Since I was little I remember a photograph of my mother and her friend, Kotsana, at Chalika. Both wore closs skirts and had their hair in braids, looking like actresses out of an old Greek film. What a great fashion, such beautiful girls!

You know, Karavostamo had its own dressmaker during the fifties! All the housewives of the village went to him, to learn how to sew their dowry! My own mother, after a lot of effort, managed to avoid it, and finally became a teacher. Nonetheless, she held on to the old sewing machine, and finally, after many many years it came in handy again…

Making use of new technologies, like youtube, and with lots of googling, one can actually learn anything, even how to sew... And now, so many years after, me and my friend Chrysa have come back and have starting sewing, using old photographs for inspiration, the old Karavostamo with its beautiful girls, and my grandmother, still looking over my head, making sure that the hems are cut straight.

And, listen, the beach bar puts swing music on, and -could you believe it?- at this very place that we now listen to old fashioned music, in our old fashioned dresses, my grandfather danced his first ever partner Charleston.

Dora Tempeli