Cinderella’s Sisters’ Closets
When you go op shopping (opportunity shopping, or thrifting), one of the most important things you need to take with you is a large dose of VISION. These days some secondhand stores are highly curated, but every now and then you will stumble across one that has not been rigorously edited.
There, the racks are overstuffed higgledy-piggledy, and it requires a discerning eye to sort the true gems from the dregs of the most puritanical and dowdiest of spinster great-aunties’ moth-eaten, lavender-infused closets. Here most of all it pays to be vigilant. Here you must see past ill-fitting shapes and not-quite-right lengths and ugly embellishments, for with the aid of a pair of scissors or the switch of a few buttons, a dress worn by an ugly step-sister is suddenly worthy of a princess-to-be!
… a dress worn by an ugly step-sister is suddenly worthy of a princess-to-be!
Take this pretty cute dress for instance. It’s black pleated crepe, with a pattern of white and red squares. The skirt has a lovely swishy weight. It’s elegant. But at first glance when I saw it hanging on a rack it was not elegant: it was ugly. It was wearing a modesty collar.
This collar was so frightfully hideous that it would have put off souls made of less sterner stuff than mine: I saw past its cheap cotton frills, its nasty polyester crocheted doily inserts. I saw what it could be with the summary excisement of this excrescence! Also, it was transparent and enormous, and one of the pearl button fasteners on the cuff was hanging by a thread.
I took it into the change room, tucked the collar in, wrapped a belt around my waist, and voila! Sold.
I couldn’t wait to get it home that evening to rip off the abomination around the collar. It was one of the most satisfying uses I had ever put my seam ripper to. I washed it, sewed the button back on, added fun red accessories, a vintage black slip underneath, and subsequently wore it to work, basking in the warm glow of admiration. One more vintage dress saved from oblivion!
Photos: Yesterday
