A Room Like a Wedding Cake

Locked in the back room of a Greville Street vintage boutique ostensibly to try on a dress that lamentably proves too marred by rust stains to purchase, I snap furiously at all these gorgeous vintage textiles.

A Chinese silk robe singing with flowers and herons; a nineteenth century French chemise trimmed with hand-crocheted lace; a sari embroidered in metallic thread; a 50s seafoam green taffeta dress trimmed with sprigs of hyacinths; a 60s sheath encrusted with guipure lace thick like swirls of marzipan in robin’s egg blue; and finally a red wool hat swathed in tattered net.

It’s just like being inside a wedding cake.

The owner knocks and opens the door; I barely have a chance to hide my phone. She asks how I’m going. I smile sweetly and answer, just as though I have not secretly been stealing the souls of her dresses. I leave with my hands empty but my spirit full.