On the weekend I was going through a box of old photos and I found something that I had forgotten I had packed away. Wrapped up in special tissue paper was the lace train from my mother’s wedding dress. Mum made her own beautiful wedding dress while my dad who was in the navy was away overseas. She hand stitched the lace together matching all the lace motifs so there were no visible seams. At the time the lace she made her dress from wasn’t available in the shops in Australia, she had to order it from overseas. She was fortunate because she was a dressmaker who worked for Georges, a very upmarket store in Melbourne at the time. Georges made couture gowns for Australia’s rich and famous and had access to fabric and lace from countries all over the world. Mum kept her wedding dress for nearly 30 years and most of it had perished mainly because of the time we spent in Darwin. The heat and humidity caused the dress to get mildew sadly. Before mum moved to Queensland she took the train off the dress (as it was the only part of the dress not falling apart) and gave it to me for safe keeping.
As part of my personal photography project this is the type of thing I want to photograph. Things that matter to me and my family. This once beautiful piece of french lace is now fragile and thin and I didn’t know what would be the best way to photograph it. I am still not sure I am completely happy with what I have captured but it is a start.
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