Mending a Hole | The Story of Cousin Billie

A few years ago, I found myself standing in a dimly-lit dressing room wearing an awful dress.

Well, it was actually a cute dress, but it didn’t suit me. It needed a belt or some darts, a bit of extra length, and maybe a higher neckline.

It wouldn’t have received grandma’s stamp of approval, but I loved the print and fabric so much that I stood there making excuses for it. Conjuring up all the ways I could get around its problems and planning its renovation in my mind, like it was a run-down house in a great suburb.

As I stood there defending its crimes, a thought suddenly came to me…

I already had a closet full of 'fixer-uppers' that I NEVER wore.

Clothes that had never made it further than the ‘discard pile’ on my bed.

Clothes that I couldn’t bear to part with for the guilt of the tags still hanging on them.

How much money had I wasted over the years on clothes that I had never worn?!

Looking in the mirror that day, I decided that I was never going to buy clothes again (so dramatic), unless they were perfect exactly the way they were. 

And guess what?

I didn’t buy a single item of clothing for two. whole. years.!
(Except for a wedding dress. Which I had to renovate. That’s another story.)

I'd searched EVERYWHERE.

Little boutiques, huge chain stores. I scoured the internet and harassed strangers on the street to ask where they’d bought their clothes. The answer was always ‘Oh, this? I’ve had this for years!’.

My hopes were dashed every time I walked into a store.

• I’d see a beautiful skirt; the perfect length, the right colours. Pull it out for a better look and it would be a pair of pants.
• I’d find a gorgeous dress, only to turn it around and find that it had no back in it.
• I’d land upon the perfect summer skirt, only to realise it was completely see-through and would need a slip.
• A top where the neckline revealed half my bra.

Sometimes even clothes that were nice but just poorly constructed or made from awful fabric.

I was more than a little disheartened.

It was hard to believe that in such a flooded industry, there wasn’t a single garment (under $500, I should add) that ticked all the boxes?!

Surely I wasn’t the only one?

There was a big, gaping hole in the industry.

And it needed mending.

So Cousin Billie was born.

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