We sat at the coffee table after eating a three-course meal that she prepared after hearing that I’m coming to visit. I was telling her about my life and the final project that I’m doing for University, and she seemed very interested in it. That’s when I found an opportunity to ask her:

Hey, Babushka (that’s what I’ve been calling her since I was a kid), was there a style or a clothing piece that stuck in your mind from your earlier days? 

Most of the clothes I used to have, at one point my family took them to Belarus to give them to other family members. We used to share them like that quite often. So those I don’t remember, and the other clothes I had somehow disappeared, maybe I threw them away or put them somewhere in the corner and forgot. – She said.

She went silent for a split second as if she was brainstorming. – When I think about it, there were a couple of dresses that stuck in my mind. One dress, when “crepe de chine” came along, and when I got the material, I took it to a seamstress to have it made. The material was very light, and the color was sort of a greyish russet with faint grey flowers. The seamstress made a dress with a little collar and a clasp in the front with a lot of buttons sewn on and covered with fabric. The lower part of the dress, I remember, was made of four cuts on the sides, which was very popular at that time.

Was it your favorite dress?

No, it was very memorable but I remember another dress that was only for special occasions and it was a black little sleeveless dress. The dart went from the chest to the sides – She stood up and showed how the dart went from the upper to the side part of the dress. – That made it very flattering on my body. I wore it with a large pressed-amber necklace, which I got from my mother. That was my favorite.

Do you still have the necklace? 

I believe so, it must be somewhere in the drawer with all the other accessories. It’s been a while since I wore it but the dress with the necklace was truly a good combination.

Both of the dresses were made by the tailor, did you often take your clothes to a tailor to have them made, or did you make them yourself sometimes?

No, it was very expensive at the time, so I only took it in when I needed it or when I was making more luxurious clothes. But otherwise, I used to make my clothes by myself, and for that, I went to courses with my co-workers, where we learned to sew together.
I used to like to make a lot of blouses, and trousers. Trousers were the best for me, I knew very well what cut suited me. I had a whole book of drawings that I had accumulated throughout the course, and I still have it, although I don’t use it anymore, it’s a shame to throw it away.

I remember she showed me the book before, hoping to give it to me. Unfortunately, even though I could understand what type of pattern was explained there, I couldn’t read it because of Cyrillic writing, which I’ve never learned.

When I was expecting your father, I made myself a lovely blue dress which I still remember very well. I used to use an old-fashioned machine all the time, which had no electric motor, and I knew how to work it very well, but the one more difficult thing was the plastering, still struggle with it to this day.

Did all of your family members know how to sew?

No, my mother didn’t know how to knit or sew at all, I remember after the war she tried to sew, but it didn’t work very well, she used to sew the sleeve upside down (laughed), but she was very good at embroidering. She had beautifully embroidered sheets, tablecloths, and pillows, too. In those days it was popular to embroider white bedding with white thread.

But differently from my mom, I used to knit instead of embroidering, and when I couldn’t buy knitted fabric, I had to knit it myself. By the time I had children, I was often knitting sweaters or socks myself. Now when I look on the internet at how people knit, I think that maybe I didn’t do some things according to the rules (laughed even harder), but somehow I’ve managed to knit something so far. Often, because the yarn was sometimes not so readily available, I used to dismantle old sweaters and use that yarn to make all sorts of things, and half of the things I made for you, kids, I made out of old knitted fabrics. – Right at that moment I remembered the red socks that she knitted for me, till this day those socks are one of my favorites for wintertime.

When did you start knitting more intensely?

The first sweater I ever knitted, was when Lione (her son) was a year old, I made it for him and I took it to one of my co-workers to check if I had made it without any mistakes, she offered to fix a couple of mistakes. The next day she brought it to me knitted brand new. It turned out that I didn’t know how to do it at all and I made a lot of mistakes. So in the end I learned to knit from my co-workers or friends around me, who often corrected my work until I learned to do it finally without mistakes.

The coffee in our cup was already gone, my grandpa, while passing by, offered another one, and we, deeply into the conversation, instantly said yes. She remembered she had a pie that she baked before my arrival, so it was also brought up for a taste.

You mentioned merezhka in our previous talks, can you tell me what is it?

It is the Russian name, I don’t even know what the translation is (eng. “drawn thread work”). It is a way of working a material where you take the threads out of the material and sew them around the hole. It is mostly used for tablecloths, pillows, and so on. I have made one tablecloth myself, and it is very delicate work, it takes a lot of patience. My father’s family used to weave these fabrics out of linen and other materials, and they did a lot of crocheting as well. They very often used those materials for decorations in the corners of the house or next to St. Mary’s statues. I have inherited most of these materials, and I can give them to you because now I do not know what to do with them anymore.

Excited to inherit them myself and with permission to use them for this project I agreed, I was very excited to see all those handmade pieces that she just talked about in person. After another week she found them and gave them to me, I was fascinated by the thoroughness of the work.

Is there a particular color that is your favorite to wear?

Green. Once Auntie Jenina, who lived in our block of flats, wasn’t a seamstress, but now and then she’d suggest a couple of garments and she made me a dress in thicker wool. It was a green dress with sleeves but with a shorter skirt. The green was not a bright green, more of an earthy shade of brown, like a military uniform. I often wore a scarf around my neck with it, it looked very chic.

Anyway, when plastic necklaces and other accessories became popular, I never wore them, I didn’t like them. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them at all, but I just didn’t wear them, I was too much of a slob. In general, my style was very minimalistic, I didn’t wear a lot of massive accessories, and I was always leaning towards a more natural or minimalist look.
If you noticed, I don’t have holes in my ears for earrings. When I was young, the only people who used to get earrings were officers’ wives. They were considered to be either overbearing, uncultured ladies, or too eager to show off. I sometimes regret that I did not get pierced, because earrings very brighten the face and you can match them with anything.

Would you pierce your ears right now if you could?

I wish I had them, but now I believe I’m too old for that, so I wouldn’t. Of course, there was a time when clip-ons were popular, but they didn’t stick with me, they were difficult to wear for a long time and hurt after a while.

Remembering now, did you consider yourself stylish?

Not really. There wasn’t much scope for that at the time. I wore what I had, there was no place to get fashionable clothes, because at that time if you wanted to be stylish you had to have connections with people from abroad who would bring you clothes from America, but I didn’t have those connections.

My grandpa, while secretly, once in a while, listening to our conversation, winked at me and said that she was dressing very prettily. Grandma shyly laughed.

Because I wasn’t so very adventurous, I didn’t experiment with clothes. In the beginning, before trousers became popular, I wore only skirts, for some reason, at that time, skirts were more fashionable than dresses. Later, when I had children, there was a fashion for shorts, shorter but high-waisted, and I wore them with an American T-shirt that I got from a friend, who would occasionally lend them to me.

With every bite of the pie on the table, our talk quickly shifted from the conversation we just had to a debate about the flower colors in the garden that she dearly maintained. 
Later that day, I left her house happily, remembering glimpses of the stories I had just heard.