It may seem unlikely that a firm specialising in Lady’s Outer-Wear and Accessories could continue to exist when it has no advertising, apart from its display windows, and with no end-of-season or other sales. Yet Bellows and Naseby has been in existence for one hundred and twenty years. The reason is the quality of their apparel and accessories. They are pricey but unsurpassed. A niche market catering to those for whom price is of no importance.
Most of what Bellows sells is designed and made in-house although a certain amount, mainly accessories, is imported from the better European houses. In turn, several of these houses make up and sell Bellows’ designs under their own name.
Although the Bellows and Naseby name has been retained, there has been no Naseby for almost a hundred years. It is a family firm belonging to the Bellows and answers to no outside shareholders.
The family has been blessed in each generation with men having a particular artistic sense and flair for design. A number of their women too. The firm specialises in formal wear and carries no casual wear at all. Their garments exhibit an elegance in design without being high fashion. The fashion treadmill is seen by them as a global conspiracy of planned obsolescence. Bellows does take careful note, however, of current fashion and what others are doing since designers tend to feed off each other with the ideas of one begetting the ideas of another but Bellow’s designs have always tended to restraint being intended to embellish real women not the stick figures of the catwalk. And much of what is strutted on the catwalk is impracticable anyway much like the concept cars that manufacturers continue to exhibit at motor shows but which never see production. Such is not for Bellows. Good design is good design, quality is quality, even when not on fashion’s leading edge and remains something to be enjoyed when ephemeral fashion has long since passed into oblivion.
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The firm’s customers come from the city’s old-money families. They are secure enough in themselves and their social position to make their own fashion statements. They don’t need a Gucci handbag or a Rolex watch to say who they are. They leave that to the pretenders and the newly rich. And Bellow’s customers most certainly would not wear clothing with a label on the outside. In fact, Bellow’s clothing has no label of any sort, no size, no washing instructions, which is perhaps an affectation in itself. It is assumed that Bellow’s garments are readily identified as such and that their staff will assist in finding the required size and will advise of any special cleaning requirements.
The firm’s present premises were built in 1921 and many who remember visiting the shop as a child, with their mother or grandmother, have the impression that it has scarcely changed since that time. This is designedly so. There have in fact been many changes with the most visible being the removal of the extensive overhead wireway which once carried docket and cash payment to a central clerk to return moments later with one’s change. Nowadays there are electronic tills, the use of credit cards and EFTPOS, with an unseen but extensive computer network keeping track of everything. But that said, what has not changed is the ambience of the place, the ethos, the service. This is not one of those shops where you must find for yourself something suitable and then take it to a cash desk. At Bellow’s there will be someone quickly at your side to assist and advise. “Can I help you madam?” or, if you are a regular customer, “Can I help you Mrs. So-and-So?” For you will be known. There will also be a chair for you to take while that someone is fetching things for your appraisal. Bellow’s customers see such personal service as their natural right.
As to the ethos pervading the place, Bellows has no printed Mission Statement and needs none. The spirit of service is endemic and breathed through the pores to settle in the bones of
SWEET BONDS Page 3 SOSIAS new staff members. They are a team without the need for deliberate team building. They have complete access to any of the Bellow’s family members involved in the business but here, although still close, it is somewhat in the manner of officers and other ranks. A Bellow’s male although young and still learning the business will be addressed as ‘Mr Charles’ or ’ Mr Frederick’ as the case may be. The foregoing is to aid in understanding the relationship of two people.
Bellows is possibly unusual in having an Alterations Department tucked up under the roof. The head of this department was for many years Elsie Williams. While garments come in standard sizes, human bodies do not. It is only right that the customer get a perfect fit for something that she has set her heart on and particularly so when she is paying well above bargain prices. Her continued satisfaction is vital. She will be escorted up in the lift and introduced to Mrs Williams, or whoever is currently running the department, and the problem explained. Usually the changes will be made while the customer waits. It should be explained that Elsie Williams was not married and was still single when she left the firm at sixty. The ‘missus’ was purely a courtesy title given to senior women staff members. A tradition.
Above Elsie again came Mr James Bellows. Alterations were one of his responsibilities although this small department ran with little intervention on his part.
Bellows has no wish to be a bespoke tailor. But how does one refuse a good customer? A woman comes in and asks, " Could I see Mr James Bellows, please?" He is paged and comes down. From her bag she draws an overseas magazine’s photograph of a dress. She must have that dress. “You know that we’re not dressmakers.” “Yes, but I know that you can do it and have done it for others. P-L-E-A-S-E!” she wheedles. Unfortunately, once in the past he had given in to such a request though enjoining the woman
SWEET BONDS Page 4 SOSIAS to secrecy. It had proved to be one of the worst kept secrets. He takes the customer up to Alterations.
Bellow’s sewing room is in an outer suburb–the firm has no truk with Asian or Fijian sweatshops. Any one-offs must be done in Alterations and while it is not normal business practice to let customers see behind the scenes, Alterations has been set up as a model workshop with its own changing rooms and it is only on such one-offs that James and Elsie ever work closely.
With a few swift charcoal strokes on a sketch pad James draws a recognisable facsimile of the woman but now wearing the desired dress. A designer needs to be a good draftsman. It is an honest drawing that makes something clear. “It ’s not right for me, is it?” says the woman, disappointed. But wait! New pages and new strokes have her wearing a variety of dresses all based on the original but more personally flattering. Elsie offers her opinions and one sketch appeals. The magazine photograph is basically frontal and gives little hint of the back. James sketches a number of suggestions one of which is accepted. At this stage James leaves the woman with Elsie, who will take her measurements.
Over the next few days, Elsie will make paper patterns from those measurements and the chosen sketches and will only call in James if there are particular difficulties. She will probably make up the chosen material herself and will make the arrangements for the necessary fittings. It is only when the customer is resplendent in the completed dress that James will be called in to express his admiration.
For more than thirty years, James and Elsie have been tied together. It is not a visible tie. They are bonded and have no idea why this should be. Each knows that the other has a respect and a quiet affection for them although neither of them has ever spoken of it. Both
SWEET BONDS Page 5 SOSIAS feel that to do so would be inappropriate. Though special to each other they confine themselves to the roles assigned by the firm. James remains ‘Mr. James’. Elsie remains ‘Mrs. Williams’. And James is married.
In the thirty odd years, they have never physically touched but then James is careful never to touch a female employee. The pair do touch though in a different and more complete way.
James has come to have an admiration and a brotherly affection for several other women who have been there for as long as Elsie but it is not quite the same as with Elsie where something in each speaks to that something in the other. But this wider affection is also something that cannot be openly expressed. He must be never be seen to favour one employee over another. He must not be distant and yet there must always be that little distance.
James’ relationship with Elsie is something that he has never been able to discuss with anyone. He is not sure that this sort of thing even happens to anyone else. Could anyone grasp that he could be closer in understanding to Elsie than to his wife Janice and yet that that in no way diminished his love for Janice? Or would they immediately make the wrong assumptions?
It was definitely not something that he could speak of with Janice. She needed constant reassurance. To admit to even the mildest affection for any woman, other than close family, would be seen as being unfaithful. And yet there was a world of difference between having a generally good opinion of women and being a womaniser.
His relationship with Elsie was a sort of sibling kinship, fond but innocent, and,in the circumstances, unfortunate. It was a bond that neither had sought. Certainly neither ‘fancied’ the other and there could be no social contact outside the walls of Bellows.
But who would believe it innocent? When people talked about a man and a woman being
SWEET BONDS Page 6 SOSIAS in a relationship they assumed it to be a sexual relationship as though that could be the only congress between a man and a woman. But sex is no relationship at all. Sex can be bought and sold.
James and Janice were in Europe when Elsie left. It was very sudden. Her brother, a widower who lived further south, had survived two heart attacks in the one week and needed care. She had left a forwarding address and, while it would be totally out of place to make contact with her, James had made a copy. A poor memento for more than thirty years. It lived in his work desk. He could not have Janice ask, “Who is this woman?”
That European trip was the last that James and Janice were to make together. Two months later she was dead. James was totally devastated. Janice may not have been his soul-mate but she had long been an essential part of who he was. A few months on and he decided that he was no longer giving his best to the firm. It was time to retire: let one of the younger family members take a step up.
It was a wrong move. He had always defined himself by what he did. He had been a women’s clothing designer and a good one. And, being family, he had had to be an administrator too.
Now, he didn’t know who or what he was. He had been depressed before, he became more so. There was little to fill his days. Once a week, he would take the train into city. Parking in the city was a problem and his parking space in the back alley now belonged to someone else. If he called in to the show-rooms it was to find himself an outsider. People were too busy to talk and it was deflating to find that everything went on exactly as before without him. Bellows and Naseby didn’t need him! The world didn’t need him! He stopped calling.
In truth, Bellows’ staff were more than pleased to see him but the canker eating him was presenting an entirely different picture.
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He waited a full year from Janice’s death before writing to Elsie. The letter was returned unopened and marked ‘Return to sender. Address unknown." In his low state, he assumed that, having read the return address on the envelope, Elsie had decided that she had no wish to re-establish contact. He was then at bottom.
Another two years, though, and things were looking up and with them his confidence. His abilities as a designer had been remembered in certain quarters. He had been approached with the request that he work free-lance from home to design a line of clothing which while stylish would also be cheap. It would be made off-shore and, he was assured, be in no way competitive with Bellow’s. The money wasn’t important. He had more than enough. It was something to do and his creative juices had welled up and re-established who he was. The family had dismissed the project as “James’s new hobby” but they underestimated him.
The success of that first line had led to offers from other parties most of which he had been forced to turn down. It would be unwise to spread himself any thinner. The two men who worked with him in the room above his garage were competent enough but the subtle elan which had lifted those garments was his alone.
His returned self-assurance brought with it the belief that Elsie had truly no longer been known at that address. It was difficult to accept that what had existed between them could ever fade. He would hire someone to find her.
But that proved to be unnecessary. He was in the city on his way back to the station after discussions on a folio of new designs. And suddenly, there she was! Not four metres away on the crowded footpath and coming toward him. She was back! She had seen him! And any questions that he might have had were clearly answered in her face. The hug that they gave each other was exactly the hug that long-time friends should give each other. Although– perhaps it lasted just that little bit longer. The foot traffic divided around them. This was their
SWEET BONDS Page 8 SOSIAS release. The strictures of Bellows and Naseby, or what other people might think, no longer applied.
Taking her hand, he led her to a coffee bar. They had some years to catch up on. Elsie had only heard of Janice’s death on her return the previous week and, the time for letters of condolence being long past, had hoped that she might somehow meet up with ‘poor James’ to commiserate personally. She had had no expectations beyond that. She had long since ceased to have any expectations. It had never occurred to her that restraints so long matured could be so easily broken or even that they could be broken at all.
Such was the glow of their joy in each other that it had to be obvious to everyone around them. Love free from fetters! A situation so new and so sudden as to seem unbelievable, an impossible dream.
And while it was premature to bring up the question of marriage at that time, the matter had already been tacitly decided.