Alterations
A rainy July Saturday. The birthday of an ex. No message sent, but weird ambivalent thoughts of the person all the same. Tornado warning, but no tornado, eventually. We made our own pasta from scratch. I sourced "The Table" for $20, at a neigbhbor's house (more on which in a future post). Happy Mondays playing on my son's speaker. Nightdress finished. Washed in the machine, to remove the 'store' off of the fabric. Didn't fall apart, as far as I can tell. Almost "ready to wear." Pun intended.
I completed work on it last night and scolded myself for having been so dismissive. For that reason, as a kind of penance, I made sure to do a beautiful job — beautiful in my particular layperson's envelope, anyway — bias-binding the neck and armholes in a gentle lemon yellow, and finishing the hems and seams properly. Not French seams, but overlocked and tidy. I put the finished garment on, and I fell in love. Easier to fall for objects than humans, for me, these days. I felt enamoured not only with how it felt as worn, or how it looked on me, but with the plain magical fact that I'd made it. You hear me. I made this. A year ago I couldn't even stitch a basic daisy onto a piece of Walmart cotton. You know what that means — emboldened. Yes, she feels capable now.
So a perception of capability brings forth scary new challenges in my world. In answer to that I come face to face with "The Wedding Dress." The "nemesis", I've been brooding over on and mostly off, for almost a decade. I rarely publicly or privately talk about my second marriage. And I won't break that rule here. I was, however, left with a beautiful designer wedding dress — Roland Mouret, to be exact — and it's hung in my closet, in various homes, ever since the ceremony almost a decade ago. At times of financial hardship I've tried, not very hard, to sell the gown — but always wondered if I could eventually wear it again, in some other context. Dye it, perhaps? Have a seamstress remodel it for me? But I never found the time, nor was it ever a priority amid everything else going on. And like, when, actually, would I wear even a remodelled version? I mean, let's be honest — I live in the Catskills, I have a dog and a kid, my car is filthy, and if I have any free time I climb, or sit around in homemade shorts and make stuff.
But recently, at a conference in Milan, I wore a very over-the-top green upcycled silk dress I'd customised myself, for the workshop I was leading. And it felt not only good, but context-appropriate. Of course the new materialist textile-obsessed facilitator is going to wear upcycled silk.
I don't really care about context or being terribly 'appropriate' these days, but, during childhood and even into my young adulthood I have been accused of wearing the wrong thing in the wrong setting. I always had a slightly bohemian attitude to clothes and often was teased or made to feel stupid for acting on it. Girls, right, totally mean. Also - female co-workers and managers - 'your Chanel skirt is too short' (yes, really) - 'that dress shows too much leg' etc etc. It does make one a little reticent.
Anyway, I digress. Back from Milan a few weeks ago, I looked again at the gown and said to the dog, maybe, "something's got to be done with that." First, I put it on again. It still fit. Now I felt an obligation. It fits. 'If the cap fits, wear it' don't they say?
The fabric is incredible. As it should be for the thousands of dollars I paid. The cut and drape are classic Mouret — deeply flattering, as a result. The shape, the look — classic, timeless, and, in my view, not too bridal. Ahh - not too bridal indeed. That can mean only one thing...context appropriate...
—
A PANEL CONVENES, WARILY, IN FRONT OF THE SEWING MACHINE
THE WEDDING DRESS (ROLAND MOURET): I have hung in two different closets, in two different parts of New York State, for the better part of a decade, and no one has asked me a single thing in all that time. And now you want to cut me.
THE NIGHTDRESS: She's not cutting you. She's editing you.
THE WEDDING DRESS: I don't need editing. I am a finished object. I was finished the day I was cut, on a pattern table, by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
THE NIGHTDRESS: I was finished on a chair, badly, by someone learning as she went. I turned out fine. She loves me. She just said she did.
THE WEDDING DRESS: You are cotton sateen, in a beige and brown pattern. I. Am. Mouret.
THE NIGHTDRESS: And yet here we both are. Hanging in the same room. Waiting on the same woman.
(A pause.)
THE WEDDING DRESS, more quietly: I was worn once, for four hours, in City Hall, for a marriage she doesn't discuss. I'd like, at minimum, to be worn again for reasons that are actually mine.
THE NIGHTDRESS: That's the most honest thing you've said all evening.
THE BLUE LOUBOUTIN HEELS (from a the same closet stuffed into a hanging clothing container from Walmart): Birkenstocks. I genuinely cannot watch this.
THE WEDDING DRESS: Nobody asked you either.
THE BLUE LOUBOUTIN HEELS: Nobody ever does. Good luck to you both. I wish you a long and prosperous future. Or whatever one says to a divorcee these days.
EMILY RETURNS TO THE CHAIR AT THE MACHINE
And now that I've finished the nightdress — which, gift that keeps on giving, has shown me I can actually take care of the inner workings, nay the architecture of a garment and do a reasonably decent job of hemming — I feel ready to lift up my fabric shears. Worry not, the intent here is to be extremely light-touch and subtle. Simply: shorten the dress to just above ankle length, so it's wearable with, say, a white pair of Converse or Birkenstocks (as opposed to the blue Louboutin heels it was originally paired with). I'll cut some off the bottom, hem it, and then — here's the plot twist — treat myself to some gorgeous, expensive, truly indulgent antique lace to embellish the new, shorter hem. Lace that might brush my ankles when I wear the dress in all its more diminutive glory — a tangible reminder of how any fabric or garment can be revived and reframed, and for what it's worth, the value of learning to sew, even at this late age. Perhaps I'll launch the dress at my first "The Maker's Table" workshop, as a story of a fabric with a story. A story of a story.
Is there some superstition or protocol about not re-wearing a wedding dress? I don't know, and I doubt I'll labour the point and go looking into the mythology around it. What about wedding dresses that were the gateway drug for divorce? I'm sure that's a no-no somewhere. But I'm equally sure that wasting an iconic, beautiful, once much-loved item of couture — selling it for next to nothing on Marketplace, or letting it languish in a closet for decades — is the more ethically questionable move.
For now, the dress hangs at full, astonishing length (it was too long for the ceremony, and gaped at the back, because I bought it three days before the rushed wedding and had zero time for alterations), adjacent to the sewing machine. Note, it is NOT hanging over the chair. I enjoy looking at its shape. I've studied its seams like a forensic scientist. I imagine — or maybe fantasise and manifest are the better words — the lace I'll treat myself to, or really, the act of finding "the perfect" lace. I think of wearing it with those white Converse... and I find, finally, that I can look back with some peace on that confusing chapter of my life.
THE LACE, NOT YET FOUND, SOMEWHERE IN A SHOP SHE HASN'T WALKED INTO YET: I don't know what I'll touch yet, or whose ankle. But I like the sound of being chosen on purpose, for once, instead of being handed down. Or married into.
