Zip right up

This dress (from the eBay store The Lyoness's Den) has got a center front zipper closing, which is a feature I always enjoy on purchased vintage dresses, but not something I've ever sewn myself.

I love looking at the design trajectory of center zippers: it seems to me (and I haven't done any real research on this, so be sure to read the comments where it is entirely likely I will be contradicted by someone who has Real Knowledge of this subject) that early on in the days of 'zip fasteners' they were exotic, interesting, expensive ... and thus they were featured prominently in designs -- front and center as it were. (I have a late 1930s-early 1940s black crepe dress which would have been very expensive, new, that has a center front zipper.) As zippers became more widespread and ordinary, even quotidian, they moved from the front to the side and then the back -- out of sight, out of mind -- and visible zippers, front-closure zippers, became a sportif or even déclassé thing. Front zippers were for play clothes, coveralls, and housedresses, like this one.

(It's almost like what happened to Velcro: if you are as old as I am, you probably remember when Velcro sneakers had that early-adopter cool, before becoming at first dorky and then unremarkable. I am afraid I've always hated Velcro, though, because I can't stand that horrible noise it makes!)

Anyway, this dress, with its center front zipper, is $9.95 Buy-It-Now and a bust 38. It's advertised as a housedress that's pretty enough to wear out of the house (to the grocery store or whatnot). If I were going to make it, I'd make it in a gray-and-red geometric-print quilting cotton with a bright red, large-toothed, plastic zipper up the front. Fun!