Silk Dress

Martha Kennedy 7 Comments

Hong Kong is the place for tailor made clothes. I know because I did that. I got a pretty camel hair suit made just for me. My ex got a three piece suit of Scottish tweed. Best of all was Frances, my ex-mother-in-law, then 70 years old. She got a silk dress. It was beautiful silk she’d picked it out from a bolt in the tailor’s shop that, itself, was everything you want a Chinese tailor’s shop to be — a hole in the wall on a busy Tsim Sat Tsui street.

When our clothes were ready (two days later) we all went down to get them. The suits were great, but Frances’ dress was the best of all. She tried it on in the shop to be sure the length was right. When she came out of the dressing room to show us — and the tailor — she spun around like Cinderella ready for the ball. The print was a soft design of flowers in lapis, cornflower and pink.

I never needed the suit because a year after returning from China, the ex and I moved to San Diego. Everyone there thought my clothes were funny and, anyway, who needs a camel hair suit in San Diego? It’s absurd… My ex didn’t need his suit, either.

But Frances wore her silk dress often.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/tailor/

7 thoughts on “Silk Dress”

  1. Colleagues have told me about the perfect way of the Hong Kong tailors. They measure you , make the clothes and they are a perfect fit and the material is perfect quality

  2. The last thing I had “made for me” … I’ve had many things adjusted for me, but I think made for me and me alone was the clothing my mother made. The clothing she made for me to wear to college was elegant beyond anything I’ve ever imagined. My lord she was brilliant and creative. I didn’t start to appreciate her work until I was IN college — in elementary school, I just thought I looked weird, but in college, looking different was something else entirely. She made me shiffon blouses with turtle necks and bell sleeves that were sheer, so she bought me underwear and dyed it the same color. Men would gather around trying to figure out whether I was wearing underwear at all — and yes, it was definitely on purpose. Mom seems to feel that when you are young and fresh and bouncy, that’s when you should flaunt it because when you got older, you wouldn’t want to.

    Not a great mother to a little kid, but fabulous for a grown up 🙂

  3. I learned to make my own clothes, little did I know I was a fashionista lol and ahead of everyone else. I was good at making clothes fit the individual. I made sleepwear, lingerie, everything from intimate apparel to coveralls made of jean material and not an easy thing but they turned out perfectly. It’s a lost art I think as you can buy clothes for far less than you can make them these days. Not that I can see to do it but I enjoyed it so much. There was a great deal of satisfaction in taking a piece of cloth and turning it into an elegant garment. Yep, those were the days! 🙂

    • I enjoyed designing stuff I really wanted to wear and then sewing it. Some of the outfits were pretty irrational now that I know more… 🙂

      • haha, but fun at the time right? I loved sewing, it was reasonable and you could make anything and everything to your own specs adding a desired bit of bling or whatever to truly make it your own 🙂

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