Ten Minutes With Rosa

Rosa’s sewing room is the most organized place we have ever stood in. The thread is arranged in rainbow order. The patterns are filed by decade. There is a framed photograph on the wall of a young woman mid-spin in a polka-dot skirt, and when we ask who it is, Rosa says, “Who do you think?” and offers us horchata. “Sit. Ten minutes. Then I have a hem.”

Who taught you to dance?

“My father, in the kitchen, on Saturdays, to the radio. He said, ‘Rosa, the music tells you what to do. You just say yes.’ I have been saying yes to the music for seventy years. The steps have changed. The yes has not.”

People ask how you dance in a wheelchair. What do you tell them?

She laughs. “I tell them, with my whole heart and very good wheels. The chair turns faster than feet, mija. Ask Don Ernesto. Every Saturday he says I spin too fast. Every Saturday he asks me to dance again. So who is complaining?”

Tell us about Don Ernesto.

“A gentleman. A beautiful guayabera. Terrible timing. Lovely man, but on the dance floor he is always half a beat behind, like he is reading the music from a letter in the mail. I adore him. I will never slow down for him. Both things are true.”

The 1956 dress. What’s the story?

“Red, white polka dots, a skirt that flies. I bought it with my own money from my first job, and I wore it until the seams begged for mercy. Now I am taking it in for my granddaughter. She stands on the box and complains, and I say, ‘Hold still,’ and she says, ‘Abuela, I am holding still,’ and she is not. Some things you pass down. Some things you pass down with pins.”

You fitted the gown for Gigi’s pageant student.

“Gigi brought her to me and stood behind me with opinions about the waist the entire time. I had pins in my mouth, so I could not hear her. Very convenient.” A pause. “She was right about the waist. Do not print that.” We are printing that.

Your best advice for vintage?

“Buy for the shoulders and the fabric, not the size on the label. Sizes from the fifties are liars. A good seamstress can fix a waist in an afternoon. Nobody can fix cheap fabric. And always, always turn it inside out. The inside tells you the truth about the outside.”

Lightning round

• Favorite decade? “The fifties for dresses. The seventies for music. Today for everything else.”
• Red lipstick, every day? “Even to the dentist.”
• Song that gets you on the floor fastest? “Anything with a horn section. You hear the trumpet, I am already moving.”
• Who on WHATAQUEEN has the best style? “Inés. My girl. She dances like her grandmother, which is the best compliment I know.”
• Secret to spinning faster than everyone? “Don’t look down. Look at the lights. Spin toward something beautiful.”

Our ten minutes are up. Rosa walks us to the door, which is to say she zooms past us to the door and holds it open, then fixes our collar without asking. “There. Now go dance somewhere.”

Follow her at @rosa_vintage_la, and see her pins in action in the storyline Gigi’s Pageant Student.