So without stopping to choose my way, in the sure and certain knowledge that it will find itself–or if not it will not matter–I begin: the first memory.
This was of red and purple flowers on a black ground–my mother's dress: and she was sitting either in a train or in an omnibus, and I was on her lap. I therefore saw the flowers she was wearing very close; and can still see purple and red and blue, I think, against the black; they must have been anemones, I suppose. Perhaps we were going to St Ives; more probably, for from the slant of the light it must have been evening, we were coming back to London. But it is more convenient artistically that we were going to St Ives, for that will lead to my other memory, which also seems to be my first memory.
From "A Sketch of the Past", by Virginia Woolf. In The Virginia Woolf Reader.
A Dress A Day 
Lovely.For me, the first mother-dress association is of us sewing matching dresses, in different colorways of the same stripey Marimekko knock-off fabric. I was about ten, I think. I wonder if those are still around somewhere.
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The dress of my mother’s I remember most vividly was black. It was, I think, a black sheath, very striking against her blondeness, and on the left side it had one pleated godet, which opened up a vivid pink against the black.My later memories include almost no dresses; she lost so much weight (not on purpose) she became painfully thin, so thin you could see the shape of her legs inside her jeans. But she was lovely in her black dress with its starburst of colour, like sunrise springing out of darkness.
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