It takes less than a metre of fabric to make a bustier. But then there’s lining and buttons and definitely boning to consider. Not that kind of boning, perv, but the thin, hard plastic strips used in sewing strapless bodices so the top is held up at all times, preventing it from falling below your boobs. I do not want my boobs falling out.
I’m in the little room with less than a metre of black cotton fabric with a magenta floral print and a pair of sharp shears, cutting my soon-to-be bustier on the floor.
I would be upstairs, in my mother’s sewing room cutting at a proper table, but then I might have to see her and she might say something, again. She doesn’t want me wearing a bustier. She thinks it’s slutty, but uses the word cheap instead. I wish people would just say what they mean.
I press play on my dual-cassette player and listen to my Madonna tape. I don’t get the big deal about “Lucky Star” — and it’s all over the radio now. “Borderline” is my favourite, and “Everybody.” I have 12-inch singles of each.
If my mother was so worried about me wearing a bustier, I don’t know why she drove me over to the fabric store to begin with. And when I found a pattern, why did she chime in with this whole business about “getting one with straps?” It wouldn’t be a bustier then, would it? It would be a camisole.
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Image: Madonna, as featured in Seventeen magazine, April 1985. Photograph by Brian Aris/Outline Press.
Welcome to the Little Room is a series of 250-word re-imagined vignettes from my ’80s youth with a focus on music and style. It appears weekly on periodicult.com.
