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Overview
Child's dress
This dress is part of an extraordinary collection of 21 children's dresses and home-made dress-ups worn in the 1950s and 60s by the O'Brien children – Shelley, Maureen, and David. The dresses represent popular girls' fashion from this period, and include a range of home-made garments, and garments made in New Zealand and USA.
The collection embodies the story of the three children growing up in Tinui, a rural community near Castlepoint in the Wairarapa, with all the rituals, triumphs, hardships, and joys of a rural life.
Grandma Winifred (Win or Winnie) O'Hara did most of the sewing and made a town dress and a school dress for each girl every year. She was a skilled home-sewer with a reputation for perfection, who did all her sewing on a treadle sewing machine. Some of the dresses were designated school or everyday wear but many were saved for best or for a trip to town which occurred three or four times a year. She was also a formidable matriarch who had a keen intellect and 'put up with no rubbish'.