I would like to write about clothes a little bit. Being brought up in a dressmaker family we have always been surrounded by them. With my brother we told mum and our grandparents what we had in mind and they made it for us. And also we always kept everything. I have clothes I still wear from my granny, mum and even my brother. I have a brownish khaki suit jacket from granny, which has real horsehair in the collar. Traditional tailoring, granddad learnt in Szeged where he was an apprentice in a workshop specialised in making uniforms for the officers.
When I did foundation at Guildford one of the girls told us during the introduction she worked at Top Shop and pretty much what she did there was spending most of her wages on the sale. I remember thinking, I would never do that. Little did I know that years later I also got into the sale-is-my-best-friend-mode. First year at M&S I did pretty well not spending, but after I got a taste of the last phase of sale and accumulated a huge wardrobe. Later on I shifted towards homeware and bought bed linen and towels. Apparently most of the people working in retail go through this phase. This is what all my colleagues told me. As I was moving out of the flat share and transferred my stuff to different storage places I really enjoyed having less and started to wear clothes sitting in the wardrobe for years. I also gave away some nice cashmere jumpers that I just bought for the sake of having it and because it was extremely cheap. It is nice to see people wearing them instead of being eaten up by the moth. I didn’t really know why people kept going on about cashmere in England until I touched that wonderful softness. I can`t remember ever even talking about cashmere back home and I don’t think during the communism it was something that we would be allowed to wear, most likely it was branded as bourgeois. I decided not to buy any more clothes, but make it myself if I need something. Since, I started this new adventure of `Wardrobe-for-Life` I got a pair of trousers and a dress from friends. So giving up shopping, doesn’t necessary mean not having anything new after all. The dress would have ended up in the charity shop and the trousers in the wardrobe, because my friend who bought it didn’t like it and didn’t have the time to take it back to the shop.
I just got in my hand the very first e-mail I wrote to Professor Szerb at the University of Economics in Pecs. I was looking for somebody, who is an expert on SMEs. I was really looking forward to talking to him. I flew home from London having that meeting booked well in advance. This was at the time when I was full on about this MA in the first round. I was very happy to acknowledge he has gained his Ph.D at west Virginia University, America. It gave me a bit of ease thinking he is not going to put me in the box of either: rich kid or the one who could only get into university abroad. I was really looking forward to meeting him and I had all my questions ready. I stayed at my brothers in Pecs, which was rather convenient. Just as we were leaving my little baby nephew had an emergency nappy change and I was late from the meeting. I don’t think it gave a good impression as Professor Szerb gave me his lunch break. What more, my recorder’s battery went flat after 10 minutes into the interview. I was really disappointed I was so tired from not going to sleep the night before because of my early flight that I totally forgot to charge it up. I felt a bit uneasy for some reason the click I was really looking forward to wasn’t working. Why is that I can click with foreigners better when it comes to research interviews than Hungarians? I set down in his office and thanked him for his time, explained who I was and why I wanted to meet him. I often experienced in England that when I send an e-mails with all the details they never really remembered what I wanted apart from Tom Sanderson from 5Talents. Sometimes I find myself totally anglicised in that sense. For my unexpected surprise probably I wasn’t careful enough how to word my question, because I haven’t even finished the sentence when Professor Szerb interrupted me and in a raised voice started questioning me why I wanted to make the artisans necessity entrepreneurs. My question was: `Because in the current situation artisans have to be necessity entrepreneurs… (I dint get to finish, I wanted to ask him what he thought would be the best thing to avoid change this or help the situation). It took me about half an hour to explain, this wasn`t what I meant. Almost two years down the line I would start the interview in a very different way. I would ask what he thinks about necessity entrepreneurship and take it from there. This reminds me once someone told me his friend married a Hungarian girl and he said without a reason she snaps from one minute to the other. Well, being a Hungarian I knew exactly that there is always a good reason behind every Hungarian snap. And, that was the case with Professor Szerb. (My snaps has dramatically gone down during the last 11 years I spent in England, sadly by English measures in times, places and situation it is still considered high. It is great to come home and get back to the traditional snapping a little bit, in case I forget how to do it.) At the end we had a good 2 hours talk and I got to understand some very interesting things about SME`s in Hungary and also understood the reason behind the snap. I believe the professor doesn’t believe in the high entrepreneurial taxes either. He also talked about his view how to bring up those people whom I am considered about in relation to the high taxes. His approach would be small firms who have grand breaking ideas for products or services should be supported by the government and that would give a possibility to grow one of them into a huge company like Nokia and could have the same impact in Hungary as it has is in Finland. He said, than the people I am talking about could become employees either to the company or to those who are in management and could work for them in the domestic services. I think many years might go by until that SME would be found and what is happening until with those who have skills to make products but haven’t got tax breaks to get started. It would of course be great to find the Hungarian Nokia that would not only be great for the economy, but for the artisans as well. It is more likely there would be a good number of people who would have more disposable income to spend and some of it hopefully would go to the artisan sector. The company`s CSR might even would support artisans. You never know.
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