I tried to iron out every crease in the pants I was ironing for Tsubi. During Sydney's Mercede's Benz Fashion Week in 2001, as a backstage volunteer, I had done everything from picking up hundreds of pearls off the floor to knocking over a clothing rack while someone was being interviewed. Mark, one of the organisers, put me in their backstage area as their "dresser".
I thought, "Who the hell are these guys?!" All their pants had permanent creases in the crutches and I had never heard of this textile treatment…and holes…I remember finding a hole! At first, i thought I was the ironing lady for some guys selling second-hand pants!
At the far end of the dressing room, men were stacking small cages of rats…lots and lots of rats. Two girls were sitting on the floor and were making some kind of head-piece on a sewing machine. I thought I saw a wheelchair go past. A nice looking blonde guy handed me a tee-shirt with a big crumpled - up piece of newspaper sewn on the front and asked me, with the cheekiest of smiles, to iron it for him. I wasn't too sure whether he wanted the paper ironed or the tee-shirt so I took a chance. While I was doing this, a young sydney tech student tried to coerce me into giving my back-stage tag to him for his friend. "No way!" I said.: I' d got into enough trouble the day before when I had tried to watch a show with the ushers.
A tall, quiet man from the group wrapped a long, thick piece of leather around the body and arm of a young blonde model and deliberated as to whether he should cut it or not. The piece draped behind her on the floor as she walked. It looked quite beautiful.
The models went out moments after the rats were released onto the stage. Perspex stage edges were used and the audience made little squeals of both horror and delight as the show started. A male model fell through the curtain and knocked over my ironing board towards the end of the show. When I left at the end, I was still thinking, "Who the hell are these guys?" Their clothes looked like they had been pulled out of a back-alley rubbish bin but the guys seemed quite nice.
