I’m a Sheep, But Don’t Call Me Soft - Chapter 7

As I repeated the work, my skills improved by leaps and bounds daily. To the point where even a lot of skirt work came my way.

‘Huh…!’

And one day… suddenly, like a revelation from the sky, a realization came.

‘With this level of skill, can’t I make a whole dress by myself?’

That I was now in perfect preparation to make a dress.

When the revelation came was in late summer, around when the social season had ended and both the shop and the sewing workshop had caught their breath. The moment I learned I had the ability to make a dress, I became anxious with the desire to make one.

‘But how?’

A dress was an extremely expensive item. Even the fabric alone for the simplest type of dress amounted to my annual income. The fabric alone.

‘I’ve heard there’s a market that sells last season’s dresses after the social season… let me try going there.’

After deliberation, the place I headed to was the city’s used-clothes market.

Arriving at the market, I was more overwhelmed by the smell than the scenery. The heavy perfume the young ladies had sprayed, sweat, and the strange, musty smell of fabric rotting.

At the stalls there, heaps of dresses of all colors were piled like fish at a fish market. That place was a dress graveyard made by young ladies with the financial means to discard last season’s dresses without even repairing them, but to me it was like a treasure vault.

‘Why didn’t I come find this place long ago?’

That day, after a long selection, I bought one dress. A silk dress that had been used for one social season. The skirt was full, but there was no crinoline to give the skirt more volume, the bodice decorations had all been torn off, the boning was gone, and the inner lining was covered in stains.

‘Now this is mine.’

On the way back, hugging the package containing the clothes to my chest, my heart pounded. The ruined evening dress inside the envelope was not clothes for a commoner girl of uncertain origin like me, but clothes for a noble young lady.

‘Soon it’ll be my clothes!’

But soon I could make it my clothes. Clothes of my own with my taste incorporated. Just thinking about it, both legs felt light as if I could fly to the sky.

‘What should I make with this?’

Spreading the dress out on the attic floor, I gazed at the pale water-colored silk and sank into thought. I also wanted to make a dazzling dress that showed off my skills, but even if I made such a thing, I had nowhere to wear it.

‘Then… let’s make a Sunday promenade dress.’

Since I went out to the fountain in the square every Sunday, it seemed like a good idea to make something to wear then.

‘It’s summer now, so a summer dress… let me incorporate all the latest trends I saw in the publications.’

A streamlining trend was blowing through recent dresses. The crinoline that, once worn, made the lower body look as if trapped in a birdcage was also rarely worn, and the bustle that puffed out the rear of the skirt was also not worn except for a small pad at the waist. At least regarding the lower body, it had become simpler and more natural.

Instead, for the upper body, the point was given by using a corset to tightly cinch the waist like an hourglass and emphasize the chest. But in my case, there was no need to give such a point.

‘Cinch the waist with a corset and emphasize the chest…? What for?’

I hate not being able to breathe in a dress. What I wanted was a dress that was beautiful yet comfortable to wear. The dress in the sketch I completed after dozens of rounds of deliberation and revision had an unpuffed skirt, a bodice with a neckline revealing the shoulders and a waistline slightly emphasized, sleeves with a bit of volume from shoulder to elbow then fitted like the long gloves worn by young ladies from elbow to wrist, the form of a two-piece with the bodice and skirt separated.

‘Hmm… is it a bit eye-catching?’

Once I drew it all out, I had never seen anyone striding around in such clothes in this city. The kind of clothes with a somewhat odd design.

‘But I hate cinching the waist excessively. Wearing a corset means you can’t even bend your back. And I hate the skirt hem trailing. If it gets dirty you have to wash it. Where and how would you do the laundry?’

Perhaps because I had eliminated everything I hated about trends. I liked that odd form I had never seen in any publication.

‘Well, whatever. It looks good to my eyes.’

In any case, the customer is me. I could only start work on the dress after all my duties ended. Even that meant I had to carve into my sleep time. But despite that, that work was incredibly fun!