You know, last week, how we were talking about our ideal Oscar dresses? I think (thanks to Helen, who sent me the the link to this site) I found mine.

Wouldn't this be stunning in a true garnet red, with antique garnet jewelry (or, of course, one enormous ruby pinned right at the deepest point of the neckline)? It would also be fabulous in a Pucci-esque print, for maximum craziness. And, of course, I'd put pockets in it.

I'm not quite buying this yet, for several reasons. For one, there's a better-than-average chance that, in order to BE a glamorous movie star attending the Oscars, I would have to be at least a size or two smaller than I am now. So there's no point buying this now, in my actual size. (Ha.) Another is that it's $32, which is slightly too much for me to pay for a theoretical gown for a theoretical event, no matter how gorgeous it is.

The site, Paper Pursuits, is mainly a magazine-and-print ephemera site, but they have tons of Vogue Designer patterns, mostly from the 1960s. They *only* sell Vogue Designers.

The only thing I don't like about this picture is how the photographic model looks as if she's just dropped some popcorn in her cleavage and is unsure how she's going to get it out. Do they let you eat popcorn at the Oscars?

I don't know who the costume designer for ALIAS is, (okay — wait, thanks to Google, now I do. Laura Goldsmith). Anyway, Laura needs to take a look at the Spring 2006 Gaultier couture collection, because doesn't this dress look like Sydney Bristow is about to open up a giant-economy-size can of whup-ass on some baddie? Preferably just seconds after picking up a champagne flute?

Actually, now that I look at it again, perhaps it is not quite tight enough or garish enough or made of enough pleather to qualify as an "undercover" outfit on ALIAS. Although it's certainly eyecatching enough.)

It's certainly an interesting confluence. So many of the high-fashion collections seemed to be aimed at amazingly-fit superspies, yet so few of us actually ARE amazingly-fit superspies! Luckily, amazingly-fit superspies seem to need a LOT of changes of clothing.

I'm now roughly ten days behind in answering comments, and there is no point at which I think I'll be caught up, so if it was something important, or even unimportant but funny, email me, okay?

Helen very kindly sent me a nice picture of her skirt made from a William Morris tablecloth, and it's lovely. She says it's Burda 8677 (and, woman after my own heart, says she also has made "a turquoise with white spots and white piping, a plain purple taffeta, a burgundy with gold sequins, a red stripe yoke with red roses skirt, a linen with woven rainbow stripe, a blue and brown wool tartan that i've altered into a puffball, a red linen with vintage embroidered trim, a denim with pink net underskirt,[and] a black with rockin' robins print.") Wow!

I think there are also several people to whom or for whom I promised suggestions or advice of various (although all dress-related) kinds; if you are one of the unlucky people languishing at the bottom of my email inbox, feel free to send me a reminder!

Msbelle sent me a link to this dress (thank you!). I like it a great deal, although of course I'd make some changes. Like, those sleeve ties have to go. And, like Msbelle, I'd like it slightly longer, although, of course, on anyone not six feet tall, it would be. Probably the most appealing part about it is the print, which is near enough to Liberty to make no difference. I swear, you could do up anything short of a halter-topped hotpants-jumpsuit in Liberty and I'd be there going "ooooh, pretty!"

This dress, from the same collection, also caught my eye:


Now, the model desperately needs a bra (I know they don't have time to switch undergarments between trips down the catwalk, but sheesh, maybe for this one they could have made an exception, or put it on a different person?) and it's oddly shaped on her even taking that into account, but something about this calls to me. And I'm not usually an epaulettes person, unless they are on Horatio Hornblower, but somehow the shoulder treatment here works.

This dress would be better on (dare I say it!) Sienna Miller, or Kate Moss, or someone slightly smaller than this particular model. This would be lovely for some 1920s-themed party, with bronze satin round-toed mary jane shoes and a brass cigarette case as a purse. (I would probably take off the belt.)

There are lots of other interesting prints in this collection, which seems to see-saw desperately between Palm Beach and the fundraising season in New York (much like many of the label's clients). Ah, well, if it were better themed this particular dress wouldn't have shown up, and that would be a loss.

Most people allow themselves to see the past only in the current romantic-patriotic de luxe edition of moving pictures and best-sellers. A more realistic approach is needed for a true comprehension of the dress characteristics of past periods. For instance, the clothing-minded should have a more critical view of that period which loving nostalgia named the Gay Nineties. It was a climax of elegance and savoir vivre, a time of prosperity and majestically sweeping female dresses. The following snapshot is handed down to us by the observer of a trifling incident: A lady, attired in a dress with a train that answered the dictum of fashion, boarded a cab after a short walk and left on the curbstone the rubbish she had collected while sweeping the street. The onlooker, without doubt an analytical-minded person, made this inventory of the refuse:

• 2 cigar ends
• 9 cigarette do
• A portion of pork pie
• 4 toothpicks
• 2 hairpins
• 1 stem of a clay pipe
• 3 fragments of orange peel
• 1 slice of cat's meat
• Half a sole of a boot
• 1 plug of tobacco (chewed)
• straw, mud, scraps of paper, and miscellaneous street refuse, ad.lib.

A still-life of less prosaic nature was painted by one Dr. Casagrandi in 1900. Reading a paper before the medical association in Rome, he reported on his bateriological examinations of trailing skirts, for which experiments he had employed a number of women to walk for one hour through the city streets. To his satisfaction he found large colonies of germs including those of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, tetanus and influenza, not to mention lesser bacilli, all of which were represented on each skirt.

from Are Clothes Necessary? by Bernard Rudofsky (Paul Theobald 1947).

This is from the ebay store of The Pattern Fairy, although, really, wouldn't you think that someone called The Pattern Fairy would magically have all their patterns in your size? This midriff-wonder (which I want desperately, and would buy if it were any bigger than B32) is only $9.50 including shipping. Click on the image to buy it if you're B32.

There oughta be a law, or at least a very stern suggestion, that pattern companies should not be able to use pattern numbers beginning in 19-. Because: searching for "Simplicity 1953", to see if I can get it in a bigger size? Not so helpful. Simplicity put out a LOT of patterns in 1953, and this wasn't even one of them, as far as I can tell.

If this pattern were mine I'd do that nice deep gray full-skirted version with pale-blue piping along the seams and as the tab. I also can see this in red gingham, although, really, there's very little I can't see in red gingham, or even better, brown gingham. I love brown gingham. I've probably made three different brown gingham dresses in the last 20 years and I have another one planned as soon as I sew through the worst of the backlog around here (although that might be another 20 years). Luckily brown gingham is timeless.

Another reason I should have this dress? I carry my handbag like that all the time. Why isn't this a few inches bigger, Pattern Fairy?

So Shana left me a link in the comments to the sperm dress, (go check it out, it's hysterical!) and I found this dress at left browsing the seller's other items.

This is a gorgeous dress, although the waist is very defined (the waist measures 28", so you'd have to measure at least an inch less than that) and you'd probably have to wear a cincher of some sort under it. It's B38, too.

This one picture doesn't really do it justice — go check out the auction, which has three days to run, and see the rest. The lace is a very nice rose pattern and seems to be in tip-top condition!

I really like the shape of this black lace dress — I do still believe black lace is not for ingenues, and this is not an ingenue-style dress. It's designed for women, not girls. I'm so tired of slip dresses, strapless tube dresses, and drop-waist jersey monstrosities all designed for folks who are too young to know about Logan's Run or to worry about the concept if they did.

It's just pure laziness on the part of the designers, in My Opinion. Admit it — almost anything looks good on a nineteen year old with flawless skin! You could dress most runway models in burlap and tin foil and they'd still look beautiful. (And I bet I could spend ten minutes on Style.com and find an example, honestly.) But older women are more demanding. They want to wear the dresses, not have the dresses wear them. They want to look good because of what they're wearing, not in spite of it. I think that's why I love vintage so much — it seems to me as if the 1950s were the last time that women were the focus of designers' energies. Juniors patterns from the 1950s are all the same: puffy sleeves, big skirts, jumpers and party dresses. They are just one step up from little girls' clothes. The women's sizes, on the other hand, are triumphs of draping, with neckline variations and skirt details and cuffs and collars and sleeves of every kind. They're interesting, and they show interest.

It might be a supply-and-demand thing, that older women are buying "career" clothing (suits and whatnot) or that they've just stopped buying dresses that are either impossible to wear or unappealing, which makes for fewer dresses targeted to the older demographic. Whatever it is, I wish I knew how to turn it around.

I love the little details on this dress, especially the completely gratuitous button closure on the bodice. That would be a perfect solution to the (literally, hand-to-God) BOXES of fabulous single buttons that I have. I believe my sewing room is like the elephant burial ground, but for single buttons. If one falls off a garment anywhere in the western hemisphere, it rolls its way somehow to me. I find buttons the way some people find pennies, and I need to find projects to showcase them that don't involve bracelets, handbags, or (shudder) art vests. Of course, in the hierarchy of needs, this comes way, way under "just get a damn dress sewn, already" so I'm afraid I would buy this pattern and then it would always get pushed aside for something quicker to sew. And it's $28. That's a bit steep, even for something as nice as this. It's B34 at So Vintage Patterns; click on the image to check it out.

The Plaid Dress

Strong sun, that bleach

The curtains of my room, can you not render

Colourless this dress I wear?–

This violent plaid

Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe

Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done

Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;

The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,

I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;

Confession does not strip it off,

To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean

Bright hair,

Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,

But it is there.

–Edna St. Vincent Millay

Part of the joy of making my own dresses is that I'm not just wearing the dress, I'm wearing the process. I'm wearing choosing the fabric. (This past weekend my young son went with me to the fabric store, and picked out some fabric for me. Will I think of him saying "Mama! This one would make a GREAT dress!" every time I wear whatever I make from it? Damn straight I will.) I'm wearing choosing and altering the pattern, I'm wearing the mental gymnastics involved in cutting it out and putting it together, I'm wearing whatever sleep was forgone to get it done and I'm wearing whatever I was singing along to on my iPod. I'm wearing my husband's grandmother's sewing machine and how I think about her sewing while I'm sewing. All that goes into the dress. It's the terroir of the dress, if you will.

Even when I don't sew what I'm wearing, I prefer my clothes to have complicated backstories. Like, "I bought this shirt at Jim Smiley's, when he was in New Orleans, before he moved to New York." Or "This coat was $13 at Nordstrom Rack!" or "My sister-in-law gave it to me and she has the best taste!" or "It was my mother's, she wore it in college." How can "I ordered it from the J. Crew catalog" compare?

In fact, sometimes I feel it's not the dress so much as it's the idea of the dress. (Okay, I feel this way all the time.) This is a kind of corollary to the "if it doesn't make you happy, don't wear it" rule–if there's no idea behind the dress, don't wear it. You don't want fast-food, assembly-line, prefab-McMansion clothing, not just because it's boring and soulless and blah, but because there are no ideas behind it. Nobody smiled making it, or envisioned you wearing it, just like nobody outside the TV commercials smiles about making you a Whopper Jr.

When you have enough psychic energy built up into the dress, how it actually LOOKS can be less important than how it feels.

This is an excerpt from a letter:

Did I tell you in my last letter that I had a new dress, a real party dress with low neck and short sleeves and quite a train? It is pale blue, trimmed with chiffon of the same color. I have worn it only once, but then I felt that Solomon in all his glory was not to be compared with me! Anyway, he never had a dress like mine! …

The writer of the letter? Helen Keller. Who, obviously, must have been taking more joy in the idea of the dress than in any rational assessment of it in the mirror.

So, even if you don't sew, try to build some process into your own clothing. Find a local alterations place and have your dresses altered for a better fit. Take along someone you love when you go shopping, and take time for a real conversation. Buy clothing when you travel, so you can think "Oh! I bought this in Baltimore!" (or Portland, or Albuquerque …) Post a picture to your blog and ask for feedback, or just rip out the catalog picture and tape it to the bathroom mirror for a week. Imagine yourself in the dress before you buy it. Who will you be seeing? What will you be doing? What will you be laughing about? Set yourself a challenge — can you think of wearing something ten different places? With ten different people? I'm not saying you should overthink every $59 dress from H&M, but a well-planned dinner party is always nicer than a drive-thru meal. Try to have more scintillating parties, and fewer hamburger wrappers floating around the car.