A Stitch in Time

A STITCH IN

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE TARA MOSS TO INDULGE IN A LITTLE FANTASY DRESSING. LOCAL SEAMSTRESS LORNA MCKENZIE, FROM THE TAILOR’S APPRENTICE, CAN TEACH YOU HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN HISTORICAL FASHION OR WEDDING DRESS.

Lorna McKenzie is a time traveller. She doesn’t have a Tardis or some H.G. Wells-type contraption to propel her through the ages – although she’d love to give either a go. Rather, she is stitching up history one gown at a time.

As a bespoke seamstress, Lorna teaches sewing using historical techniques, specialising in steampunk, vintage, ’20s, ’40s, WWII, Edwardian, Victorian and Regency styles. A love of historical sewing was cultivated in high school textile and design, and later in university English classes. “Learning the history of fashion at school really piqued my interest when I was a young girl, as did reading lots of 19th-century novels at uni,” Lorna recalls.

And it seems sewing is in her blood. “My mother and grandmother were both dressmakers. Indeed, my mother kept our family afloat with dressmaking. I just adore fabric. I love taking a flat object and turning it into a 3D garment,” she says.

The Internet brought Lorna closer to a world of people working with and enjoying historical fashion.“I found I could connect with groups all around the globe, like the Society for Creative Anachronists, Jane Austen revivalists and rockabilly girls right here in the Blue Mountains.”

“The most fascinating thing about historical sewing is that when you make something in the style, of the period and the way a woman would have sewn back in the day, you are time travelling,” she says. And if she could actually time travel? “I’ve always loved the 19th century, so I would probably go back to the Regency period because it was a time of such ferment and change, particularly due to the French Revolution,” Lorna reveals. Mass beheadings aside, Lorna points out that fashion also got the chop, going from expensive court dresses made of silks and satins, with side paniers and high hair, to suddenly adopting the dress of a simple country maiden. “Mind you, I’d probably get marched to the guillotine for my outspokenness,” she adds.

Another of Lorna’s passion projects has been the creation of WWI Australian Nurses Army Service uniforms. “I created the uniform patterns to ensure that the women who saved so many lives and helped many an ANZAC could be remembered by re-enactors during the Centenary of WWI,” she says.

Lorna also accepts bridal commissions. “I do about two or three commissions for brides or bridesmaids a year [recently married Michele Lelly is pictured right with her daughter and bridesmaid, Ellora Tibbets],” she explains. “I prefer to work with a bride, or with a bride’s mother, to help them make the gown themselves. People often buy very expensive fabric and it makes them nervous to go it alone because they are not as skilled as they’d like to be. I do the complicated bits, and they get to make their own gown.”

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Handmade doesn’t mean cheap, though. “It costs as much as it would to buy an off-the-shelf gown but it is bespoke –it fits them perfectly, gives them a sense of achievement and ownership, and is exactly what they wanted.” BML

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