ISSUE 12 – APRIL/MAY 2016 – FREE
55 Mill Street’s Nina Ludlow’s Brand X William Shakespeare in Ludlow? Getting real in the garden Long-haired deer of Mortimer Forest Rod Stewart’s Ferrari F50 Remembering Amanda Brisbane Correct crossword
“I worked on George III’s waistcoat: It had all sorts of stuff down the front of it. Normally with conservation, you’re trying to remove dirt but on this occasion we were trying to preserve it.” AT the top of Mill Street, just opposite the Ludlow Assembly Rooms, lies a veritable cornucopia of delights. Over three large floors and with an outdoors garden space, 55 Mill Street offers vintage clothes, antiques, artwork, furniture, books, kitchenalia and more. It’s the sort of place where a few hours can easily be lost to browsing and pottering. Run since 2012 by the everglamorous textiles expert Nina Hely-Hutchinson, 55 Mill Street is actually host to a range of different dealers, with Nina’s own vintage clothing concern being just one of the businesses. A hugely experienced textile curator and conservator, Nina’s impressive CV boasts the likes of The Royal Palace of Hampton Court, the LA County Museum of Art in California
and, more locally, museums in Herefordshire and Wales. Above all, though, it’s her passion for vintage clothing that really comes across as we chat over marvellously strong coffee at Cicchetti. “I’ve always been interested in clothes, it’s just in me,” Nina says. “I started making clothes for my Sindy dolls, but that’s not unusual I think. My mother was Danish and used to make her own clothes. When she came to Britain, she didn’t like the magazines published here so she used to get French Elle. I remember it coming through the door with interesting clothes, and interesting photography...” Nina’s father was Australian and when he and Nina’s mother, freshly engaged, took the boat to head back Down Under, they even
made the news. Nina treasures an old newspaper cutting – ‘Mr Peter Cole arrives back in Sydney with his fiancée’ – from the days when such a long journey was truly rare. When the couple, then married, came back to Britain, Nina’s mother’s trunk and suitcase of clothes “made for Australian living” returned too. It was kept in the attic but as soon as Nina was old enough, it was ransacked for dressing up clothes and then incorporated into her own wardrobe. At school, Nina was delighted to be offered needlework classes but was then somewhat disappointed to learn she would just be making simple wash-bags. She badgered the teacher and was allowed to make a skirt instead, “a really basic one though,” she laughs. Her Danish
– www.ludlowledger.co.uk –
grandmother taught her how to use a sewing machine and by the time Nina was choosing her O levels, she already knew that she wanted to work in fashion. “I did a foundation course at art college but,” she shrugs, “I realised I wasn’t good enough to do fashion the way I wanted to do it.” Somewhat impressively, she was part of a group that persuaded the nuns at her Catholic sixth form to allow the students to wear jeans – on the condition that they didn’t smoke in the common room... Whilst idly wandering around the V&A’s costume department, it struck Nina that someone must look after and collate the collection. Fortuitously, one of her teachers was friendly with Natalie Rothstein,
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