?” asked Miss Reid as she hung up her coat on a peg stuck in the wall by her machine.

“I’ll have to check the book,” Izzie said.

In the old days, Mum’s appointment book lived in the tiny office off the workroom. Only Mum touched it, because, along with the order book, it was vital to the shop’s running—a bible of sorts. However, as a concession to the fact that Izzie was opening the shop more often these days, Mum had begun to leave the book out on the edge of the huge wood-topped cutting table that sat at a perpendicular angle to the four sewing machines that dominated the room.

Izzie opened the clothbound book, flipped to a page marked with a ribbon, and sighed.

“Is it that bad?” asked Miss Reid as she took a seat at her machine.

“Mrs. Wilson is due in first thing, and then Mrs. Cowles has her second fitting at two o’clock.”

“And after that?” asked Miss Reid.

“Nothing except for a delivery.”

“Really?” asked Miss Reid, incredulous. “That’s all?”

She nodded.

Miss Reid sniffed. “I’d wager a guinea that Mrs. Cowles will leave without settling her account. I thought your mother was going to have to call the bailiff on her last time. An entire summer wardrobe cut, sewn, and finished, and six weeks later Mrs. Shelton still hadn’t seen a single shilling of it. And where is Mrs. Cowles going to wear it anyway? There’s a war on,” tutted Miss Reid.

“Mrs. Cowles did pay in the end,” Izzie said, remembering the number of thin excuses that the woman had fed Mum until finally she’d shown up to settle her account in August. “And she’s already given over her clothing coupons this time.”

“That’s because the government says she has to. Your mother is too soft on that woman,” said Miss Reid.

“Mum believes that everyone deserves a little bit of understanding from time to time,” she said.

“That’s all well and good, but it isn’t as though Mrs. Shelton’s suppliers let her have any cloth on credit,” said Miss Reid.

“Miss Reid!” Izzie cut across the other woman’s complaining. “Shouldn’t you be starting your day?”

“There’s no need to hurry me, young lady,” Miss Reid huffed. But still, the seamstress busied herself peeling the cover off her machine, giving Izzie a blessed moment of peace.