Rebuild Your Wardrobe (and the Gulf Coast)

Whoa. I love *all* the dresses at TrashyDiva.com. I love them with a deep and all-encompassing love. I don't think there's a single one that I wouldn't gladly wear to rags.

This particular dress, though, (the "Kabuki") hits all my current obsessions in color, fabric, and cut. I'm a little dismayed that it only goes up to a size M, but perhaps the larger sizes have already sold out -- this would be even MORE of a knockout on fuller figures. It's $238, which is pricey, but it's silk all the way through, and ... just LOOK at it!

There's a huge sale section right now, and of course, Trashy Diva is based in New Orleans, so you'll be supporting the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast if you buy from them. It's practically your civic duty. (Note: their site says they can take only Paypal for the next few days.)

I was also entranced by their shoes (Princess Moonbeam, check out the pointy-toe button boots!). I'm actually afraid to look at their lingerie, for fear of being overcome with desire (which I guess is the actual point of lingerie, but usually it's one step further removed ...)

Thanks to the indefatigable Madelene for the link!

Always Room for One More

(Especially when they're this small -- sorry for the teen-einsy picture!). No, really, as if I didn't already have enough patterns to clothe every B36 woman in the lower 48, without repeats, I'm looking at this one -- Vogue 7820.

However, I have my doubts. Recent painful experience has enlightened me that a blousy top and a narrow waist combined with a full skirt makes me look like a particularly bizarrely decorated fireplug. At least in pictures. Sigh.

So I'm thinking that despite all the things I like about it (kimono sleeves [for ease of making], defined midriff, fuller skirt, surplice bodice with small darts) that I should probably pass this one by. Besides, I'd have to change the back zip to a side zip, which is always a pain in the ass. The time would probably be better spent running up a half-dozen fall skirts, considering the stock I've laid in of charcoal corduroy, moss flannel, and orange twill! Mmmm ... pumpkin orange twill.

But -- isn't it nice? Wouldn't it be gorgeous in a dark mulberry, with the neckline edged in black tatting, and a slightly shorter skirt? Worn with tights and boots? Maybe I could sew it one size down in something with a little stretch. Talk me into it, folks. C'mon. I know you can. Lydia, when's the next Vogue patterns sale at Hancock?

Making excuses.

You know how some women KNOW they are in relationships with sucky men, but they keep making the lamest excuses? Like, "I know he never calls when he says he will, and he can't seem to remember that I'm deathly allergic to shellfish, and he insulted my mother at my father's funeral, but ... but ... he likes puppies! He can't be a monster." That's a little bit how I feel about this dress from Temperley London.

I mean, I know those sleeves are hideous, and it's got sequins AND metallic I-wanna-be-Napoleon embroidery on a dress clearly intended for daytime wear, and it's freakin' $1835 (!) at Saks (click on the picture if you don't believe me) for RAYON/ACETATE but ... it's not really showing to its best advantage on a model this thin, and ... it's got pockets! And ... this silhouette (with shorter, narrower sleeves) is the one that's on my mind for fall. Vee-neck, midriff band, fullish skirt ...

Okay, okay. I know this dress isn't perfect. But it's trying! It *wants* to be a better dress. It just needs a good woman to believe in it.

Ask Dress A Day: Cherry Fabric

Mauricio Parra, the producer and emcee of the Cherry Pop Burlesque show in Madison, Wisconsin, asks:

I have been scouring the web for a silky/shiny fabric with cherries on a black background that would be suitable for making a tie/bow-tie/pocket square etc. I bought a cherry tie online that turned out to be made from a cotton print that wasn't very saturated and just looks -- crappy. In fact, cotton prints are the only cherry fabrics I've been able to find so far. Heck, I'd be willing to cut up some silky cherry pajamas if I could find them. One of our cast members has some but won't let me near them. ;-)

Any ideas?

Cherry fabric is very near to my heart -- I must have yards, but it's all cotton prints, not the shiny silky fabric you'd need to make a great tie.

You really have two options: call around, or DIY. I'd call the big fabric stores first: Vogue Fabrics in Chicago, Britex in San Francisco (I ordered some very nice cherry print from them five or six years ago, but it was cotton on a white background) or G Street in Rockville, Maryland. You might also want to grab a copy of Threads magazine and start calling the stores that advertise in that mag ... I'd start by asking if they have any of the cherry-print black silk that Nicole Miller put out a few years ago. I'm still kicking myself for not buying some of that.

Of course you also want to set up an eBay search alert that will email you whenever someone lists silk cherry fabric.

As for DIY, if you know a good graphic artist, you could get a cherry print made just for you, and fabric either silkscreened locally or printed up at www.my-fabrics.com. (If you use my-fabrics, let me know, I've been dying to try them out.)

Also, Dharma Trading Co. sells silk tie blanks, pocket square blanks, etc. that could be painted!

Any Dress A Day readers have leads, or want to part with some of their stash?

By the way, the picture is for some black cherry-print denim, on sale on eBay for the next several days. Click on the pic to go to the listing. Note: the coin in the photo is a QUARTER. Those cherries are HUGE! Happy bidding!

A man after my own heart.

I got yelled at a while back for assuming everyone reads the Sunday New York Times, so if you've already seen this lovely article about Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, don't you yell at me too!

This is my favorite part:

"Geisha are perfect," Elbaz said, now at work in his atelier, "and perfection is never interesting to me, but the search for perfection, which all women feel, is interesting. That's a timeless struggle, so why not provide women with a solution? For years, men have had uniforms, and a dress works like a uniform. You don't have to think - you zip in and zip out. And then clothes become about simplicity and form and function."

And that's a total lie, of course: you absolutely have to think about a dress, at least until you put it on, at which point you should not be thinking much beyond "I'm so glad I wore this today." If a dress is a uniform, then it's for a job that changes constantly. But I have no problem with why Elbaz said what he said, because anything that justifies dress-wearing is fine by me.

I think I've posted dresses by Lanvin before, but here's another one, just because. One of the reasons Lanvin is so great? This dress would actually look better on a curvier model.

You'd think this one would be more attainable, but no.

You'd think this Boden "Chic" dress would be more attainable than yesterday's designer frock, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong -- most of the sizes have an eight-week wait. (Ebay didn't turn up any, either.) Sigh.

If you don't mind this dress showing up after Thanksgiving (warning to Canadians: I mean US Thanksgiving), by which time you probably will have forgotten you ordered it, go ahead and click on the picture. It's $128. This particular colorway has a name so English it seems nearly self-parodying: Treacle Tara Spot. I mean, that's practically the name of a show dog, isn't it?

Want.

So regular reader and perspicacious commenter Madelene emailed me last week, with a link to a designer at Style.com. I was traveling, and then I was catching up from traveling, and it took me a while to get to a time and place where I could check out the link and now ... I want. Sleeves, neckline, waist, skirt: all perfect. This is me, huddling over here in a little breathless ball of pure throbbing desire.

Of course, I want it in red, or sky blue, or possibly bright grass green, and not this moonstone color, but still. Want.

The worst part is that, as beautiful as this is, it probably wouldn't even make the top five of impossible-to-have things I've wanted in the last week. How sad is that?

Picture Unavailable

I was at the dentist yesterday, and part of my "wait for the numbness to wear off" routine is to wander through Lord & Taylor. Not that I picked my dentist because the office is above L&T, mind you -- it's just a happy coincidence.

There I saw the dress that I wanted to show you today -- Hugo Boss, hammered satin, beautiful neckline, short-sleeved, in the most exquisite moss green color. Really, it was the ideal winter party dress, AND a faultless excuse to buy green shoes, so it could not have been more perfect.

"Aha!" I thought. "Tomorrow's dress! The all-benevolent Internet shall provide a picture, and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Stoopid Internet. No picture! This is why I really do need a digital camera, I guess. Although trying to explain to the L&T people that I NEEDED to take a picture of the dress for my BLOG, where I talk about dresses "you know, JUST LIKE THIS ONE," would have probably been highly comedic.

Anyway, that dress was not like this one at all. (Warning, page very slow to load.)

Write This Caption, Please.

Sometimes a pattern arrests me with the illustration, not the design, especially when it is supposed to show the glamorous life you will lead in whatever dress it is that you will be making. This one looks like a still from a bad movie, but I can't decide what the hell that guy is saying! Help me out -- is he saying:

"Miss Monroe, you look simply ravishing. And, as you well know, my ... tastes ... lie in a different direction."

"Don't look now, but that's my ex-wife and her greasy gigolo -- I said, DON'T LOOK!"

"After tonight, you'll never have to go back to the typing pool ever again!"

"See that man? I'm going to have him killed. No, not him, the one on the left."

"I really enjoy standing in for Mr. Brosnan. What is Ms. Zimbalist like?"

"Look, there's another woman wearing the same dress! Vogue 1066, right?"

"No, you're right, the ice sculpture is definitely supposed to be 'Guernica.'"

I'm not sure what he's saying, exactly, but something is making this poor woman freeze like a deer in the headlights. Maybe she left a pin in a seam, and has just found it? Maybe she realized too late that her glittery and bare evening-y dress is just not suitable in broad daylight, at what is evidently a business function?

There's another pic of it here, which shows that the weird front top panel of the skirt becomes a sash in back. Why? Because it can. Anyway, if all this speculation has made you fall in love with this Molyneaux pattern, you can buy it from the Blue Gardenia for $35. It's B34.

I would think this was pretty even if it weren't vaguely Buffy-related. Honest.

Check out this adorable dress on the adorable Alyson Hannigan. She wore it to the Emmy awards, which she attended with the adorable Alexis Denisov. (It's like that woman just floats in a CLOUD of adorability.) I did a desultory google but couldn't figure out who designed it. Any ideas? (Or better Google-fu?)

Anyway, I love it because it seems Liberty-ish, and I'm in a huge Liberty-print phase right now (the fabric of the other day was Liberty, and I desperately want about four yards of this):


I really wish there were a better way to buy Liberty fabric in the US other than off eBay. I mean, eBay works, but occasionally you want to buy a certain number of yards, not just whatever they happen to have cut. And they tend to concentrate on the classic florals and not the wacked-out modern stuff I am drooling over. Oh, my first-world problems, how difficult and intractable they are!

Swan, Swan, Hummingbird

Dress A Day reader jrochest let me know that if you must own a Bjork swan dress (not the one from the Oscars but a "highly superior pearl-encrusted" version from her Vespertine tour) you can do so by going here.

There are a lot of other interesting (by which I mean "largely unwearable") clothes up for auction as well, most of them at very reasonable starting bids (although all the auctions still have five-plus days to run).

The auction benefits Oxfam and, jrochest points out, "You can also buy and donate goats, camels and trees. A goat costs much less than Bjork's dress, and would certainly be more flattering on."

The picture I'm showing you (I couldn't bear to inflict the swan dress on you, and besides, it had a bad "arty" photo that was all shadow) is of another dress in the auction, described as a "sky blue hand-painted swallow print short-sleeved dress designed and donated by Belgian designer Dirk Van Saene. The dress has blue knitted collar and cuffs and button front detailing. The dress is taken from Dirk Van Saene’s Summer 2005 collection and has never been worn." Usually I am very much against hand-painted clothes, but this one is so very cute, and not at all artist-y, at least not that I can see from the picture. And it's for a very good cause ...

An update, followup, whatever

That's the fabric that I promised I would post, the fabric that was last Monday's dress. (Not the dress pictured, the dress described.)

The dress I made it into is this one, which I thought I had posted before, but no.



I made the one with sleeves, but without the white revers collar. I've also made this dress in pink/multicolor striped seersucker, which I bought in two separate colorways -- pastel and bright. (Still haven't done anything with the bright one, but I figure around about next March it will start to call to me.)

Man, I am completely undercaffeinated today. Bear with me.

Patricia Field Has A Lot of Explaining To Do

There is so much wrong with this dress that I'm not sure where to start. I suppose the color is always a good place -- teal is supposed to be big this year, but the teal that's big this year is more mallard, less HoJo's. The tan piping, the lumpy sleeves, the neck band, the elastic waist: all shudder-inducing.

However, what really struck me about this dress (which is for sale on eBay for ten bucks or "best offer") is that the listing describes it as "This is definitely a dress you would see Carrie wearing while roaming through the city." Now, I have been known to look in a mirror and say "is this too 'Carrie Bradshaw'?" (and if the answer is "yes," I take whatever it is off. As you might have already guessed, I identify clothing-wise with Charlotte.) but this constant invoking of her name, attaching it to every hideous sartorial excess imaginable, has Got To Stop.

Carrie would not wear this dress roaming around the city, unless the plot involved her joining the witness protection program, in which case the "city" in question would be Duluth. This is the dress equivalent of a hair scrunchie. This dress cannot exist in the same plane of reality as Mr. Big. There is not a pair of Manolos ever made that could redeem this dress. Slapping "Carrie" on it won't change the fact that this is a horror.

Of course, now that I post this, someone will find some still of Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie dressed in something exactly like this. I will maintain that it's the lost "Witness Protection" episode. Or I could just say "Hey, so I was wrong. Carrie would wear it. But YOU still shouldn't wear teal terrycloth elastic-waist dresses, okay?"

"Wear the Rainbow!"

"Wear the rainbow!" is what old-clothes.com (hmm, somebody needs some marketing help there on the URL, in addition to a refresher course on ROY G. BIV) exhorts us to do with this dress, and if it were a size bigger (or I were a size smaller--it's B34 W26) that's what I'd do. It's only $16!

Be sure to click through the rest of this site -- there's tons and tons here, most in good condition and extremely well priced, and the pictures are good. It's a keeper.

a-Heim

I was looking for more sexy-seventies today but ran across this instead, at The Blue Gardenia. I was completely arrested by this dress. I prefer the sleeved version, myself, I'm not sure the pockets are completely functional, and I'm not buying it because it's a B32, but -- this is such a great dress.

The black version is so absolutely faculty cocktail party that it should practically come packaged with an album called "Highbrow Music", a passionate martini-fueled defense of the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and an obligatory makeout session with someone else's spouse in the half-bath.

And I'm not completely sure, but I think the woman in the black dress? Over by the cheese straws? Is sizing up YOUR husband.

Oh, Mr. Halston!

Usually, when an auction title says "ULTRA SEXY 70s DRESS", not only do I pass it by unclicked, but I roll my eyes and possibly heave a big sigh. For an era when so many people were supposedly having so much sex, the clothes are so unerotic (to me, at least, possibly because I spent the 1970s in single digits) that one has to wonder if the whole thing is just one big urban legend. I'm not sure long prairie dresses or quiana can actually EVER be sexy. However -- The Pattern Fairy, on eBay, who also has a ton of great 1950s patterns, wasn't lying. (Possibly because I bet this dress is more early-80s.) Look at this!

I think this dress is sexy because it isn't trying too hard. Sure, it's got a low neck, and a surplice effect (which always holds the promise of UNwrapping), but it's something you could wear to work. The skirt's not short, the back's not bare, and it has sleeves, even.

The only reason I'm not buying this is that it's tiny (bust 30 1/2). But it's only $10! I'll probably be looking out for it in my size. I'd like to make it in really soft Japanese geometric-print silky cotton, with an obi belt in a contrasting print ...

Two Things

The first thing is that I was only vaguely aware that you could go buy people's old abandoned photographs on the Internet. Which seems vaguely creepy to me, but out there somewhere a photoblogger is posting "Did you know that you can buy people's old clothes on the Internet? That seems vaguely creepy to me."

(The difference, in my opinion, is that old photographs remain part of the lives of the people who are in them, but old clothes become part of YOUR life.)

In any case, this one is captioned "1957 Gal Shows Off Dress to Beau in Kitchen." I feel a twinge of pity for both of them -- like every right-thinking woman, she wants her partner to join in her enthusiasms: in this case, for this really pretty awesome dress. He, on the other hand, is thinking something like "am I going to have to remember this? Are we going to be able to get to the movie on time? Is this new or have I seen this before, and am I supposed to know?" (Come on, you know he was! It was 1957!)

I'm pretty sure that she made this dress -- I've made enough dresses myself to know the look of a dress made just for an evening. It looks a little too new; I think perhaps she skimped (as I often do) on pressing seams completely flat, or on measuring the hem twice, in order to have it ready for that night.

And the other thing is now I am so tempted to make an enormous skirt with a faux rick-rack pattern! Arrgh.

it started off being about a dress, anyway

I really want this dress -- and I could buy it, but it's a little tight in the hips for me, and the only thing worse than a dress you want and can't have is a dress you have but can't wear.

Actually, that's true for so many things: almost is worse than nothing. Think about it. The nonfat cookie; the hug instead of the kiss; the vice-presidency.

The only cure, as philosophers have told us since there were philosophers to tell, is to want what you have. So easy to say -- so incredibly hard to do. Today's dress (that I'm wearing, as opposed to posting: black eyelet, full skirt, interesting neckline) is one of my favorites. So, for the moment, at least, I want what I have. Cross your fingers that it lasts.

"Where's the paperwork for the Henderson Account?"

Check out this excellent, never-worn office dress from Prototype Vintage. This is absolutely what you would wear if you were a a go-getting career woman of the era. With a black croc bag and heels, I'm thinking, and an important bracelet.

For something this size (39/29/40) and condition, $55 is an excellent price. I don't think it will last long ... if you want it, snap it up.

I am not wearing anything like this today, sadly. It's still just a little too hot for hauteur. (Not to mention that my Joan Crawford impression tends to dissolve into fits of helpless giggling.) No, today I am wearing a late-1940s-pattern dress I made of lightweight Liberty cotton print which looks like a combination of flowers and neurons (don't ask) in orange, red, teal, and moss green on a cream ground. With a green-and-cream zebra-pattern scarf as a belt (good call, Kate!), green glasses and handbag, and an orange sweater. Oh yes, fear me. Fear me and my senseless love of orange and green together.

Verrier dress is very close

Madelene sent me the link to this dress (thanks, Madelene!) and I like it very much. I'm not sure if I'd wear it -- okay, who am I kidding, I'd wear it, it's got a Peter Pan collar and pockets -- although I'd feel better about it if it were red with pink accents, and not mostly that pink. I'm starting to feel a little long in the tooth for pink AND Peter Pan collars AND pintucks.

I looked up the designer -- Ashleigh Verrier -- and found out that she's 1) 23 and 2) her mother is her muse. So what does that mean? Is this dress for 23-year-olds, or for people who could be the mothers of 23-year-olds? (I did the math, and even at the limit of biological possibility, I could not yet be the mother of a 23-year-old.) Her collection (click on the image for the slideshow) isn't bad. And according to New York magazine, her thesis collection was picked up by Saks last year.

I do like this dress, but I think it's not quite there yet. It's still a little too predictable. It's a great shape, but I would like this better in a wild chiffon print, or in a lightweight wool bouclé. What if the hems on the skirt and sleeves were left ragged, or were intentionally made ragged with bias chiffon? What if, instead of tucks, there were lace inserts? There's a lot more that could be done with this dress, to move it a bit more away from April Cornell.

Australia's Mary Quant

I love this dress, and I hate both 1) polyester (oh, sorry, "Crimplene") and 2) purple, so you know this is true love.

This is from a site with the punning name "Beehive Yourself," and I think it might be Australian, which makes the pun make more sense, because try to say that in a fakey Aussie accent. No, go ahead, I'll wait. See? Click the image to see all the gory details (unless you are too busy STILL saying "beehive yourself" in that "no, THIS is a KNOIFE" accent).

Anyway, the designer, Prue Acton, was Australia's Mary Quant. You see, kids, before the Internet, each widely separated geographical area ... ah, never mind. Now I wish I had a search tool that would let me search [name of place]'s [name of famous person] to see how many funny combos I'd get. I'd also like to see dresses from Japan's, Bulgaria's, and Canada's Mary Quants! Any help?

Deep Cleansing Breaths

For some reason (perhaps the towering stack of work, the 150+ emails to deal with [not to read, to DEAL WITH, we're talking the dreaded "action items," people], the planning for yet another week of travel) I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed today. So I'm just going to look at this Marc Jacobs silk shirtdress (with Peter Pan collar) and take deep cleansing breaths. I'm not going to think about how it's nearly my size (B34, so it'd be a leeetle tight), "only" $500 (for Marc Jacobs?), or about how I actually have a vintage pattern very similar to this one and could do it in better fabric if I had just four extra hours today. Nope. I'm just going to look at it (I wish the pictures were better, click on this one to visit the designerexposure.com site and see other views) and take deep breaths.

I suggest you do the same ...

Use the Force (for a skirt), Luke

As promised, a scan of the Darth Vader silk fabric I bought in Beijing. The Darth heads are about the size of a quarter.

I only bought two meters, because, although the temptation to make a hugely full-skirted 1950s shirtdress out of this stuff was nearly overwhelming, how many times could I actually wear it? (Keep in mind that I have very little Star Wars interest; haven't been to a comics convention; have never, not even as a little girl, dressed as Princess Leia, etc.)

So what I'm actually thinking of making is a nice skirt with a contour waistband, lined in black habotai. I'm going to edge the hem in picot trim, to give it some weight that it badly needs. And I'll use the leftovers to make a Darth Vader bow tie for my little boy. He's very excited.

For some reason, no matter how long I looked at the bolt, I didn't see any "TM George Lucas" on this anywhere! Go figure.

::tap, tap:: Is This Thing On?

I'm back!

Okay, so my mad Photoshop skillz are never going to win me the b3ta challenge [warning: that link often nsfw], but I needed to crop the other views off this pattern envelope (click on the image to find out why).

Oh, never mind, I'll tell you -- it's because one of the other views comes with "dance pants," that's why. Do you know what "dance pants" are? It's a euphemism for "this dress is so freakin' short you have to make matching underwear." And the thought of that nearly ruins this dress for me, and this dress is not so bad. Even if I did drag it out of a comic-book longbox labeled "BAD 70s PATTERNS".

Anyway. Imagine this dress with narrow sleeves, done in tissue wool jersey in a deep jewel color, possibly with a contrasting silk sash, because that's what I'm imagining, and this is my guided meditation, okay? Got that in your mind's eye? Good. Now relax, breathe, and enjoy this image. Don't think about the dance pants. Damn. Sorry about that.

I'm sorry

I'm sorry if you are coming to this blog looking for a respite from the horrifying Katrina news. There's nothing I can say about Katrina and its aftermath that hasn't been said better, by other, smarter folks, but here's one thing I hope people think about: many areas of the country, not just the Gulf Coast areas, are going to be affected as gas prices go up and up and stay high. When you need to buy gas to get to work, that money has gotta come from somewhere, because in 99% of this country, public transport is not an option. Biking to work is not an option. Walking to work is certainly not an option.

I am seeing posts all over the internet asking "Where can I send food, where can I send clothes and bedding and toys to the folks hit by Katrina?" And many organizations are saying "Thanks, but we need cash." But -- poor people, just as poor as those left behind to suffer in New Orleans, are going to be hit by a gas price hurricane, right where you live, wherever you live. So, please: think about making regular donations, every month of this year, to the local food pantry. Clean out your closets and give those warm clothes you never wear to a local charity -- bonus points for giving business clothes to The Bottomless Closet and other work-enabling charities.

We don't have gas stamps. The Salvation Army doesn't have a gas kitchen. There's no Gas for Families with Dependent Children. There's no Gas for Tots program at Christmastime. If you want gas, you have to have money. High gas prices are going to take a big chunk out of the pockets of the people who can least afford it. Rising gas prices are going to mean hungry and cold people all winter long.

I am not talking about gas companies' profits, or gouging, or whatever. I am not talking about whether gas prices should be high, to discourage people from driving, or to encourage public transit, or whatever. Sure, people like me can drive less, walk more, conserve. For other people, the choice isn't between a job far away and a job close by: the choice is between a job far away or no job. That's not a choice. The single mom who has to drive to the suburbs to work or else her kids need to spend three hours before AND after school in care? That's not a choice.

So, please, give what money you can to Katrina relief now. But please also make a resolution to give what you can to your local charities, now and all winter long. I've just put a repeating reminder in my calendar on the 29th of each month for the next year, to remember to see what I can give on that day. Call it Katrina Donation Day.

A new obsession

So, after being in China a few days, I am completely obsessed with the gorgeous, slim, almost-but-not-quite traditional dresses I am seeing on the street. Where on earth these women are getting these dresses, I have no idea, as every place I've been has been a tourist nightmare of rayon satin, but hey. They're allowed to keep their sources a secret from me.

However, the internet, as always, provides. Check this one out, at chinasprout.com. So pretty, so inexpensive ($42!), so orange! (I like orange. There also seems to be a blue one I couldn't edit out. Blue's just ... okay.)

Oh, and folks, you're gonna love this. Dress a Day reader Eevin Hartsough sent me this link: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/fold.php. [warning: flash animation] Fold a shirt in two counterintuitive and swooping movements! It's fun and provides a tremendous sense of accomplishment (okay, it did after I practiced it a few times). If you don't feel joy upon seeing this you might need a joy recalibration. See your doctor.

Just in Case

Okay, so I've been thinking about a more 1970s look for this fall -- narrow-shouldered dresses in deep jewel tones with vee necklines, bell skirts, defined midriffs, and bohemian trims -- but just in case I come to my senses and remember that I'm nowhere near tall enough to pull those off, I bought this.

Click on the image to go to Miss Helene's Vintage Sewing Shoppe on Ebay -- lots of nice patterns, nicely priced, too. Maybe you'll find the 1970s pattern I was looking for.

I probably won't go back to the Yuanlong Embroidery and Silk Store in Beijing today and buy four more meters of the Darth Vader mask print silk (I only bought two meters), so that I can make the dress on the left in Darth! Vader! Silk! I mean, I'm pretty sure I won't do that, as hysterical as it sounds to me right now. I'm mostly sure.