I didn’t quite put on the dress, as much as I wrestled it. After sliding the heirloom garment out of its rosy sleeve, I realized it was seamless, but getting it on, would not be.
That is how my grandmother sewed it, so it would fit my mother like a glove when she dawned it at her senior prom decades ago. My mother became a real-life Andie Walsh by designing the dress herself. Instead of “Pretty in Pink” that 1988 night, she was beautiful in blue, arm-in-arm with her long-term boyfriend (her future husband and my father).
The gown was patterned with a white, cursive scribble. Organza cutouts flared out on the skirt like the wings of a swan. My mother stood on a platform in her parent’s dining room, while my grandmother sewed on each piece by hand. A cherry red bow tied it together like a present from one daughter, to the other.
I had always wanted to wear my mother’s prom dress for a high-fashion editorial. Those who know me are privy to my penchant for vintage. Over the years, I’ve sported my mother’s collection of eighties, nineties, and early 2000s wardrobe with pride, because I get to write another line in that style story. But there was something sacred about putting this custom piece on, like I was restoring a priceless painting that belonged in a place of honor at a museum of our family’s history.
And as my grandmother had intentionally not put a zipper on the piece, I’d have to slide it on with care. The high neck, long sleeve garment was practically skintight, save a plunging back, so there was quite the barrier to entry. I developed a strategy, lifting my hands up like I was about to do a squad cheer, holding either sleeve of the dress in both hands, like pom poms (which is right on theme, since I was a cheerleader in high school!)
I could not believe that I was walking in such an avant garde gown past a league of legislators and tourists. In cherry-red pumps reminiscent of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, I strutted across the checkered tiles outside the California State Capitol, in place of a yellow brick road.
Crowned with a voluminous velvet headband like some scarlet halo and my grandmother’s gold-rimmed pearl earrings adorning each ear, I relished in wearing a momentous look, at a monument.
From one iconic Sacramento setting to the next, my friend Anaya and I went to the Tower Café. As we strode past the theatre, two elderly women stopped to tell me that they loved my dress, and I proudly orated its origins. “Oh, what a sweet story,” one of them said wistfully looking at the other. I was so elated; I could have danced.
Keeping it Krischic,
Kristin Vartan
Photos by: Anaya Salcedo
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Source: Style-Speaks