Orphan Annie, Luxury Lil and the French Model – A true story
By Mira Robertson
For ‘EWF X Textile Message‘ as part of the 2025 Emerging Writers’ Festival.
It is the 1950s, and Australia is riding on the sheep’s back; wool prices are soaring, and Dad is making money after taking over the family property on his return from the war. Mum, meanwhile, is having babies and adjusting to life on an isolated farm, five hours drive from her former home in Melbourne.
Melbourne. Where Lillian Wightman’s couture atelier at the Paris end of Collins Street is the ‘in’ place for women with money and style. Le Louvre, as it’s called, is not for the hoi polloi. You can’t wander in off the street on a whim, for this is no ordinary dress shop. An introduction is required from an existing customer, followed up with personal vetting from Luxury Lil, the nickname bestowed by her clients. In my mother’s case, contact is made through a wealthy friend who’d married my father’s first cousin.
I try to imagine that first meeting where Mum, having arrived from the farm, nervously enters the front salon, her first glimpse revealing a magical space with enormous gilt mirrors, crystal chandeliers, swags of fabric tossed in reckless abandon, and leopard skins draped over sofas. I imagine Lil, imperious queen of her domain, inviting Mum to sit while a silent assistant pads in with tea and petit fours. There are no clothes on display and nothing to indicate the commercial nature of the meeting. No mention of what things might cost, not on this first meeting, not ever, because Lil avoids discussion of anything as vulgar as money. That you’re there at all is the only proof needed.
I imagine the way Lil sizes Mum up. Of course, she needs clients for the business, but she also likes the look of this woman who is tall and slim with the body of a model, perfect for showing off the latest Le Louvre fashions. And in my mind’s eye, I picture my mother, her vivacity and charm hiding the insecurity that lies beneath.
Growing up, I never had the right clothes. This is the tale Mum tells us, her daughters. How her mother, Pearl, was rarely well enough to take her shopping and she had to wear clothes that no longer fitted. That were ugly and unfashionable and already too young for her. I hated the way I looked, she says, and behind my back I knew there were girls who called me Orphan Annie. It was humiliating and shameful. And she relates again the story of her teenage years, the war years when she’d sneak out of home on the weekend to visit her friend, Eve, whose parents were part of an artistic milieu. How these parents were so different from Pearl, depressed and mentally ill, and Alfred, the Methodist minister. Once I got to Eve’s, I’d change into her clothes. We’d get the tram into town and go dancing with the American soldiers. Eve’s clothes made me feel like a different person, she says. They made me feel normal.
My mother was stylish. All my friends said so, often with a hint of surprise as if they’d been expecting someone with a helmet perm and a shapeless floral dress like a country cousin of Edna Everidge. A stereotype of country women to be sure, and one that Mum challenged. Handsome, with an arresting face and that great sense of style, she was a head turner.
The first meeting between Mum and Luxury Lil goes well and with the vetting completed it’s into the dressing room where measurements are taken. Further fittings will be needed, but popping into Le Louvre on a regular basis is impossible. The problem is solved when the model who works for Lil turns out to share the same vital statistics. A French model, Mum reveals, with more than a hint of pride in her voice.
Over the next few years, opera coats, silk dresses, cocktail frocks and evening gowns find their way into my mother’s expanding wardrobe. I have no memory of her wearing these clothes, no memory of where she and Dad went, dressed up to the nines. I was too young to take an interest, but the Wimmera has never been the kind of district where opera coats and formal evening gowns are required. In those days they must have gone to parties in the Western District where pastoral dynasties still ruled and social class was rigidly observed. And there would have been visits to Melbourne too – the Spring Racing Carnival, the March races, and the Royal Melbourne Show.
Much later, in the mid 1980s, Mum decides to purge her extensive wardrobe of all the clothes she no longer wears. Off to the Salvos, she says without a trace of regret or sentiment. By chance, I happen to be visiting and manage to rescue a few Le Louvre outfits. They date from the 50s and early 60s after which she must have stopped shopping there. Perhaps Dad put his foot down at the outrageous cost of it all. There was a growing family to feed and the boom wool prices of the early 1950s were long gone.
Among the clothes I save, is a Le Louvre original, a black jersey shift dress and matching jacket with a white mink collar. While the dress and jacket have an elegant simplicity, it’s the mink collar I fall for. So wrong in terms of animal welfare, yet so sensational to look at, so gorgeously soft and luxurious. But where on earth would you wear it? Mum asks, au fait with my inner urban lesbian lifestyle. I wonder briefly about turning up at one of the lezzo bars we frequented back then, but the 80s are all tight t-shirts, leather jackets and Levis, not haute couture black ensembles with mink collars. I tell her that wearing it isn’t the point. It’s about saving it. For posterity, I add. She shrugs, lights another cigarette and hands it over.
Weeks pass. The black ensemble hangs in my wardrobe until, on impulse, I decide to try it on. I’m in my early thirties; the age Mum would have been when she bought it. She’d had four kids by then and I’m sure the shift dress will be far too big. But no matter how much I suck in my stomach, the zip won’t budge. It’s a shock to realise how slender she must have been – Mum and the French model whose vital statistics she shared. Surprisingly, the jacket turns out to fit and I indulge in a fantasy of swanning about at some glamourous event; a fantasy destined to remain unfulfilled. Or so I think, for not long afterwards I’m invited to a queer dinner party for fifty where we are instructed to dress up. The invitation makes it clear that one’s best pair of jeans is not an option.
In a photograph taken at the party, I’m captured (for posterity) wearing a black jacket with a plunging neckline edged in white mink. Having imagined myself as the epitome of sexy elegance, a version of my mother no less, it comes as a shock to see how ridiculous I appear. A child playing dress-ups with none of the sophistication required.
Looking back, I reflect on the reality that I’m not my mother, that I’m part of the hoi polloi, and would never have passed Luxury Lil’s scrutiny, nor would I have wanted to. I think of Mum, a decade dead, and how those Le Louvre days were the expression of her desire to never again be Orphan Annie, of banishing shame and embarrassment and ensuring that she had the right clothes for every occasion. And while it didn’t erase her early insecurities, I can’t help but be glad that she stepped across the threshold at number 74 Collins Street where she met Luxury Lil and the French model and embarked on a decade of haute couture fashion.
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