Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.

N.B. This was originally supposed to be an excited post about a wonderful new dress that I recently acquired. It was going to be full of beautiful photos, capturing sumptuous fabric, vintage styling, and va-va-voom shaping, and would make you all green with envy. I’d been thinking about it all week.

Monday comes around. I position said dress on hanger, in front of some artfully arranged flowers, because that’s how I roll. And proceeded to shoot.



Oh dear.



Pride comes before a fall.



Multiple falls, as you can see.





No matter what I did, the dress looked awful. The only way that I was going to take a half decent photograph of it was to put the damned thing on, and photograph myself. But, of course, this blog is based on me being anonymous (like a fashion superhero, remember??) and so a photograph of the dress would, on account of the charming neckline detailing, result in a photograph of my face. Which ruled it out as an option.

Although this seems like a bit of a blah thing to happen on a Monday, it’s actually proved something I’ve long suspected. Photographs are not representative of the real world – or rather, they represent it, but often poorly. I swear to you, this dress looks amazing in real life. Maybe the inability to capture its amazingness lies in my photographic naivety. Be that as it may. But it proves the point that I have been stressing to many of you – and you know who you are – that my reluctance to be photographed is not entirely down to self consciousness, but to the fact that I actually don’t translate well into film, as an objective fact rather than a distorted self-perception.

Now that I have a top-five ranked dress that’s in the same boat as me, I feel a lot better about this. Because I’ve proven, once and for all, that beautiful things can look pez in photographs.

The only thing for me to do, dear readers, is to tell you the story of how I met this dress, excluding the photographs I originally imagined, and let you use your imaginations…

I’d just finished a particularly gruelling fieldwork session when I got one of those wonderful instinctual nudgings.

For some people, their instinctual nudgings take the form of warnings about impending disasters, or loved ones in peril. For me, 99 times out of 100, these instinctual nudgings are shopping related. They go something like this:

‘Behold, blessed child, and praise the name of style, for, in the hallowed halls of David Jones, await pair of shoes. Make haste and rejoicing, for they will be in your size and on sale. But hark, on the morrow they shall be vanished, and all that remains will be dust and size sevens.’

Or, alternately:

‘BE NOT AFRAID, oh sanctified stylist, for that thing-you-need-but-do-not-know-as-yet-that-you-need, is nigh! Look to your left – no, the other left – and ye who have eyes shall see that fabulous vintage bread bin on ye exalted shelf.’

Some people think that hearing voices means you’re insane, but I like to believe it just makes you a bit special. Kind of like the wise men in the Christmas story.

Anyway, I have long learnt to listen to these voices, as they are always – without fail – correct on all matters of purchasing. So, when I heard said voice:

‘Glad tidings to you, wanderer in the wilderness of an Unnamed Fieldwork Location. Under the distant star of Fyshwick, in the little town of Down Memory Lane, awaits a dress. Oh come, all ye faithful, and be joyful in the triumph of the perfect vintage dress.’

I knew that, in spite of my gnawing hunger, tired feet, and field notes that would grow expodentially the more hours I left between end of fieldwork and typing them up, I had no choice but to do as the voice said. So, off I trundled to Fyshwick.

Again, I wish to stress that this blog is in no way sponsored, and, just like last week’s post about the farmer’s markets, this is purely a savvy tip from one shopper to another, but you really must go to Down Memory Lane. Located at the very end of Geelong St in Fyshwick (just keep driving, when I say it’s at the very end I mean the absolute absolute very end), Down Memory Lane is a treasure trove of antiques, collectables, clothes, books and furniture. I make a point of going at least once a month, a whole lot more in the lead up to Christmas, and always come away with something wonderful at a bargain price. It’s also one of the cleanest and most organised establishments I know of, which makes shopping there doubly nice – no need to disinfect the new-to-you goods when you get them home.

Arriving at DML, as I’m abbreviating it, I dutifully listened to the voice in my head and started trawling the racks of vintage clothing. There was a lot there which I liked, but nothing that I LOVED. Nothing, that is, that I was moved enough to get naked for. I always think that you should apply the same rules to shopping for clothes as you do with boys. If you’re moved enough by them that you’re ready and willing to get naked for them, then it – the dress or the boy – will probably reward the time and the effort of disrobing.

I was beginning to think, after a good quarter hour trawl, that my instincts had failed me, and that perhaps my subconscious was merely generating a phantasmic excuse to get me out of some fieldwork that had boarded the train to headache land. I turned in the direction of the hat rack.

But then, ladies and gentlemen, I saw it. I want to avoid the cliché of the dress buried under a mound of others, shoved at the end of the rack, amongst a swathe of dresses that were extra small, but I can’t here, because it’s one hundred percent true. A chink of rich brown fabric poked out from between some pasty florals. I investigated, and my investigations were rewarded with the following:

An Australian made, early 60's, chocolate brown pure wool double-knit jersey boucle fitted sheath with rear vent.

Sing, chiors of angels, sing in exultation. I don’t need to add any more to the description above, because I’m sure you’ve got the picture in your mind. It’s the pinnacle of vintage perfection.

I raced to the change room, threw the dress over my head, and slid the zipper up my back.

Ding dong merrily on high, it fitted! Perfectly! A centimeter shorter than ideal, but the hem, being generous, could be adjusted. I couldn’t get back into my normal clothes and hand over my cash fast enough.

Driving back to write up my fieldnotes, I almost had an accident, so adoringly was my gaze focused on the parcel occupying the passenger seat. I like to think that the fashion gods were smiling down on me then, and protected me from a rather unfortunate incident. Which, for any parties concerned about my driving, was actually the fault of another vehicle to give way – I was just a bit slow activating my defensive driving skills on account of reverent worship.

It all worked out in the end, and the dress is now hanging on the drying rack, gently dropping its hem without the harsh assistance of a hot iron and steam. I will hem it, and wear it, and love it, all the days of my life, or at least until it falls off my back in tatters. Amen.