We teamed up with Katriona Flynn, lecturer in fashion at TU Dublin, to ask readers to share their story of a dress that has played an important role in their lives. We were struck by the huge response, and how the physical features of the dresses played second string to the human stories around them, and the memories embedded within. Here’s a selection …
Submit your own ‘Story of A Dress’ to amy@thegloss.ie and discover more stories online throughout the series. See the details of a new Desert Island Dress Podcast coming soon, created by Katriona Flynn and Dr Dee Duffy below.
A New Dress! By Dr Dee Duffy
As a child of the eighties, ‘new’ clothing items invariably meant garments worked their way through two older sisters’ wardrobes before they ‘newly’ arrived in mine. So when my Holy Communion Day rolled around, this was my opportunity to have a dress straight off the rails. Oh, the excitement! Not that my mother didn’t try to pitch my sister’s dress first. She did. I used to wonder how I won that battle standing at just six years old. But, with my own tenacious daughter to contend with, I understand more. These days I’m frequently told, ‘You mustn’t let a little thing like “little” stop you’ … Thanks, Matilda.
Looking at pictures of my First Holy Communion Day, I was beaming. My mother had a professional photographer’s picture taken. I was elated when he put my picture on his shopfront window. I felt seen. A whole day and event where I was front and centre. And that day was immortalised on the sitting room wall for years to come – ‘The Communion Photo.’ Finally up on the wall beside my sibling’s photos. Catching up, but never quite.
Eventually, graduation and wedding photos would supersede communions, and these pictures quietly came down. Where do you put an old framed communion portrait in modern homes? Every parent’s attic across the country must have a stack of them. Too precious to dump. Too dated to display.
Yet, I held on to that little white dress. I imagined I’d pass it on, an heirloom, as such. Indeed, this day rolled around. I braced myself for the emotional transaction with my then-six-year-old. Instead, it was an utter anti-climax. Distracted, she humoured her mother, as she scratched at the nylon sleeves and looked disinterested into the mirror. “It’s itchy”. I didn’t remember it being itchy. She looked up at my disappointed face, and said with no sympathy, “I feel sorry for you mum, you kept this all these years and I don’t even make my communion until I’m eight”.
I should have sold my wedding dress when it had currency.
An Investment Piece by Karen Ross
Feeling the flurry of excitement standing in the store on Washington Street – that sensation that comes when you are justifying throwing caution to the wind and ignoring reality. I remind myself that I am just browsing. A sales assistant offers us champagne – why not, we are on holidays. She brings us back two miniature pink tins with silver straws. My eye catches a black wrap dress with a chain design. The assistant notices the direction of my glance, taking the dress from the rail, telling us it is a timeless investment piece, one that will hang in my wardrobe forever and take me through a lifetime of memories. She encourages me to try it on. My friend concurs and I, fuelled by too many quickly taken sips of champagne, think why not!
So often I am disappointed when I try something on. When I stand in this dress surrounded by mirrors, I feel the little leap of excitement again. This is my investment piece. I feel like another person as I imagine myself wearing this beautiful dress. More champagne and fitting on and I come back to my original love and yes, I must have it.
It travelled in the cabin with me on my journey home, and not in my luggage, because without champagne, the reality of the ‘investment’ I had made, instilled terror in case of lost luggage.
My dress has brought endless joy, made me feel like Audrey Hepburn outside Tiffany’s. I wear it less now, but it hangs in my wardrobe and from time to time it makes me smile and brings me back to that day. My daughter now has her eye on it. Were they right – an investment piece? Yes, for a lifetime or maybe two.
The Jacqueline Kennedy Dress by Penny McCormick
It was Anne Lowe, an African American designer known for creating gowns for Waspy socialites, who created Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s silk taffeta wedding dress in 1953. This was defined by its portrait neckline and full bouffant skirt, made from almost 50 yards of fabric.
Jacqueline looked look both regal and relaxed. She wore her grandmother’s veil (held in place by clusters of orange blossom) and a small row of seed pearls. I particularly liked a photo of her at her wedding breakfast, which I used as a screensaver for many years.
When it came to my graduation ball I decided that this vintage dress would be my inspiration. I found some satin material embellished with a heart design in the now closed Spinning Mill, Belfast and sketched a pared-back version of the dress. I am not a fan of the full skirt (as those with generous hips will know, it does nothing for the silhouette). My mother, meanwhile, had found a dressmaker who was apparently a dab hand at making formal dresses. As soon as I met her, I realised that my dress would not be as imagined. Her “atelier” (read front room), was full of Butterick patterns and there was no sign of Vogue tear sheets and society party photos, as I had imagined. However, it was too late to turn back – the ball was in a matter of weeks.
When I picked up the finished dress, I could see the seams and the underskirt were bulky, but I liked how the satin shimmered in the evening light. As she was wont to say, Mum reassured me that “a man on a galloping horse” would not notice the finer details as I whirled on the dance floor.
Though neither the dress nor the ball lived up to expectations – my date disappeared at midnight never to be heard from again – I learned a lot from this first foray into dressmaking (start simple and research the maker). The dress still hangs in my wardrobe and it always makes me smile … a souvenir of romantic notions and a (laughable) homage to an enduring style icon.
A Memorable Nightgown by Spencer Adamson
I was born on 30th January 1997 in Dublin’s Holles St Maternity Ward. When my Mother tells me the story of the big day, she always remarks on a couple of details. What my father said to her when I was delivered, the names of the midwife, my weight (8lbs 3 oz), and the nightdress she wore.
The first three details are typical. But the last detail surprised me. A cotton nightdress is not something that would spring to mind when discussing the momentous occasion of childbirth.
This dress had no significance up to the day of my birth. Just an ordinary cotton night dress. So why is this item of clothing always mentioned when the story is told?
This is something I’ve thought about for some time. Why is the dress a key detail and not something else? But one day the penny dropped. Something I have come to understand since January 1997 is that what we wear connects us to memory.
We fabricate life’s most significant moments via the clothes we wear. Life’s threads are a tangible substitute for our intangible memory. When we try to reach out to those special moments, our elusive memory fails us. What better way to materialise our memories than the dress, shirt or shoes we wore in that moment?
This story of childbirth and my Mother’s nightdress reinforces that the clothes we wear are preserved deep in our consciousness. This dress has become the vehicle to access the most significant day of my Mother’s life. Something so simple as a piece of cloth has given my Mother an opportunity to remember the day, as well as giving her son a means to contextualise his first day in the world. Who knew a nightdress could mean so much?
The Story of A Silk Worm by Sandy Goldsbrough
I am delighted to share my story. The story of how I started life as a wriggling worm in a humble Chinese village. Fattened up on Mulberry leaves hand-picked off the stalks and laid on the floor of a family home.
A humble abode of three rooms – kitchen, bedroom and silk worm room – shared by a family of six people. The elderly parents, a couple and their two children who all shared the bedroom.
It was a tough life for the family with a communal well for cleaning vegetables and washing clothes, sheep to herd, cows to milk, children and worms to be fed.
When the time came we clung to the wooden trellis laid on the floor and spun our cocoons, never to re-awaken but rather to be bundled into sacks piled high with our heavenly shapes. Loaded onto the back of a lorry we were transported thousands of miles only to be boiled, cleaned and prepared for weaving.
I was turned into pure white duchesse satin, shipped to Europe and crafted into a wedding gown for the most beautiful lady with a voice like honey and a laugh like velvet. The dress was very grand with a square neck, puffed sleeves and a massive bridal train. She looked like a princess in it, radiating beauty and kindness.
After the magnificent wedding celebration I was carefully packed away but through the keyhole of the wardrobe I kept watch over my bride. A lady with a heart of gold who not only showered her children with love but fed and clothed orphans and beggars, a lady with nothing but kindness pumping though her veins.
She has two daughters and a son. Her eldest daughter adored her mama and loved to put me on her tiny body with her tiny feet shoved into high heeled shoes and pretend to be a princess with magical powers.
Her mama died suddenly six months before this precious daughter was due to be married. What an honour when I was hastily but lovingly transformed into a more modern style and graced the beautiful blessing one month later where her daughter made her wedding vows on what would have been her mama’s birthday.
Now modelled as a modern slip dress, my new bride was radiant and beautiful, the aged duchesse satin giving her confidence and strength. Packed away in a different wardrobe, I spend my days watching my angel’s granddaughter manifest her grandmother’s earthly kindness, wondering how this little babe will honour my shape when she too becomes a bride.
But first for dress up and tiny feet in wobbly shoes!
Dedicated to Catherine Ellen (1964 – 2019)
Coming Soon: The Desert Island Dress Podcast
The podcast unearths the heartfelt stories behind the clothing we cherish the most. In this unique series, guests share the four garments they could never leave behind, each with a profound connection to their lives and loved ones. Join your hosts Katriona Flynn and Dr. Dee Duffy on a captivating journey through the wardrobe of memories, as we explore the emotional tapestry that clothing weaves into our most cherished moments.