Pret-a-Porter

Things have definately soured with my tailor. Every year when i come to Goa I go to my 'tailor' (a fellow i have handpicked for no other reason than i like some of the wares he has on display) and I enter into a convoluted process of trying to get a piece made for myself. This year it is the leather (mini)skirt. Before you start on about how a mother of two should not be caught dead in a black leather mini skirt unless she's a lady of the night (which i actually happen to be, only not the exciting elicit type but the forlorn downtrodden up-all-night-with-a-cranky-baby kind).

Anyway, I custom designed it with him, and whether it was me thinking he knew English perfectly, or he being more interested in my breasts popping out of my bathing suit top I cannot tell. But for whatever reason, for the past week now we've found ourselves on a highway to fashion hell with the results going decidedly down the past few days.

I should know better. I really should. There have been 'incidents' in the past with local tailors involving Jay and several custom made shirts which ended just below his belly button and involved waking said tailors up in middle of the night before we flew in an attempt to get them to do the impossible and make extra fabric appear where there was none.

Much is the case with this skirt. The metal snaps do not only not align, but they pop open just breathing on them....a thought which fills me with dread were I ever to attempt to wear the finished product in public. However we have both gone too far now to stop - although halting this miserable affair would be the wisest and kindest for both of us. Instead, after my latest fitting moments ago, my depressed tailor (who has lost his joie de vivre the past few days after my visits) just nodded his assent at my latest instructions for righting the manufacturing wrongs, and told me to come back tomorrow.

I don't hold out a lot of hope. In fact I may just end up donating the skirt to Oxfam on my return, where some unfortunate soul will find themselves the proud owner of a fine piece of black leather which resembles a skirt, feels like a skirt, but simply hangs in such a wonky fashion that it shall leave her feeling that her body is odd and badly put together.

Lesson? Spend your money in India on MASSAGE, BEER, and FOOD. You can't really go wrong being a lazy sloth-ridden pig, but you can when you venture into fine jewellry, clothes design and trinket-mania.. Off I pop for said massage. Cheerio.