It's Fashion Friday!: Why Won't This Fugly Dress Stop Haunting Me?!

Dolce & Gabbana Needlepoint Lace Dress

            This dress just won’t go away. This horrible, dreadful, no good Dolce & Gabbana dress seems to be everywhere, and I can’t figure out why. It is one of the ugliest dresses I have ever seen! I have seen it on the television show Fashion Police, thanks to Emma Stone's poor decision to wear it. And I keep seeing it in magazines. UGGGGGGGGH. Can I tell you why I dislike this dress so much? Do you want to know? Too bad, if you don’t. I’m going to detail it anyway.

            Let’s start with the sleeves. These poofy elbow length sleeves are the exact same sleeves that were on the dress my mum made for my fifth grade graduation dress. I loved that dress. And it was okay for me to love those sleeves then, because I was ten. Those are little girl sleeves. Those sleeves were also on MANY of the dresses I saw in this catalog that came around Christmas and Easter time – I think it might have been called the Toy Soldier, or something along those lines. They carried matching dresses for sisters and mothers. They were quite expensive, and a lot of their dresses had a similar sleeve aesthetic. I couldn’t figure out then why my mother wouldn’t want to wear a dress just like mine! NOW I get it. Thank you, mother, for not ever dressing like a ten year old while you were in your forties. The only place where it is appropriate for grown women to wear sleeves like that is on sister-wife compounds hidden in the west in Arizona or Utah or Nevada… and that is because those women have so many other problems that sleeves are the last thing they need to be worrying about.

            When I think of the sorts of things that people needlepoint, samplers, pillows, and decorative wall-hangings come to mind. Large quantities of lace make me think of curtains. This dress is about half lace, half needlepoint. It should be in someone’s living room. In a window? Although, I certainly wouldn’t want it in my window. The needlepoint is sort of strategically placed on the dress to say, “Here are the wide parts.” And it would be difficult for a young girl to wear that much lace and not look old (or like she should, perhaps, be in a coffin). It covers the knee, so it’s business length, and there’s nothing coquettish about it.

            The pattern: oh my. My mum – she saw it and recoiled. She’s Pennsylvania Dutch, a quirky sect of German Americans with a culture that remains fairly German countryside. “It looks like a German tablecloth,” she said. To which I responded, “No German would allow that into their home.” I could see my Grandma intentionally spilling jars of pickled beet juice on this dress so that it would have to be thrown in the trash. (If you are unfamiliar with pickled beets because you do not have family hailing from Amish country or others places where they might pickle beets, they are mulberry red. They sit in mulberry red Crayola crayon colored juice that does not come out of any textile, can stain countertops, and for all intensive purposes is indelible). My mum and I then decided that this pattern is what would happen if a little Chinatown knockoff shop tried to replicate a Pennsylvania Dutch needlepoint tablerunner. So, you silly rich girls with your bad taste, go ahead and spend eleven grand on this dress and wear it out. See what happens! Forget the paint guns, I’m going to go find some pickled beets. WATCH OUT! I’m coming for you!