Do you remember dress-up paper dolls? You carefully pressed out the perforations for each garment, and dressed a cut-out doll figure by folding little tabs at the edge of each clothing piece around the doll's sides.
It was mix-and-match heaven. What top goes with which bottom? Skirt or pants, above or below the knee, and don't forget the shoes.
On and on went the permutations.
As May Yates was designing her start-up label, Main Road Fashion, which was officially launched this year in Main Road, Boolaroo, her illustrations reminded her of the paper dress-up dolls she had loved as a child.
She decided to revive that joy, and had some printed to sell at a market stall at Speers Point. Then she progressed to magnetic dress-up sets.
"The young girls didn't know what to do with it," Yates says. "But people my age, they say, 'it brings back my childhood memories'."
She doesn't sell the dress-up dolls anymore, but still gives them to customer's children to encourage the kind of simple play she enjoyed growing up in Thailand.
Yates was raised with an innate understanding of what is now called slow fashion.
Her grandmother, like most women in the village, had a mulberry tree for farming silk worms.
In the off-season of the rice harvest, the silk was processed and spun. Traditionally the worms were also eaten, Yates says.
Then her grandmother dyed the thread and wove it into fine fabrics on a large-scale loom. "It was just something that they do, from generation to generation, and they didn't really count the hours," she says.
The resulting lengths of fabric were taken to a local seamstress by Yates' mother, and Yates and her sister made sure to tag along.
"We would sit and look at all the fashion books, showing all the styles you can choose," she says. "I never got bored waiting. That brings me to do what I am doing now."
When their children were young, Yates and her husband moved from Thailand to Australia, and she took up a fashion industry degree. She arose at 4am to travel to Sydney for many of the lectures.
Yates then received an invite for a one-year internship with Newcastle couturier Jean Bas, honing the art of patternmaking and bespoke fitting.
She soon expanded her market stall to include clothing, and she tuned in to what women said.
"I wanted to interact with real people, rather than who is the 'target market'," she says. "In fashion school, we design everything for size 6. When you get into the real world, the majority of people are not size 6. I wanted to connect with them."
Yates creates versatile pieces, to suit any figure. She added a plus-size mannequin to her shop displays to demonstrate her point. She also put a sign outside promoting plus-size activewear, which she designs and has manufactured offsite.
Her standard range - including dresses with good lines, well-cut pants, kimono-styled wraps and skirt-look/pants-comfort culottes - are all made by Yates at the back of the store. Linen pants, with lined pockets, which are made in either flat-front style with a zipper, or elastic-waisted, are her top-seller.
Yates, in keeping with her motto of making clothes that women will actually wear, and keep on wearing as favourites, offers custom adjustments on-the-house.
"I believe if people buy pants, they need to fit," Yates says. "All bodies are different. I make them an exact fit for them, because it's no point to buy things that do not fit you.
"This is some of the feedback I heard, they say 'that's not my size'. That breaks my heart. I don't want women to feel limited."
Seasonal versatility, and fashion season transcendence, are also at the core of the sustainability ethos at Yates' boutique.
"I want to design something that lasts longer than one season and you can wear again and again and again," she says.
"That's something from my background, that comes to what I am doing now. My clothes are not going to sit in a wardrobe."
The loom at the rear of her shop, on which she weaves one-off scarves, speaks most personally to Yates' roots.
"When I got my citizenship, someone said to me, 'don't forget where you came from'. That loom connects me."
