This is what Glinda, the Good Witch, wears as a hostess gown.

Actually, I find it strangely appealing, with an emphasis on the "strange". For instance, the collar is a little sporty for plunging bespangled gauze. And somehow this dress actually repels breasts. (Which always makes me think — why can't they put this technology into a goddamn sports bra, already?) And the sleeves, which were torn, birds-helping-Cinderella-style, from a *different* dress and tacked on at the last minute. I'm glad her evil stepsisters were temporarily distracted and she managed to get down the runway with them intact.

So I'm thinking this is the reverse of the famous Go Fug Yourself "scrolldown wtf?", in that I really like this dress from the ribbon down. It would be lovely with a sweetheart-neckline, cap-sleeve bodice. You know, with the edges of the lace extending beyond the bodice lining to frame the decolletage. You could even keep the embellishment if you wanted.

Oh, wait, now I know what this reminds me of! Did anyone else have those pink "Fashion Plates" that I had as a little girl, where you could mix and match tops and bottoms, do rubbings from them, and then color the rubbings? Totally 1970s — I think even the bathing suit had a cowl neck. Unsurprisingly, I spent hours playing with them. This is what you got when you mixed the tennis top with the ballgown skirt. It didn't work for me then, and it doesn't work here now …

Unlike Atoosa Rubenstein, who said "I feel like I want to start starving myself so I can wear those clothes now" I wouldn't give up so much as a Raisinette for this one.

For one thing, it's pretty much this pattern, isn't it? I mean, they're really similar. And I've already TRIED New Look 6348! Although, granted, not in black satin. In fact, there are a lot of things I haven't tried in black satin, but that doesn't mean they're making it on my life list.

I am deliberately not speculating whether Tuleh has started some interesting new padded clothing trend or whether the photographer just caught the model mid-wiggle.

The Getty images had some more pictures of Tuleh dresses, some with large same-fabric rose corsages, which were much less wearable but somehow more attractive. I'd link but their server has timed out on me. I know y'all can find 'em.

Of her closet, that is.

Yep, a while back I threatened to start selling all the vintage I no longer wear, and, after a marathon digital-camera session on Saturday, I'm starting to list some dresses. They need a good home! They're mostly pretty cute! They all start at $5.99! A couple folks asked me to link to them here!

I don't know why this photo is fuzzy. (Okay, I do know — because my digital camera skillz are not so skillful.) Anyway, there is a closeup picture of the print (little letters! little letters in circles!) in the listing.

If you have questions, please email me. If you're antsy because this is a new seller ID, let me know and I'll link you to my other eBay ID, which has a 99.6% positive feedback rating. (I've been an ebay member with that ID for nearly eight years. Yeah, I know, I'm a geek.)

Anyway, this is the only post I'll make about my ebay listings. I'll add them in the links column, too, but that's pretty much the limit of my shilling here. Oh — if you win one and mention "Dress A Day" in the Paypal comments, I'll throw in a couple Dress A Day pencils, too.

I would SO wear this. I mean, I'd probably take off the flap chest pockets and shorten the sleeves, and I'd check to make sure it was silk or cotton and not polyester jersey first, but I'm all over this fabric and cut. Absolutely.

I'm a bit confused about the relative placement of the right and left side pockets — Liya has her left hand in a pocket that seems to be lower than the patch pocket I think I see on the right. But perhaps this is an artifact of the patented runway-model hip-tilt that would not be apparent on me.

The thing I'm really excited by is trying to find bolt-ends of this fabric. If anyone sees any, send me a shout-out, okay? Because what I *really* want is a circle skirt made out of this fabric. Knee length, with a contour waistband for less bulk at the actual waist, to wear with a little black polo shirt or short-sleeve sweater and black flat loafers or ballet slippers. Wouldn't that rock? With a black short-handled bag and black sunglasses, of course.

Now that it's February I'm dying to sew for spring. It's because I grew up in the south; I think spring starts right after the shiftless folks take down their giant blinking inflatable outdoor Santa. I walk out of my front door every day now thinking "Where's my forsythia?" I'll be shivering in cotton prints on March 1 again, I just know it.

Okay, finally something I really like. Isn't this lovely? And yet it seems as if it could be worn in the Real World — I bet that deep vee has fasteners to make it slightly less deep, and it actually has sleeves. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it has pockets!

I love the color — that rich caramel is such a warm and forgiving shade, especially for brunettes. This would be too harsh in black, too bridal in white, and just plain eccentric in red, green, or blue — brown is exactly right. And I like the darker belt, which I'm hoping is brown velvet. If we see this dress at the Oscars, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. I can't think of who would be best for it though — leave your suggestions/predictions in the comments!

I wouldn't be surprised to see this in Harper's, either. Maybe in one of their "What To Wear At Any Age" spreads, in the 30- or 40-year-old layouts. I'd wear this with amber, or old (faux) ivory, or even yellow jade cuff bracelets, myself, and high brown velvet heels.

I'd consider shortening the skirt to ankle or even knee-length (ankle for formal parties, knee for dinner parties/cocktail parties) just because I have a horror of unintentional pratfalls and of putting my heel through my dress.

This is definitely the prettiest, most wearable dress I've seen in the Fall 2006 collections so far.

Oh, the humanity!

Seriously. Who in any of the five planes of existence wants to dress up like a giant aqua blimp? Oh, excuse me, a giant aqua blimp with sheer stripes because the only thing that's sexier than a blimp is a blimp who's flashing her undies.

When people who don't like fashion want to claim that fashion designers hate women, this is the kind of image they seek out. It doesn't even have the dignity of the sack dress — the transparent stripes make sure of that.

How could you even sit in this? Sitting would turn that neckband into a choke collar.

Click on the image to see the rest of the collection. The pale-magenta striped satin jumpsuit is a doozy, too.

Maybe the shows later today or tomorrow will bring me something I like, or at least don't want to scrub my eyeballs after seeing. We can always hope.

So this is one of the first dresses shown for Fall 2006, from the Kenneth Cole show. It might be a long, cold winter, folks.

Now, I understand the appeal of this. Look how flowy and easy it is! Check out the graceful neck, and the closefitting shoulders — I think narrow, natural shoulderlines are always elegant. And, of course — pockets!

However, for most of us, I'm afraid, this falls into the Don't Try This At Home. Trust me — I've made several variations on this kind of dress, tempted by the flowy and the easy, but unless I accessorize with, oh, another eighteen inches in height, it just looks tenty, not flowy. It's also hard for most women to wear a line that cuts directly across the high bust without it creating odd bulges.

I also never understand why so many day dresses for Fall and Winter are shown with sandals. Now, I've heard tell there are some places where the winter temperatures never fall below my age, and that people actually live there, but seriously — as long as you're going to show something like this, you might as well go all the way 80s and throw in some high-heeled ankle boots, right? 80s frizzy updo is optional.

There's a lot more of Fashion Week yet to come. Thank goodness.

(Thanks so much to all of you who left robot-dress links! Carol was the first –by email– and she'll get some Dress A Day pencils and a dress-shaped notebook.)

Designer Ella left a good comment on the last entry, and, since I know some folks don't come back and read the comments (I am making a face of shock and horror), I wanted to respond up here in the main entry.

This would be far too expensive and illogical in the real world, as far as designers making your designs, one at a time.

I get that it's expensive now — what I'm hoping for is a convergence of tech and design that makes it inexpensive, and I think that, although it's not here yet, it's coming. We'll see it sooner than we think.

Now, I'm not sure that it's illogical, though. Think about graphic design–would most graphic designers want to design something for you from scratch? Well, yes. But are there freelancers out there who will take your basic sketch and keep you from making dumb mistakes and doing something horrible? Well, yes again. Check out Craigslist — plenty of people offer design "help". And some people will just be your hands if you don't have the InDesign skillz you need to lay out your newsletter, brochure, etc. and will never make one single suggestion about how maybe, just maybe, you don't want to use Comic Sans. I think that this will eventually happen with fashion. You make the sketch, you find someone to program the magic fab machine, and you get what you ordered. Have It Your Way, writ large.

I went through the beginning process of getting my own handbag designs made, to sell. The manufacturers wanted high minimums of products to make at once, and this was expensive, but it cut their costs, and cuts costs of each product, considerably.

I understand that this is how it is NOW. What I'm hoping for is manufacturing processes that make one-offs easier. I believe I read something on Boing Boing about a website that let you upload your design for machined parts — parts that used to require expensive dies to be made first — and get small lots of parts quickly and inexpensively. If it's hitting that manufacturing sector, it'll hit fashion eventually.

The pattern, the material, the design effort, etc. all in very short supply = expensive. Much time put in, much money spent, for one garment. There is no, this is great, now let's make tons. There's no real potential for profit.

Right. Again, this is how it is now. But if you think of the materials/manufacturing as being the barrier to entry, once those two factors become less expensive, more and more people are going to start wanting to make their own. Again, with graphic design — once there were desktop layout programs, many more people got into doing their own. Do I think all the DIY stuff is as good as old-skool designer-with-light-boxes-and-X-acto-knives stuff? No. But some of it is pretty damn good. I myself have InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator — just so I can mess around. As for profit, think about all the sites that make money off people making their own photo albums and scrapbooks and so forth. When the costs and methods get cheap enough, there will be money in custom items.

Plus there's the tricky little problem that "designers" are making YOUR original design, why would they want to do that?

Because there's money in it? Seriously. Once it becomes cheap enough to be a 'design facilitator' folks are going to do it. Think of it as the next step up from personal shopper. Can't find the pants you want at Nordstrom's? They will make them for you. They'll advise you whether what you want would be better in faille or twill or jersey. Come back on Tuesday. Oh, and they'll knock $5 off if you let them sell them to someone else, too.

Realistically, specs matching searches could happen, but it would just be a more sophisticated version of ways we can search stores, like Zappos, right now.

I think you're right that this will be first step. But adding metadata (like specs) is expensive, because it requires human eyeballs to look and categorize. Computers are just not up to speed on this yet.

Threadless has a vote on which designs to make, because making everyone's won't equal selling, right?

Well, it's not fungible. If Threadless doesn't make my t-shirt, it's not a given that I will just say "oh well" and buy some other shirt that someone else designed. If I ask them to make my t-shirt, they've made one guaranteed sale, and may possibly make others. The trick is in getting the transaction cost of that one sale down to the point where it's profitable to do it.

What can you do? Mix and match. Shop on the Internet and exhaust all its resources. You could even make your own tees on Café Press and only sell them to yourself. And finally, get a good tailor for the perfect fit.

Check, check, and check. I'm doing all that now! (Well, I'm my own tailor.) But I'm no cobbler, I have made one and a half handbags (I don't sew with leather, which narrows my options), and sewing takes up enough of my time to make knitting and jewelry-making not an option in terms of results-from-effort. Dammit, I want my instant fab machines!

Tomorrow, I promise, no more of this science fiction stuff. We'll be back to pretty dresses with occasional snark.

Late post, and no picture today, first of all because my Google-fu is not sufficient to find me a picture of a robot wearing a dress (this will become clear later, and the first person to send me one not from The Jetsons will get Dress A Day swag) and secondly because I am slightly tired. I went (as is my wont when I am in NYC on a Wednesday) roller-skating at the Roxy last night and when they turn the bass up to "defibrillate" I find myself unable to stop skating and leave at a reasonable hour. (The Roxy got hip! I am resisting the urge to complain loudly about how I've been going there forEVER–I even have my own skates, which I keep in NYC–and how the hipsters and noobs are ruining it. 'Cause they're not! It was actually fine, once I got through the line at the door. A few more crashes and collisions than usual, but nobody took me out, so that's okay.)

Anyway. Why was I going to post a picture of a robot wearing a dress? Because I want to talk about The Future of Fashion. There have been other posts in the Countdown to Fashion Week that talk about disintermediation (that is, cutting out the middleman), the need for virtual fashion shows, faster fashion cycles and greater consumer feedback — and I think all those things are inevitable.

In fact, in my dream world of the future, I'm not hoping for space tourism, food pills, and personal jetpacks (okay, I'm still crossing my fingers for the jetpacks). I am excited about infinite customization, smart (or even nano) manufacturing, and efficient marketplaces. If I want something (say, a pair of round-toed 2" heels with an ankle strap, in brown suede, or a lemon-yellow silk/Lycra short-sleeved cardigan sweater with a peter pan collar, pearl buttons, and 3/4 sleeves), I just spec it (including exact dimensions) and put it up for bids through an electronic matchmaking service. Manufacturers and designers will automatically send me price offers: who can make it for what price, in what time? Do they already have something close they think I'll like better? I'll weigh the offers depending on how fast or exact I want it, and whether or not I want to maintain rights to my design, release it under a Creative Commons, charity-benefit, or some other kind of license, or hand it over to the manufacturer in return for product.

I'm thinking the designing process will be much like an Identikit suspect sketch — you start with a template that you tweak by saying "not so much here" or "a little tighter there". You'd choose a color with a Pantone chart! (I can't tell you how much I wish clothing and accessory manufacturers would list Pantone colors so that I could search for things that are my favorite color green, for instance.)

People who don't want to design their own clothes (and really, do those people actually exist?) will "shop" by watching online fashion shows and getting feeds of what's new and hot right to their browsers. There are things like this happening right now, on a limited scale, mostly a few measurements and size and feature options. Custom Nikes. Custom sizing of pants at Land's End. Think of how Threadless.com works — some people design t-shirts, members of the community vote on them, and then the winners get printed up. Or CafeShops, where you upload your image to use on everything from totebags to thongs. Imagine that for handbags. Imagine that for shoes. Imagine that for every possible garment, plus the option to get one-offs made just for you!

You'd think this would kill retail, wouldn't you? But think of a store where you walk in, look around, select something and customize it to your size and preferred color right on the spot. You'd still be able to buy off the rack — for a premium. Everyone else would come back the next day (or wait for it to come in the mail) to grab their perfectly-fitting, color-matched, personalized garment.

The savings on the manufacturing side would be wonderful. No more guessing how many people are going to want the red in size 2 or the black in size 16. Much less waste. Much less shipping of product back and forth, from factory to store to outlet mall. (Maybe no more sprawling suburban soul-killing outlet malls!) Plus the chance to tweak designs immediately based on customer feedback and take advantage of fads instantly.

All of this, of course, depends on new fabrication methods that don't require tons of *different* raw materials — essentially nanotechnology and desktop fab. Technology that isn't really proven and has a long way to go. But considering how far other technologies have come just in my lifetime (computers, cellphones, the whole friggin' Internet) you have to hope that infinite customization is just around the corner. I'm willing to sacrifice the jetpack, even …

Okay, I'm leaving Manhattan tomorrow (yes, I know, before Fashion Week even starts, but I told you I wasn't here for FW). The one show I would have really, really liked to go see is one of the last ones of next week — high noon next Friday, Cynthia Rowley.

I've always loved Cynthia Rowley's clothes. I even have a skirt of hers I found in Filene's, a short pink wool full skirt with great patch pockets, and I'm still kicking myself for not buying the pink wool sailor pants. I mean, really! Pink! Wool! Sailor pants! (As you might imagine, she has a sense of humor about clothes, which I think is essential.) And the clothes are wearable, obviously, if I can wear them. In fact, I think that's one of the things I like best about her collections. The ratio of things I could see myself wearing to things I couldn't is really, really high. Her shoes and accessories are adorable, too. She's really mastered the art of being girl-y without being girl-ish, if you know what I mean. A celebration of the feminine that doesn't require being a giggling, brainless larval human.

This dress is from the Spring 2006 collection. I'm sure you regular readers know why I love it, but for the benefit of those you have just joined us (big ups and a heartfelt thank-you to The Manolo!) I will enumerate. First off, I love that lemon color (I'm wearing yellow myself today). And, of course, the midriff band. The skirt is full enough for nice movement but not overwhelming, and a great length. But the best part is that circle detail — such a nod to Courrges! (I wish the necklace weren't there — it almost hides the circle detail, making it look like part of the jewelry and not part of the dress.) Dress-a-Day rating? A+.

So I'll definitely be hitting "refresh" on next Friday night to see what Cynthia Rowley shows on the runway for Fall 2006 …

There's been lots of posting about The State of the Fashion Union and Fashion Week — check out some of the highlights here at FashionTribes.