A Look Into the Past
:: evelyn royston ::
1919 – 1980
Red and Pink silk patterned suit. Feb. 1966
(Sketch by Evelyn Royston)
My mother, aka mom, not only made a lunch for me every morning before I went to school, but also made my clothes, from dresses to skirts, to shirts, to patching my Levi jeans and teaching me how to thread a needle and sew on a button and hem a dress.
When I was about the age of eight, I enjoyed perusing magazines with lots of colors and fun pictures of different places and exotic looking people, mostly women, that were delivered regularly to our house. Each month a new magazine was delivered on the doorstep or in our case right at the front of the door that led directly into a little entrance way which then became our living room. It was a rather large special magazine that my mother specifically ordered for herself.
Vogue magazines, circa 1960
However, I was allowed to peel off the brown paper cover, smell the newly printed pages and begin looking before she got her chance. The magazines were huge, covered my entire lap, thick with lots of avant-garde content that would take hours to inspect and digest. Enclosed were pictures of beautiful women dressed in wild clothes with bright colors and mixed designs that somehow made sense when put together. How absolutely fascinating it was! Vogue was the name on the cover. I would spend hours just looking at it. I would be gentle with the pages flipping from the top corner slowly as to not rip each glossy masterpiece. When the next magazine would arrive, the older ones would be placed in a neat little pile in a handmade basket off to the side by the front door.
My mother's sketches around 1966
A happy customer with her new dress
(Mom far left)
Black and white woven fine wool two-piece suit with matching coat.
Textured red wool coat.
As time passed and I became a little older I started to understand that my mom was creating her own designs and making her own patterns. That was when I realized she had talent extraordinaire.
She and her friend Gertrude opened a shop above a yarn shop in downtown Mill Valley, CA. It had a long staircase going up (or you could take a small elevator up to the second floor). I believe it was the first and only elevator in Mill Valley at the time. Their shop was called Royston-German. I would walk in after school and see a woman with fabric draped around her and mirrors in every direction. She was slowly turning, I already was an expert, I knew what they were doing.
Gold and black woven silk dress with mid length arm coat. Nov. 1964
Golden crepe long evening dress. Feb.1967
The smell of fabrics would again fill my nose and the sound of a sewing machine gently buzzing coming from the next room and the smell of machine oil. The sound of scissors cutting fresh fabric slowly and methodically inch by inch. A new and original piece was being created for one special person.
I found and have kept my mother’s renderings of her original designs. I will be making collages as a tribute to my mom and to honor the woman of talent, whom I never had the time to get to fully know because her life ended at an early age. My mother truly found her passion and has inspired me through my entire life to find mine. Little did I know that our passions would somehow intersect and become one. She will be with me always and the cosmic inspiration for many of my future works.
Blue and white fine cotton shift. May 1966