Love at First Sight

When it’s right you just know it. That’s how I feel every time I see… well, a dress I simply must have. It’s how I felt when I saw this Annelore, micro-mini, lushly patterned dress featured on the cover of WWD a zillion years ago (pre kids, pre marriage, circa steadily dating current beloved husband). This dress also marked a turning point in my relationship with Tom (said beloved husband).

After a year of dating, and Tom’s pleas for guidance, bewildered as he was by the mercurial tastes of his fashion-fixated new love (and in spite of my discomfort with asking for what I want… still working on that), I decided I would not leave the next occasion for gift-giving to chance. Instead, I casually (read: boldly) left a copy of the WWD cover article on Tom’s pillow in the little apartment we shared behind Canter’s Deli. I then worked into conversation how my life might be made complete if I could somehow add that dress to my ever-expanding closet. He smiled noncommittally, if a little gratefully (projecting here, something at which I excel).

Days, and then weeks went by and, save for the occasional leading questions about my size, we never spoke of it again. Until one day, he handed me a box. Inside of which, underneath carefully placed tissue, was my sartorial dream come true! He’d searched high and low for the dress, no easy feat in the pre-internet shopping days, ultimately finding it in a San Francisco boutique.

I know it seems (is) exceedingly shallow, nay naïve and probably misguided, but somehow that moment symbolized for me, with laser focus, his willingness to stretch beyond his comfort zone in order to make me happy; and to accept and love me for who I am (recovering fashion obsessive). It affirmed what I already knew, that we would live happily ever after. And here, sixteen years later, we are still going strong. Tom, the dress, and me.