The Hazards of Vintage Apparel

This past weekend, No. 1 went to the Junior Prom. She looked fabulous:



My mother wore this dress to the Military Ball at the University of Illinois in the late fifties. Obviously, she kept it all these years. My sister and I both dreamed of wearing it, but it didn't fit her and Mom staunchly refused to take up the hem for me. She gave it to my cousin to wear at one point, but her parents deemed it too revealing so she gave it back. Let us fast forward to 2011, where No. 1 announced her intentions to go to prom, and I told her she should try on Grandma's red dress. Mom went along with the idea because I pointed out that SOMEONE should wear it. It certainly wasn't doing anyone any good hanging in her closet.

It needed pressing, there was a peice of elastic on the inside that needed replacing, and the straps needed shortening. But it fit her perfectly, despite her genetically inherited lack of height, and she loved it. Who wouldn't? Mom still insisted that it not be shortened (Why? Its not like she's ever going to wear it again...) but fortunately in these modern times 5" platform heels are readily available. It was decided that No. 1 would wear the fabulous red dress to the prom.

From this point I made several errors in judgment.

First, I procrastinated. I figured I had 20 minutes of work to do on the dress and I put it off until the day of the prom. I know, I know, but No. 2 went to the prom also and I made her dress, 24 yards of fabric in all, with linings, overlays, tucks, darts, bands, and gathers. It turned out beautifully, of course, but it took A LOT of time.

I also failed to fully inspect the dress and assumed that because everything looked good, everything was good. Not so. We should have had a dry run sometime before the actual prom, where we would have noticed that the entire lining was not properly attached. (This also could have prevented incident where the entire hem came undone at the restaurant.) As such, I had to sew the entire lining back in by hand which took a good hour I didn't really have and severely cut in to my ironing time.

My next mistake was not having the dress professionally cleaned and pressed. Do not try to remove 50 year old wrinkles on your own. It simply will not work. Actually, you can get the wrinkles out but they come right back. It was the most frustrating ironing experience of my entire life, and I owned a tuxedo-style shirt with a million little ruffles on the front in the 80's. Which I wore all the time with hot pink corduroy pants tucked into slouchy teal suede boots because I was so stylish.

The biggest mistake of all was rushing. The rushing, of course, was a direct result of all my other grevious errors. No matter how little time you have, you should ALWAYS sew the straps on securely. I would recommend going over them twice because, well, once isn't enough because your kid could end up falling apart at the prom. Probably not, though, because apparently these kind of things only happen to me.