Meet the Green Dress

When I do notice the dress, or when I think about it, it strikes me as lovely and timeless. I bought it in 1972 for my college's senior dinner dance, and I think I could still wear it today. I am speaking of style rather than size, as I am the same size that I was when I was eighteen. It is floor length, a beautiful bottle green, and originally brushed the tops of a pair of narrow, rust suede ankle-strap platform heels. It features a turtleneck that buttons up the back and folds over, and full, long sleeves that terminate in buttoned cuffs; quite virginal, considering what an exhibitionist I was in my salad days. The Maid Marian theme is played out in the dropped waist that comes to a point at mid-abdomen, and the skirt is full of movement and serpentine grace.

It is made of Qiana, a fabric that makes my spell-check shift into a hasty red underline. Qiana is a stretch knit with a sheen to it, and it clings to the figure or flows off on its own. It is probably a petroleum byproduct, the result of invention during the Vietnam War, just as nylon replaced silk during WWII. I don't care. I loved the dress on sight and love it still.

I bought it in a boutique in Wilkes-Barre, PA, with the last of my college grant money, the money that was supposed to support me through the rest of my senior year. I paid seventy dollars for the dress, which, in the dog years of 2010 would be four hundred and ninety dollars. It probably would be very expensive today, what with inflation and the passage of time and the scarcity of Qiana factories.

It is a dress with a zillion buttons on it, in addition to one long zipper up the back. The buttons are round, like green marbles, and exactly match the color of the dress itself. I would hate to lose one. Where on earth would I find a replacement today?? There is a row of them up the back of the turtleneck, that cleverly fold to the outside once they are buttoned, and each sleeve has a row of them up the long cuff. All this makes the dress very challenging to get into solo, especially that turtleneck.

The adornment that I got to go with the dress was a faux gold necklace that depended onto my sternum like a series of beaten rectangles with a flat temple bell at the end; a flat, silent temple bell. I was very conscious of not entering the dance like Elsie the cow.

I suppose this bit of history might be why I wanted it back badly enough to fib to my sister. I really did want it back. It still fits me, and it doesn't fit her, flowing though it is. I am lucky enough to be built just like my mom, while she shares the bosc shape of the women on my dad's side of the family. Spell check doesn't recognize the word "bosc", either. Fruit, you moron, pears!!

So the dress is hanging here, and I haven't a clue about what I want to do with it. Maybe nothing. Maybe I wanted it so that I could write about its history.; 38 years of hanging in closets and on costume racks, of lying wadded up in trunks and suitcases, of dancing and dining, of being borrowed and worn, of being performed in.

My sister borrowed it from me more than once. This last time, she said she wanted it to be an inspiration to her writing, a gift which she always said that she had, but one that she never realized. This is another reason that I reeled in the dress and flopped it back on board my own little raft. Balsa wood encloses and protects those fragile ropes that hold the raft together. Thor Heyerdahl proved that on the Kon Tiki. I feel like Thor Heyerdahl. Maybe I will be the one to write about the green dress.