The first thing everyone asks me on a sofa in his studio Madine beaten Liverpool is to be, "You are a gypsy?
"No," she said. "I am not a gypsy and I'm not in any way, nor ever claimed to be a spokesperson for the travel community. I am a tailor, whose customers often come to be Gypsies.
However, without the participation of large Gypsy marriages Madine never greasy. Madine is a reliable partner and the United Kingdom and Ireland travel and television producers had tried to board for a while before the show was made. Madine has an instinct for the erratic nature of the passenger communication - has confirmed that he learned long ago that the dates and times are not met, and how to work with the programs of non-application of new and often noncompliance that characterizes a traveling lifestyle. His understanding of the culture traveler has the right to vote to create a unique and successful company, wedding dresses on the youth of the travel community, women and children to build.
She was running from his tailor, Nico, since 1998. Before they had sold a place in the rice market in Liverpool, baptism, communion. His business in the city center is the face of society and the first point of contact for customers. I meet her at her studio in a small property close to the industry. This is where the equipment will be done and where your company belongs Madine, the use of a core group of five women, as well as occasional seamstresses and apprentices. A look at the clothes show here that, contrary to its apparent superficiality of television, his creations are beautiful, carefully sutured.
A young mother is an Irish gypsy in the garage with his six year old son and two daughters ranging from 13 to 11 years. Girls in full make-up, and they made clothes for a party. Madine speaks through tissue samples in the cutter center. She has been making suits for the same family for years, and has a similar relationship generations most of its customers. After many young girls dressed in his baptism, his marriage is a figure of the surrogate mother for Madine some of them and watched them grow.
Madine, who lives in a house large enough with a pool in an affluent suburb of Wigan, refuses to talk about money, but he admits that, early in its relations with travelers, she realized that the only guarantee deposits were strong that your customers really come back for expensive clothes he had ordered. And anyway, he said, the issue of confidentiality and to each customer, so that it does is different, so there is no fixed price.
"Some of my clients ask me to give them a bill for four times that amount, just so they can show people that what happened at the wedding of his daughter," she said. "It's a pride thing, but it does not do well, our business really, because I have many emails from Facebook have, in reference to astronomy, with all these girls and said," J 'I had a dress for you, love is, But I know you can not afford it. I said, their clothes cost £ 100,000. "'
Madine said he will consider all applications. "I tell all the girls, tell me your budget, and we'll do the rest"
So what is the most astronomical budget that was delivered? "I had a little girl comes and says:" I have whole rock Swarovski crystals will ", and said," Well, let's be reasonable here? "Then I will make with 10 bags of glass and say: "Here, now they have - looking at a weight of about 550 times more than appearance. How can you go? They will not move in a position to be located. "You just go," Oh, ok, ok. "I do not know, as long as your dress is the greatest of care."
Thelma Madine grew up in Croxteth, in the 1950s with his older brother, Tom. His father worked in the art, and his mother in a factory canteen, catering to others' work and on weekends in a bar. Despite Croxteth is one of the most difficult in the suburbs of Liverpool today Madine, whose parents moved after the war, remembers him fondly. "Everything was new, when my mother moved there and when I was a kid, I remember it was very nice. Were good. "
His mother made sure we were always very well thought out. "My mother kill to get it right for us and she always made sure that me and Tom were dressed impeccably," recalls Madine. "They worked their fingers to the bone, then took a night course in sewing, and then stay up all night, I have clothes to ensure that come the next day, I would be the best dressed girl his school. I always was. "
Madine knew, instinctively, what types of clothes they wanted. "Very big, tacky clothes, and as he grew older, I have not watched the Victorian era." After graduation, he worked to do with the restoration of the marriage of his mother and inspired by the swish hotels and decorating events I attended, began planning his own. At 18, she married Kenny Madine, a businessman with his own glass company. The couple had three children, Kenneth, Tracey and Hayley, all now in their thirties. Kenny was a commercial success and had a good life, "the big house, Rolls-Royce."
With the support of her husband and her mother's help, Madine their own chain of fashion stores for children, mini-Madine. Hayley and I had just had it in mind for purchases: "I remember one day seeing and thinking, I would, I would make clothes for children - and so I started to the store and went to Europe for my fair share no one else is doing. six open throughout the Liverpool area in 1982 and was known for the clothing of my children. "
Only when she dresses communion Madine design on her way to where she is now out mitgestartet. "I knew I could not sew, but I knew exactly what he wanted, so I take my ideas and my mother and aunt in their production, I saw what he did and said." No, no, the sleeves slightly larger, add more material here. "After three years, another woman, Audrey, came to work for us and she taught me to sew. I was not very good at first but got better and could therefore start my own design. "
Own design Madine communion gowns were pioneers in the way, if the wedding dresses, and not the substance that became a worldwide success. (Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which airs worldwide and Madine was a huge fan base worldwide success. Girls travelers contact via his Facebook page and Twitter account last crazy year when Kate Moss said in an interview with American Vogue , see the Madine clothes they get married on television, was inspired.)
A few years later, the company began to crumble Madine, like marriage. She was forced to close their shops, and separate them, and Kenny. Madine and Hayley continued to live in the family home and she tried to keep the company in his garage - which had an agent in Ireland at that time for communion gowns. But come without the money, could not afford to heat the family home.
Times were difficult, but in 1996 he had succeeded in reviving the company with the financial assistance of an aunt and through a business partnership for a short time yet. He holds a market stall in Paddy, always sells communion dresses, but now specializes in christening gowns for girls.
"I remember this painting of Henry VIII and I made the dress of a child based on his team - I liked how they came together under their belts," she said. "So I did it in black velvet. I want to see the historical books of the hour, all fabrics, velvet and a variety of braids and study how things are done have been with blouses and coats.
His position has become a topic of conversation, people liked the dress so small that they come by. Then in early 1997 came to a young man, looking around in the locker room in the program, asked: "Can you make Gone with the Wind dresses?"
"She was very young, it seemed a strange thing to ask," recalls Madine. "I mean, she would never have known that I had seen this movie a million times. So I thought, velvet skirts, big hats. Yes, yes, I can do. "
The girl made an order of three girls in red velvet dress with matching hat, made a deposit of £ 80 (Madine had a prize of £ 100 - "I soon realized that barely cover the equipment), and said it back a week later to collect it. But it has not, so Madine, which hung in the square, were against all the rows and rows of small white baptism. In end of the day, they had about 20 orders for them. Message Madine was such a thing as a meeting point for travelers since then, as it passes through the commands and provides the latest news from other families.
In late 1997, one of the women passengers, who began attending his place and had a friend who was asked to Mary Madine Gypsy, a wedding dress for one of his daughters. She had asked for a package of 30 feet, but two weeks later, demanding a change, "is now 107ft, making it larger than its cousin. She married last week and his train was 100 feet, "said Mary. Gypsy Maria came a week later and ordered 18 bridesmaid dresses.
The company flies very well, still in first place in children's fashion, Madine was living at a stable level. Nico was opened in 1998, while the position of Paddy on Saturday, because it is still the heart of the company. She was also with a new partner, Dave Armstrong, who are still together and have a daughter equipped. She started thinking about picking up the very idea of thinking about wedding dresses.
But his past was about to overtake them. When he started the business of rice in 1996, Madine had illegally claimed benefits for 11 months to July 1997. "I needed money to buy fabric and I also had to qualify for legal aid to proceed with the divorce, which was very dirty to help," he said.
They were agents of the benefits and then the police who questioned his charges of false accounting. His trial began in 2001. As she had no criminal record, told his probation officer was likely to receive an order for community service. Instead, he received a prison sentence of 12 months for benefit fraud worth £ 10,700.
Madine spent four months - .. "A Life", she admits that what he did was wrong and had to pay the price can not understand why someone like her - an intelligent, funny, well-trained workers Croxteth girls who have their own businesses had run for years -. had left there, Hayley, who was 21 at the time, wrote a journal entry every day with a message to keep it filled minds.
While she was in prison, the best friend of women Madine and his right hand in the business, kept Pauline Wooley, Nico works with the help of Armstrong. Madine was published in April 2002 and although it took several months to recreate, it applies to the company and started wedding fairs. He decided he would start with wedding dresses designed and Nico with some purchases of corsets.
Shortly after, she took an order of a bride-to-be for a wedding dress without having a dress that is from the beginning would be to hand by the end: "I want the greatest dress ever, most of the crystals, which was never a dress and skirt around the widest I've ever seen. "The girl was 15 and was married when she turned 16. Money was no object.
The short dress, girls decorated and accurately weighed 21 stone. Local media and found the moment the bride left the church, some photographers gathered outside. The pictures went on the internet and the phone rang wall Madine, as the media tries to speak and, more importantly, the bride. However, the bride asked Madine to talk to them.
So began the phenomenon of Big Fat Gypsy wedding. Madine was Jenny Popplewell, a producer with the film of fireworks, as each month for a year until she finally gave in and accepted the Popplewell start filming for the documentary. The two have been friends since Madine Popplewell said to his original promise, that his company is not interested in appeasing to the terms of the form of travelers' lives tabloid, but I wanted to tell the story through clothing.
Although the TV series has done much to raise the profile of Madine, business is booming. Nico has a steady stream of orders for wedding dresses (usually by orders from an average of 14 dresses in the company). No seasons set wedding trip, except for winter weddings in the Irish town of Rathkeale - at home, for three months, some of the richest families of the passengers on the British Isles in the past the rest of the year abroad. There are plans to move a much larger workshop and Madine said that may lead them to improve the resolution of production to satisfy all requests, party, wedding, communion dresses belonging and participation. Most are connected to the traveler.
Madine be used to make cheap wedding dresses for girls as wife kind local and foreign players, but she says she much prefers working with travelers. She understands what they want and love to create stories. "Brides can be temperamental, usually when my clients give travelers to me only a blank check. And they are so young and excited," she said. "Most of the wives of others are a bit old, lost, and that feeling of being a princess."
