“My father was an old-thinking man and used to say, she is a baby girl, let her practice sewing. Armenians had such a thing that since you are a girl, you need to learn sewing. When I was 13, my father did not let me go to school anymore. Times were bad in France. It was 1939, and leaving the house was dangerous. I was the only daughter of my father, and he was afraid to leave me. Our neighbor, who was a tailor, my parents sent me to her to learn sewing,” told the 92-year-old French-Armenian tailor Silva Pirilian, in the conversation with “Aravot”. The tailor specialized in her work and worked with “Christian Dior” and other well-known brand companies, she had also sewed clothes for Armenian and well-known Russian artists.
Mrs. Silva’s family has also escaped the Genocide getting to France and settling in the city of Marseille. “The Turks killed my father’s family and also my mother’s husband, and both of them, having lost their families, made a new family,” tells Mrs. Silva. In the Western Armenia, Mrs. Silva’s father is leaving a large property and taking one of his friend’s surname is moving his family to France, where Silva Pirilian was born.
As told by the tailor, “Years later, my dad will again go back after his property but will come back empty-handed. The Turks had taken everything. Hopelessly, we moved back to France.” Finally, settling in Europe, the family begins to adapt to French manners and morals. “I was sewing at home. In those times, there was not an average class tailor, either they were high quality tailors or a small things tailors who were sewing at home. There was an announcement posted on the shop window of one of the workshops of “Christian Dior”, saying that an employee is required, so I went on Thursday and started to work from Monday,” said Mrs. Silva.
The tailor sewing dresses for famous actors and singers recalls how all tailors were impatiently looking forward for the singer Tino Rossi to appear in the workshop to try on and to sing for the tailors, or how they admired the beauty of the actor Fernandel. “It was difficult to communicate with celebrities in France, we were looking at them at a distance. When I came to Armenia and had the opportunity to sew dress for famous people, I was amazed. The artists, here, were having a modest life. When I first listened to the word “to make both ends meet”, I did not understand, but later I saw that “to make both end meet” is also a very good condition,” tells Mrs. Silva.
According to her, she experienced a great responsibility when she was sewing dresses for Silva Kaputikyan. “She liked to draw her dresses by herself, she was a little punctilious and was paying close attention to every small segment. I was bringing magazines from France and she was drawing a new dress with the small segments that she liked. She was working hard and when coming to our house she was lying on our bed to rest a little. She was talking not much, it was Stalin regime and those speaking will be exiled.” According to tailor Silva, Silva Kaputikyan was a very patriotic person and believed that all Armenians need to live in their homeland, in Armenia. “She was used to say, this is their home.”
According to our interlocutor, during those times she was working in Armenia with great difficulty, because it was prohibited to open up a separate workshop. As told by Mrs. Silva, either the tailor was secretly going to the client or the clients were secretly visiting the tailor. “It turned so that I was disclosed that I am working at home, they came to inspect and exiled by brother to Siberia for it, allegedly he sews shoes at home. When the state officials came to our house, I said that I am sewing for me and my family. They believed and left me alone.” Silva Pirilian also had other very popular clients too. “I was sewing for actress Isabella Danzas, also for sculptor Ara Sargsyan’s wife.”
In those times, due to the lack of communication means, people were learning the place of the famous tailor by asking each other. Even some gave a bribe to know the place of the tailor. Using such manners, the actor Verchaluys Minijanyan had found the tailor Silva. In the conversation with us, Mrs. Silvia told us that the actor’s husband, Gevorg Aslanyan, was compelled to carry the neighbor’s “pood” of grain on his shoulders a few kilometers so that the latter would say the place of the tailor. Despite decades of rich experience, Mrs. Silva no more does sewing, nor there is a continuer of her crafts in the family. She lives in France and regularly visits Armenia. “I love Armenia, but I sadly see how people suffer here. Every time when I come here, I want to be helpful to my countrymen.”
Anush MATEVOSYAN
