When Tom Met Elvie

Tom McEvoy is my kind of people; passionate, uncompromising and a rare force for Australian fashion history. Elvie Hill, 97, is a legend of Melbourne’s rich fashion scene in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Tom and Elvie met, clicked, became friends, and now Elvie is the most elegant pin-up girl you’re ever likely to meet for Tom’s simple concept of a ‘living fashion museum’. By Janice Breen Burns

(This story first appeared in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald  Spectrum section, with a gallery of Tom’s photographs of significant Australian fashions recreated in their original style and architectural settings. Example, main picture, top)

Elvie Hill can’t quite believe what her young friend, Tom McEvoy, has done. The 97-year-old fashion legend laughs delightedly as Tom lifts frock after frock – designs by Elvie Hill, circa 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s – out of a garment bag and lays them carefully on the table in front of her. “You bought all these?” She peers closely, fingers the fabrics, click-clicks elegantly manicured nails across thickly beaded trims. “I do remember that material; and that beading, and I remember those buttons!”

Seventeen years since she retired, aged 80, after 60 years creating couture for many of Australia’s most fashionable women (Dame Patty Menzies and Sonia McMahon were regulars), Elvie Hill of Melbourne is remembering, being remembered, and selling frocks again.

Or, rather, Tom McEvoy, 33, is selling them. The boyish, snappily dressed wedding photographer from Greensborough switched careers in February (another bleak winter of brides thin on the ground loomed) to become a wheeler-dealer and sometime curator of near-forgotten fashion brands such as Hill’s. “A living fashion museum,” he explains. “That was my idea: you wear one of these amazing brands and when someone asks ‘what are you wearing?’ you can tell them the history. You’re a walking museum exhibit…”

Tom trawls eBay, vintage fashion sites, shops, markets, private wardrobes; anywhere he can rescue a pristine or near-pristine example of Elvie Hill, Eleanor Lucas, House of Lucas, Norma Tullo, Leon Cutler, Le Louvre, Maglia, Sally Browne, Maryvale and Mr John, Leon Haskin, Ken Shaw, Arnel?, Cherry Lane, Prue Acton, John Claringbold, Shareen, Jinoel … hundreds more are on his wishlist. “You just have to know what you’re looking for, and where to look.”

If you remember some of Tom’s rescued brand names, chances are you’re on the sunset side of 50 and also remember their feel of quality fabric, cut, make and finish. Most younger people don’t, which, he laments, puts the history of hundreds of Australian fashion labels – markers of our most popular and creative industry – in mortal danger of being forgotten. He wants fashion to enjoy the same “retrospective culture” as art, music and film, by selling significant examples of near-forgotten brands with their backstories attached. “You can buy music and see films (created long ago) with full titles and credits,” he says. “You can get inspired by the history and stories behind a band when it gets back together. But you don’t get that with vintage fashion; there’s just the label, the name, so it’s more about liking the look of the garment, not the history. The stories get lost.”

Even the current swell of interest in fashion exhibitions worldwide doesn’t impress Tom much. “Very few young people relate museums to having fun,” he sniffs. “They can be a bit clinical, and preach to the converted.” On the other hand, a girl swishing through a party in her Elvie Hill, circa 1958 frock, or stiff little House of Lucas mini frocklet from 1974, is bound to whip up enough intrigue to be asked “What are you wearing?”. And, according to Tom’s theory, she’ll know precisely, and have a tale to tell.

Within a few months of concocting his living fashion museum idea, Tom had spanked it into reality. “Once I get passionate about something; I give it 100 per cent.” He started buying and advertising a mix of Australian middle-market brands and couture fashion dating from 1950 to the 1980s on his Facebook page and selling them out of his parents’ Greensborough car port. No frills. Unlike the average vintage flogger, he also emailed an historic backstory package to the new owners of most garments.

He builds the backstories by plumbing state, national and private libraries and archives for original records, catalogues, media advertisements, editorials, reviews and news. And, sleuth-style, he also chases gossip-of-the-time through chain-links of original designers, original customers and frock inheritors; anyone with a helpful anecdote or useful scrap likely to lead to another anecdote, another scrap.

That’s how he found Elvie Hill, the unofficial pin-up girl of his living fashion museum, at 97 as chic as she ever was when her luxurious Parisian soirees with their spindly gold chairs, dainty sandwiches and champagne, were the toast of Melbourne’s fashionable set. Tom’s research into Elvie’s career started in archives but continues over many cups of tea. In the 1960s, for example, Elvie was one of many Australian designers, including Douglas Cox, House of Lucas and Simon Shinberg, licensed by iconic fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Nina Ricci, Yves St Laurent, Jacques Fath, to replicate their collections here. It was a common practice to circumvent the six-month season lag between hemispheres and to avoid import quotas and tariffs (gradually removed from the early 1980s onward). But, Elvie remembers with amusement, the practice didn’t always go swimmingly. “I went over and saw the Nina Ricci range in Paris,” she recalls. “But they made me use their patterns quite strictly and the French are thin and little and flat-chested. I wasn’t allowed to put any bust allowance in so nobody wanted to buy them.”

Elvie’s quirky anecdotes are among thousands Tom is stirring into his rich and gossipy history of Australian 20th-century fashion. His “living museum exhibits” re-tell frock tales that are rarely dry or boring. At least, not while he can swirl in newspaper snippets about characters such as Leon Cutler, a legend on Flinders Lane who once sued to have his daughter’s marriage annulled and, on another occasion, was punched in the nose by a tram driver. “Then there’s Douglas Cox; he was spectacular,” Tom says, holding up an impossibly chic empire gown in rich, loden-green silk velvet. “He made under Dior but, they fell out when (Christian Dior) thought he wasn’t sending all the profits back.”

Tom carefully lays the elegant velvet gown down and lifts a wildly different frock – at least 20 years younger and groovier – out of its cover. “This is a work of art,” he says, “but so many people haven’t even heard of the label.” It’s a House of Lucas cotton frockcoat with a distinctive 1972 extended collar and vivid psychedelic pattern in pinks, greens, blues and yellows of near-neon intensity. The label was started early in 1888 with a collection of knickers by Eleanor Lucas. Her descendants continued for another 80 years, introduced nylon and rayon to Australia, replicated Parisian collections including Dior, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent, and became one of Australia’s most successful and prolific manufacturers until the last of the dynasty sold out to Courtaulds in 1968 and memories fizzled.

It’s a fate Tom hopes to reverse for many Australian fashion creators. “Elvie has said to me; ‘There’s no greater compliment than to be remembered,” Tom says. “That’s my aim…”

Tom McEvoy and Elvie Hill’s daughter, Amanda Pelman, are collecting the designer’s original garments to feature in a fashion show and sale early next year. If you can lend or donate an Elvie Hill for the night, click here or phone Tom 0407580678.