The Dress
So, I bought a classic, rather conservative, silky black sheeth dress with pink roses on it back in the early 90s. I can't remember why, maybe it was on super sale or maybe it was for some event. I must have worn it once (a tell tale sign being the dry cleaning number stapled to the tag).
For years I forgot about it.
Update June 25, 2009. My most excellent friend Julie Ashby Mann (known as "Ashby") has a story about a dress to contribute. Do you have a dress story to add? Send it to me!:
Take it away Ash...
About every 6 months I go through my closet and get rid of clothes and donate them in bags on my front porch to the Vietnam Vets of America. I always pull that dress out and stare at it for awhile and think "I never wear this thing, I'm going to finally give it away". So I pull it of the hanger, fold it up and put it in the bag. And I ALWAYS pull it back out and hang it back up. I must have done this a dozen times.
A month ago I was cleaning out the closet again and John happened to walk by right when I was holding the dress up and contemplating ditching it once again.
"That dress is adorable" he said, "I'd love to see you wear that". Huh. really? So I put it back in the closet. Again I forgot about it.
Last night I was digging around for a dress to wear to work and came across it again. "Why not?" I said and pulled it out and set it next to a cute pink fitted cardigan for work the next day.
Today I wore it and got maybe 58 compliments from both co-workers and random people on the streets of downtown Pittsburgh. A total winner.
What's wrong with me that I never saw the true potential of the old dress? Am I losing my touch?
I'll never consider letting it go again. It clearly pays to listen to your intuition (and a husband with good taste), even if you don't catch the clue until 16 years later.
Update June 25, 2009. My most excellent friend Julie Ashby Mann (known as "Ashby") has a story about a dress to contribute. Do you have a dress story to add? Send it to me!:
Take it away Ash...
Some time ago at some discount department store I bought a lemon
yellow suit - yes, that's right. Can you guess why it was at the
discount store? I am sure I was with my mother. Only a middle aged Church of Christ-er could appreciate a yellow suit.
Anyway, I never wore it. How could I?
Years later, I started work at XXX College
and the professor who taught the Professional Image class loaned me a
book on dress. Not because I was unprofessional in my dress, but
because she was trying to prove a point to me about why people found me
"so intimidating."
The basic premise is that people are ridiculously predictable and
you need to dress for the reaction you want. For example, school
teachers dress so children find them approachable (Christmas sweaters),
I dress so people do not (lots of monochrome in cool colors). I
thought the book over simplified things and so I ran an experiment, I
pulled out the yellow suit.
The day I wore that yellow suit, I swear to you I was touched
about every 15 minutes, people crossed rooms to talk to me and I got
lots of compliments. I was appalled, these people had no taste.
I returned the book, threw out the suit, and started wearing printed scarves and "discussion topic" jewelry with my monochrome.
