The painting depicts a woman friend of the artist (to the right) and their dressmaker (to the left). In those days, dressmakers – poor girls from mostly agrarian families that had moved to the city – would go to the homes of their clients, where they would work for a daily wage. The external appearance of the figures suggests the different social class to which each woman belongs. The dressmaker, more simply dressed and coiffed, wearing no jewellery or make up, is holding in her hand the fabric she is about to sew. Her bourgeois client, on the other hand, is more dapper and emanates a different air. As in many of her works with women as their subject matter, here too we can discern Nicolaides-Vassiliou’s attempt to palpate the inner character and the subtle mental states. The painter did not limit herself to the features of a portrait, but with keen powers of observation, sensitivity and intuition, she brought to the surface aspects of female psychology. As she recreated a world of feelings, she emphatically rendered the eyes as the mirror of the inner world. The gaze of her friend is depicted as sparkling, vain and linked to the present, while that of the young dressmaker emanates a day-dreamy, melancholic mood. This despondent introversion – a mental journey to other worlds – is a salient feature of many female figures in the paintings of Loukia Nicolaides-Vassiliou.