The woman behind the Big Fat Gypsy Wedding dresses

The first season of the television show Big Fat Gypsy Weddings won a Bafta nomination, millions of viewers – more than any other documentary series in Channel 4’s history – and a heap of controversy. The second series, on now, is dividing opinion as much as the first, not least for its Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier promotional poster campaign.
As before, the travellers are fascinating but it is the dresses that are the main attractions, and this year they are even more excessive – and expressive.
Take the bride-to-be who wants to be a palm tree and for her bridesmaid to be a pineapple for her night-before party, and requests a white mermaid wedding gowns with the logo of the American urban streetwear label Baby Phat written in Swarovski crystals across the skirt. The label’s cat motif provides the inspiration for the bodice – 'I want the cat’s tail to go around the back of the dress and then curl along my neck down the front.’
Each girl’s wish, no matter how fantastic, is granted by one figure at the heart of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, who has so far remained elusive – Thelma Madine, the Liverpudlian dressmaker whose calm presence underpins the series and whose enormous duchesse silk, fine tulle and Swarovski confections have become the stars of the show.
Madine’s profile is to be boosted further this year with a new television series, also for Channel 4, this time with Madine and her team as the focus. There are murmurings that it may involve her taking on traveller girls as apprentice dressmakers but she won’t divulge any details. And this month she releases her own memoir, Tales of the Gypsy Dressmaker, a picaresque journey interweaving tales of her dealings with the traveller community against the backdrop of her own eventful life story.

Source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9133098/The-woman-behind-the-Big-Fat-Gypsy-Wedding-dresses.html

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