"Once Upon a Dress..."

I am a bit obsessed with dressing my 3 year old daughter.

I never knew (or even noticed/cared) how beautiful and wonderous childrens’ clothing could be until I became pregnant with a girl. Then one day, as I was heaving towards the 9th month in a big mass of belly and fatigue, UPS came calling and brought me  a package, a present from one of my mother’s friends. I proceeded to open the unassuming brown box that it came in and navigated my way, rather laboriously, through the endless layers of packing material, wrapping paper and box-within-the-box. I finally reached the final layer, a flawlessly execution of folded white tissue, le denouement, or so it seemed, given its creaseless perfection. I pulled it back with the anticipatory reverance one always reserves for this last moment, and yet was still unprepared for what I found underneath. I made a short gasp for air, for I was breathless. It was, a Dress.

It was not just any dress. It was a little girl’s dress, in all the storybook manner I had ever imagined a girl's dress would be, which perhaps I did not actually stop to imagine, as an adult. Until now. As such, the dress had neither the perfunctory gaggle of pastels and frills reserved for "baby gifts", nor, to my secret relief, the gender reduction of neutral colors and unisex themes  one found in ... well, unisex baby clothing and "organic" clothing. It was a girl’s dress, simple and pure. A wonderous evocation of nursery rhymes, charming grace, Heidi and childhood innocence. And as such, the most exquisite little dress I had ever seen. A cotton red gingham dress with a scalloped hem, with a matching embroidered cardigan. It could not have been more perfect that the embroidery was of a little girl wearing … well, of course, a dress.

And in that simple cotton dress it finally occurred to me that, wow, I was going to have a GIRL. The dress jolted within me that beautiful, precious and sublime knowledge, which had thus far been the imagining of an embryo, and eventually, (and affectionately) a “bean”. Now, she was indeed, a girl … something I had somewhat felt a bit apologetic in yearning for, particularly amidst the hype and hoopla for "mod" and equal-opportunity baby products such as Skip Hop, Bugaboo and BabyBjorn. Instead, here was a dress. Not a onesie. Not even a skirt. A dress. For my girl.

My daughter was born in the summer of 2006. All of the blessings in my life heretofore paled in comparison to that moment. My life was instantly changed, altered, transported to the sweet and sublime foreverafter. I became a Mother to a Girl.

Amidst all the life-altering, earth-shattering and indescribable joys, challenges, love and work that followed in the days, weeks and months to come, I kept coming back to this one small thing that brought me a most mundane-yet-not-mundane and trivial-yet-not-trivial pleasure and constant in my otherwise transported and upheaval’d world. A little dress… though still too big for my newborn to wear, as it was size 18 months. I placed the dress neatly on a hanger, and hung it from the pull of my daughter’s dresser drawer where I could see it from the rocking chair where I nursed. I gazed at it as if it were an object of art on the wall of a museum, admiring it, dreaming upon it, referring back it, as the object of a certain revery whilst nursing my beautiful gazing-at-me and growing-before-my-eyes child - my ongoing and primary activity in the first year of my daughter’s life.

Finally, the day (and occasion) arrived when she was old enough to wear the dress. The moment I had been waiting for, for 18 months. (well, 12 months, since European sizes run small, thank goodness!) I debuted my daughter’s dress (and my daughter!), to my family-at-large, at my cousin’s summer wedding.

From that day, my obsession was sealed. I was absolutely taken with the experience of dressing my daughter so beautifully, which I resolve to now do everyday, and not just for a special occasion for which I would have to wait 12 months.

I have since dedicated perhaps an unnatural (yet immensely satisfying) amount of time to the matter of dressing my daughter. But I have done so without having the means to purchase a Jacadi dress for everyday of the week. Indeed, this is perhaps why this endeavor has consumed so much of my time – because I have spent so much time searching in ordinary retail stores for clothing pieces that would look beautiful and unique, if creatively mix’d and match’d with other similarly “ordinary” pieces (with the occasional Jacadi-esque piece thrown in for good measure … purchased on sale of course!)

And so the story of the Dress has become the story of Dressing Up My Daughter, everyday. My blog is, as such, a picture book of sorts, filled with photos of outfits inspired by an erstwhile, simpler, more wonder-filled world - a world not yet intruded upon by Hanna Montanas, Britney Spears and Barbies. These are the storybook moments I will pull out of my daughter’s closet --- and perhaps, out of my nostalgic yearning of innocence --- one dress(ing) at a time.

And so I begin.

“Once upon a dress …”

 
  

Comments

[Hampers]

Nice blog with a nice picture of cutie and the dress looks awesome making the blog looks perfect. Keep up the good work.

[Once Upon a Dress]

thanks Hampers, I hope you will continue to check in!

[Kari]

Angie! Love it... You are such a good writer and cannot wait to learn more from you. In my Southern town of high priced boutiques and hair bows that are bigger than our poor baby girls' entire heads, I quest to keep my daughter's wardrobe affordable and un-ridiculous. Keep it up, girlfriend!

[Once Upon a Dress]

Thank you so much! LOL about the bows, but I bet Brooke loves that!