Rib removal.

I'm going to a black tie event on Friday. This is causing predictable wardrobe anxiety. I AM NOT GOING TO BUY ANYTHING. I don't need to, I do have stuff. Too much stuff. (Excuse the capitals, that is the shouty bossy voice in my head.)

I've opened my wardrobe, ummm-d and ahhh-d, tut-tut-tutted and let out a longing sigh. This is the normal pattern of things.

I do indeed have dresses that could be worn, but they're all bloody dirty. ALL of them. What kind of woman puts away her sparkly treasures dirty? Clearly not the sort of woman that I think I am. I am still always genuinely surprised that clothes are hung in my wardrobe filthy. Why would I do that? WHY?

In my head I never leave my dresses where they drunkenly fall or festering for months in my unemptied overnight bag. I never then pick up my crumpled lovelies and crookedly hang them on a coat hanger. I don't ignore wine, lipstick and food stains. No, I wouldn't do any of those things.

In my mind I always dutifully trot down to the dry cleaners the day after an event, where my dresses are carefully revived and then I lovingly hang them back in my closest (covered of course), ready for the next auspicious occasion. That's the theory anyway. That's the woman I am in my head. In reality I am none of these things. I am the type of woman that spends weeks kicking my clothes in the general direction of the closet and who eventually musters the energy to bend down and launch my clothes (clean or otherwise) somewhere into my wardrobe black hole. What a pig.

So there are frocks that can be worn. In fact, there are many. There are decisions to be made and doe-eyed dry cleaner pleading to be done. This requires effort, organisation and logistics. This is the cause of the ummm-ing, ahhh-ing and tut-tut-tutting. The sigh is another matter all together.

Sigh, sigh, sigh.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/babylonlanetales/5589897542

This dress makes me sigh with despair and kick things in fury.

The Dress is my dream dress. I think it dates from the 1950s, it is wool with a fur trim. Both The Dress and I know that it would transform me into Audrey Hepburn. Well it would if I could ever get the bloody thing on, which I never will. Never. I could starve myself for a month and I still wouldn't be able to get the wonderful wool to meet at the back. It's petite and the proportions are all wrong. I'm quite slim, but I'm not dainty. I'm tall and sturdy. Wearing The Dress would require the removal of a couple of ribs and half a thigh. Sigh.

It taunts me, flaunting its fairy like proportions every time I open the wardrobe door. It knows its power to wound me*. I keep The Dress locked away, sometimes even in the attic as punishment. It always makes me gasp with want when I stumble across it.

I have friends that I could give it to, but I can't. I won't. If I can't have it then no one else can. Awful I know and completely out of character, I have frequent girl crushes and always admire without avarice. Not in this case. I won't share it. Ever.

Instead of Audrey, The Dress has turned me into Annie out of Misery. The Dress is mine and I'm going to keep it imprisoned forever. It can mock me all it likes, if it pushes too far I may just chain it to the spare bed and cut off its fur trim.

Don't push me Dress, I'm warning you.

*You may be thinking that I should stop anthropomorphising my clothing, you are probably right. Remember the other Dress, you know the one that bites (here). At least I can get that one on my bleeding back...

Posted as part of Miss Lizzie's Magpie Monday, go here for competitions and vintage finds.

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