The Brown Dress circa 1996

Before continuing with our rock & roll adventures in sewing, a quickstep back through the decades. Just as the Machine was an intrinsic part of my childhood, so were the clothes it made. Many are long gone, recycled, disappeared in the fabric of time. Some, however, survived changing fashions and tastes and still hang in my wardrobe, triumphs of engineering and luck and none, surely, more triumphant and lucky than the little brown dress.
If ever a dress had magical powers, this was it. An uninspiring colour, not cerulean blue or vermilion red, just plain chocolate brown. Not filigree lace or spider’s silk, just cheap needle-cord. And yet there was fairy dust in the making of this simple shift that became first the Pulling Dress then the Party Dress and then the Respectable if Rather Too Short Work Dress.
Its journey started in the haberdashery section of a large French department store. In air heavy with perfume were rows of high desks laden with heavy catalogues – Butterick, Burda, Vogue – all stuffed with a bewildering array of skirts, dresses and blouses modelled by women with glossy hair and smug smiles.
The idea was that you weren’t only buying the pattern, but stylish perfection and elegance too. Except, sadly, on our awkward teenage bodies nothing ever looked quite like the ideal we’d bought into. It didn’t stop us trying though, drawn as much by the process, the joy of discovery and creation as by the finished product.
The brown dress could have been long, short, scooped or square-necked, belted or not. I often wonder what would have happened if we’d taken other routes, flirted with frills, embraced other colours and ended up with Not The Brown Dress. It might have been beautiful, but would the entire course of history have been different?
I loved that dress. So simple, just two panels and a zip up the back, but it fitted perfectly. I wore it all the time and it was there at the important moments of my life. Wooing back an undecided boyfriend who had started locking his bedroom door at night. Shaking the hand of Bob from Blockbusters at an awards ceremony. Meeting and being inspected by potential in-laws. Parties. Job interviews. Other boyfriends. Other in-laws. Sadly only one Bob. And so on, and on, through 14 winters and 14 summers and now, almost spring, it’s still there in the wardrobe. Showing its age, the fabric wearing thin, a smattering of wrinkles that won’t iron out. It has been altered over the years, let in a little, let out a little, the hem lengthened and shortened and now just a sweep shy of respectable but in essence, unchanged.
I still wear the dress but with a slight feeling of sadness, knowing that our days together are numbered. Then, with a lift of heart, I remember that somewhere, in a drawer, wrapped away in a fading fug of perfume and smugness, is the original pattern for the dress, waiting, biding its time…