The Dress

Lately everyone seems to have one. It comes up in conversation with both friends and family. The subject can be closet cleaning, a daydream, or a fabulous fabric.  But however we start, the talk turns to a recollection of The Dress. A favorite. Its details from decades ago are recalled with ease. Its purchase may have required careful financial planning. It may have a special sentimental attachment.

My friend Rose Ann and I were talking about decluttering. When I mentioned that I didn’t think it is ever necessary to discard a piece with sentimental value, I learned of her version of The Dress. What she was wearing when she met her husband.

For Kate, It was a lavender linen Pauline Trigère, long admired and only possible after months of saving for a real couture piece.

In a conversation with my mother about silk organza, she gave a detailed account from 1952 of a fitted shirtwaist bodice in a large check of blue and soft gray over voluminous skirt in the same soft gray. She wore it with a shoe in soft red to ‘every dressy occasion.’

The conversation about The Dress is a delight. I am struck by how many of them are out there. So I wonder. Do you have your own version of The Dress? I would love to read it. A sentence, a paragraph, a photo if you have one.