The Dress Up Box

I don't remember the beginning; that would be like asking a child what the day they were born was like. However, I can tell you about the feeling I've never lived without. It comes to me in doses here and there with butterflies at the beginning of an evening. It's the sound of hangers with metal tops being parted from wooden rails. The satisfying weight of layers of fabric. Fashion fabric, lining, and interfacing, kissed with buttons or zippers. Threads pulling at gathers like the muscles in my cheek as I anticipate the garment in my hand to be the one to wrap around my shoulders like warm air after coming in from the cold.

The first garment like this came out of a wooden box that was beloved and beaten rather than any regal position held by a hanger. This box was full of countless dress up dresses and plastic princess heels. As well as some of my Mothers' old heels that my foot barely filled the toe pad on and the ankle straps climbed to the middle of my shins. My favorite of all my misfit clothes was a dress, also retired from my mothers closet, with a sweetheart neckline made in black velvet with white satin piping. It was soft on my skin as it slid over my legs to come up to my chest. I'd hold it between my collar bones and my chin just to tie a scarf at the waistline. Sometimes if my twin sister wasn't mad at me for bullying my way into the dress and her out of it she would hold the dress while I tied it. Either way the scarf was a necessity to the look because at the mature age of seven I had no figure to speak of. Beyond the velvet, however, nothing would compare to the gathered champagne silk skirt with a rolled hem. It was meant to be tea length but on my tiny frame it hit the floor. It would glide over my peach fuzz covered legs and I was no longer seven. I was a woman. Regal in her posture and powerful. I commanded armies and ships. I could run as fast as the wind and move as elegantly as swaying tree tops. I was an empress and a titan. I was a master spy at a ball. And nothing could compare to “The Tornado” a move I had perfected, and the best way to exit a room. My hand would slip from waist line to mid thigh over the gathers and there between my forefinger and thumb I would pinch the fabric, hold it away from my body as if to curtsy and in the most dramatic way possible turn on my heel as fast as I could. The silk cascaded at my side making a whooshing sound and ever since the first time I heard that sound I knew I would never be sick of it.

Little did I know time would fly as fast as that silk. I went from seven to seventeen in no time. No more fabric between my fingers for fun now it was for school working on projects and even prom dresses. I learned to love sewing as I loved dress-up. From patterning, to pinning for hours. In an almost meditative state. To the crisp sound of my sheers gliding along countertops. Blades kissing to meet one another after finely splitting fibers. At this time I had to stop thinking like life was a game of dress-up and start figuring out what I wanted to be when I grow up. After all, I can’t be ten different people in one day. So I began looking into fashion schools and as I applied and told more people about it they asked what I wanted to do in fashion. I used to say I wanted to design for special occasions, prom and weddings. The events with beautiful fabrics because there is more room for art and grand expression. That opinion changed in one evening. It was my junior year and I decided to make my sister's prom dress as well as my own. Sometime in February on a school night, in a cold basement in Illinois. My sister had just come home from water polo practice. It was about eight or nine and in her zombie-esque state I called her down because I needed to fit her dress to her. She complained that the basement was too cold and her hair was too wet, and that the fabric was even colder and her sweats were far better. I told her to shut the hell up and hold still. I placed my straight pins along the back where raw edges of fashion fabric, lining fabric and interfacing met one another and a zipper would eventually go. Once I was done I watched as she walked over to the mirror on the other wall while she held the ulnhemmed skirt up so she wouldn't trip. Accessorized with a posture that told me all she wanted was to go to bed. She dropped the skirt at her feet before looking up to meet her own gaze. That's when I saw it. As her eyes looked over the iridescent navy skirt up to where it was gathered to meet bodice. To the silver waistline appliques, to the “V-ish U-neck” she had asked for; a tear fell. She looked at me in pure bliss and her first words were “I wasn't even sure of the color until now” That moment lives as fresh in my mind as the sound of silk. She began turning in the mirror eyeing the dress and the way it hugged her body swaying left then right. The thread that held the gathers on her skirt matched the way her cheeks pulled her smile from ear to ear. She even pulled “The Tornado” for old times sake. Those sweats became less appealing as she saw all the beauty the mirror faced her with. And that was it for me. I didn't love clothes for how pretty they are alone. I love clothes for how pretty the people in them become. Because for just a few hours we can all play dress up and feel like I did at seven. Battle ready and more powerful than we've ever been.

Once I finished the dress, with its zipper, hem, and all. And after its debut at prom I collected my masterpiece and put it on a hanger next to my own dress and the metal top kissed the wooden rail of my closet as I felt the weight of the layers of fabrics, lining, and interfacing. Kissed with a zipper down the back. Threads pulling at gathers like the muscles in my sister's cheek that painted her face on the dance floor that evening. The one where the two seven year olds both got a dress that felt like heaven. No longer did I wish to be a princess but the fairy godmother.