Zena Howarth
Creator & Dressmaker, Fantastic Frocks
I was born in Manchester in the north of England 1963, in the middle of the worst winter in English history. My love of ballroom dance started at the age of about eight years old and my mother made my first green powder puff style, Ballroom Dress. She made everything I wore as a child, and our talent for dressmaking again ultimately has come to us from her mother, my beautiful Nanna who taught me so much. Nanna taught us that attention to detail and finishing off is everything, and finishing techniques for the inside of garments were different years ago before overlockers were created, and very detailed. I have always taken pride in the fact that garments I make could be worn inside out because the finishing inside is so well done. Children’s garments and special occasion items, are lined with invisible stitching even on the inside. This of course promotes comfort as well. I found out in recent years that my third-generation great grandmother on my father’s side, was actually a milliner and she was running a small haberdashery shop in Manchester in 1871. The love of fabrics and creating beautiful things has obviously come from both sides of my family. My daughters do incredible work, my eldest girl is incredibly intricate with a needle and thread creating minature doll’s and dresses, and my younger daughter is learning to sew with a machine making lovely dresses for her daughter. I started making dolls dresses at the age of nine years old, and then after Dress Making classes at school as a teenager, and with Mum and Nannas influence, I have spent my life sewing children’s christening gowns, beautiful vintage style smocked baby girl dresses, special occasion dresses, and Wedding Dresses over the years. I have been sewing for 51 years.
I spent my childhood and teenage years doing Ballroom dance, and was doing old time Ballroom and Dancing back then. The photo shows my first partner Stephen, and I was the envy of the girls because they were not as many boys back then and I was lucky enough to dance with a gorgeous little boy. The photo was taken at a beginners Veleta competition which we won.
My Mum has always been proud of a competition that I won in the UK at the age of 16, and was run by the local newspaper and open to any entries from people in our town and surrounding areas. They ran a fashion parade of entries at a beautiful local venue, and I won the best in show in the adult section for day wear, and also the best age 16 and under category. Mum recalls the competition was extremely stiff and I did really well to achieve that. I remember a gorgeous long sleeved blouse with beautiful button holes (that were manually done back then) and a gypsy style skirt, both of which I was very proud, along with Mum and Nanna.
Later on, I began to focus on nursing and I trained as a nurse in England from the age of 18. After marriage and raising my family, we emigrated to Perth in 1996, and I continued nursing, caring in many areas for cancer and palliative care patients. I remarried in 2016, and after a divorce and a 35 year absence from Ballroom Dancing, I met and remarried another ‘little boy’ that I discovered had a love of dancing too. It is also amazing to discover, that my ‘bigger boy’ here, is one of the few people that did compete here in Old Time Ballroom Dancing here some years ago, and he knows the old time dances that I did back in the UK. We love to dance, and create beautiful garments of all descriptions, I love to create garments and outfits that people cannot buy or cannot get to fit their particular shape or figure.
After a 45 year nursing career, which has been a joy and love of my life, I am now in a position, and have the opportunity, to create fantastic frocks, and look forward to doing that as a small Home family business, as I look forward to retiring from nursing.