you can also take it apart and braid it into an outdoor clothesline

no stars
-(❋)

The moment I saw this dress I had to have it. This kind of visceral reaction is usually reserved for works of art, and the occasional man, but the dress called out to me from a Certain Booklet Formerly Known as The Catalog, plus I had a magic discount code on which time was running out, plus I had the perfect shoes. See? Grey, dark grey, bright yellow, all leather Chies.

The dress is composed of a cocktail of mysterious ingredients, what my old boss would have called "a medieval cure for snakebite," but none of the fibers were fur or wool and there was a lot of white and some cotton, so I figured it might be a good restaurant dress for transitional times of year, when the a/c is still on. And I loved the way I thought the shoes would work with it. Synchronicity?

I interrupt to offer an important definition: restaurant dress. A restaurant dress must look good when you enter - moves gracefully with you, it must look good at the table, it must take well to jewelry, it must breathe because I go to restaurants to eat food and drink wine and I don't want to faint at the table and fall in a plate of gravy; it must have a little room in case I want dessert which is usually; and it must look good from the back in case I need to leave the table, meaning it must not get baggy from being sat in. The fabric must not give you a red face or a sudden rash on the wrist - you're at a table, face to face with Someone. The requirements are in fact so stringent that I often wind up in restaurant pants or restaurant twinset with skirt. However, a good restaurant dress will take you far.... like to good restaurants! I did not give this dress ANY stars.

There was a little drama concerning the arrival of the dress, nothing serious, we can skip that.
First the good news: I was right about the shoes.

Close look at fabric

As for the rest - I have returned the dress. Of course I still have my shoes.


The fabric is truly a modern miracle: it stretches but it doesn't breathe. It's not quite as plastic-y as the woven stuff on the seats of cafe chairs, and it is more flexible. For your money, you get: thick-n-thin white threads, medium lumpy black threads, the occasional fleck of silver glitter which shows up blue-grey in my close-ups, and other. The body of the dress is lined, but not the sleeves. The lining is polyester.

Small darts at the set-in waist point up and down to shape bust and bottom. 

The designer must have been channelling Sonia Rykiel 

ever so faintly because all of the darts are inside out.

The waist is set in, and the seam allowance on the waist strip is fringed, top and bottom.

Self-fringed waistband
close up

There is more of the self-fringing on the self-binding around the neckline and at the cuff. I like the shape of the neckline, but having those fibers in touch with my neck didn't appeal. It's possible that the synthetic components may offer some protection against all that self-fringing getting carried away with itself, but I wouldn't count on it. We know where it came from and what the prevailing standard of craftsmanship is .

I wish J.Crew had gotten this dress right. On the other hand, since I do not weave outdoor upholstery, I see no possible use for the fibers in my life should there be pilling and unravelling, and I suspect there will be.