The dresses - actually they were full-length gowns - took up an awful lot of cupboard space. On the other hand, their new house had plenty of storage space. And there was just two of them, so what need did they have to conserve space? If they were the conserving type they wouldn’t have sold their four-bedroom two-story only to exchange it for an even larger house, albeit with three bedrooms.
The larger house, with its spacious walls, some two-stories in height, better suited him. Fact was, over the years he had assembled quite an art collection. And he wanted to be able to hang everything, see it all. And that’s just what he did. But he was so busy continually that he rarely took the time to stand back, look at his precious paintings. Which didn’t stop him from always being on the look-out to expand his collection.
As for her, those ball gowns - for that’s what they really were - nagged at her. There was a time, once, when she wore them, when they attended formal events. That time was past. She couldn’t bear, she thought, to dispose of them. Besides which, even if she’d wanted to, she knew he would object. They were beautiful, and he loved beautiful things. Objects that were well-designed, well crafted, made of exceptional materials, expressing creativity and aesthetic perfection. He had a keen eye for these things, they delighted him.
So there they hung, sumptuous garments wonderfully well made, recalling a much earlier ante-bellum era, never to return to the world of fashion. Crepe de chine, gossamer net, silks, satins, bows, furbelows, flounces, ribbons, sequins, beading. In ivory, scarlet, the palest of melon colours, these were fabulously lovely gowns. When they’d bought them, in a mad spree of acquisition, he’d had her model them when they’d arrived home with their treasures, and he took photographs of her wearing them all. With their great layered, flounced skirts and close-fitting bodices.
She was a dainty woman. Even at thirty-five, which was her age when they’d bought those dresses in Tokyo. Of all places to purchase formal wear. But these were - or had been - formal rental garments, just like the coloured silk, massively embroidered marriage kimono that he also lusted after, as wonderful works of wearable art. The Japanese were extremely fastidious about everything; the food they ate, and the clothing they wore, particularly those worn on formal occasions. [ And what could be more formal than a wedding?] Where a social convention had arisen that part of the marriage ceremony saw the bride wearing a marriage kimono, so heavy the silk and embroidered lavishness of the garment that an attendant was required to ensure the bride was able to negotiate her way around without tripping over the kimono - far longer than her height. The bride’s face mirroring tradition, with its heavily white-powdered mask, the white extending over her neck, including the nape, where the collar of the kimono would be pulled slightly back. Beguilingly erotic, it was thought to be.
After the ceremony, though, during the formal dinner, there would appear stage central the modern Japanese bride, wearing a Western-style wedding gown, her face transformed with Western-style make-up; the stiffness of her Japanese white-face having slipped into the red-lipped, albeit shyly smiling new wife to whom toasts were being elocuted along with those for her new husband.
It was those kimono, those gowns, not all of them representing bridal wear, that were later sold at a fraction of even rental cost in the boutique sections of Tokyo department stores. When she had herself worn those gowns later - the Western-style gowns; the amazingly-embroidered kimono were meant to be hung on their walls, not worn - they caused a sensation. For one thing, her weight and shape hadn’t changed since she was in her 20s, and she looked far younger than her years, and the dresses, with her dark, curly hair, showed her off to as much advantage as she advantaged the garments.
They’d come across the gowns hanging in great spacious racks in a special area of the Mitsukoshi department store. Amazed at the presence of these sumptuous, luxurious, hand-sewn and -embroidered gowns made of the finest fabrics with immense care to detail. She had fingered them longingly. He had urged her to try one on. There was a series of very small change rooms set up for just that purpose. Go ahead, he’d said, give it a try; what can you lose? So, against her better judgement she selected a gown, took it along to the absurdly small change room and tried it on. He knocked at the door, said he wanted her to exit, wearing it so he could examine her radiant appearance in the gown. She did, he enthused about trying others on as well. She demurred, mentioned the money involved, and he laughed, then thrust another gown at her to try on.
The Japanese tend to be extremely curious about what foreigners get themselves up to. There hadn’t been anyone other than themselves looking through that rack of gowns. Suddenly, other shoppers took notice and began showing an interest. An interest that extended to a small bank of onlookers ranging themselves casually outside the change room. She was startled, wearing the second gown for exhibit, to see that she had become a focus of interest, and at her re-appearance onlookers clapped. She blushed, turned directly back into the change room to shed the gown and pull on her own clothing. But there was her husband again, with another gown, and the watching crowd erupted yet again in approving claps.
In their later postings abroad, those gowns were well utilized when the occasion demanded. There were six of them, and they more than paid for themselves from one posting to another, allowing her to dress the part of a diplomat’s wife. In one of their postings, where formal wear had been relegated to the back burner of society’s expectations, she had flaunted the informal eschewing of long dress, and worn the peach-coloured gown with its tiny seed pearls and self-cape, to great acclaim. She was photographed and appeared in the following week’s society columns, after which time formal wear was resuscitated; she had set a trend. (Which she hadn’t suspected, since, the following year, she chose to wear a slinky black silk calf-length cocktail dress with the long rope of black pearls she had acquired while still in Japan; and this time she was the odd-woman-out; everyone else emulating her costume of the year before.) Just shortly before they left on another posting.
But there they were, those dresses, taking up an entire closet that covered one whole wall of one of their spare bedrooms, and there they hung, for the next twenty years. Their presence alarmed her, haunted her, taunted her, reminding her of the time that had lapsed. She was now in her 70s. Even her granddaughter, who when much younger had so delighted in looking at those gowns, now thought them passe, uninteresting. Why had she ever imagined her daughter or one of her granddaughters might be interested in them? Clearly, they weren’t. This was an entirely different world they inhabited. All of them, actually.
Since they no longer attended diplomatic affairs, and hadn’t for over a decade. And even before her husband had retired such events were no longer the formal ones they had once been. She knew that specialty vintage shops might be interested in such garments. Among the cognoscenti, those with a large appreciation for the lushness of eternal fabrics, of classic design and sterling workmanship, these garments would have great appeal. And then again, perhaps not. Since there were no designer labels sewn carefully into them. They represented an earlier era, but were produced in the far East, where quality of workmanship was unparalleled but lacking the cachet of a Great House designer label.
So, surreptitiously, one at a time, she carefully folded the gowns, and took them over to her local Salvation Army thrift shop. Her husband would never notice. He hardly thought about them, so much time had gone by. And she had a yearning to see herself freed of their presence. She wanted to be able to open that clothes cupboard, and see a great yawning gap where the gowns hung. After all, wasn’t that the new trend? To rid oneself of all clutter. How did that mantra go? If you haven’t worn it in a year, discard it. Did that, she sometimes mused, extend to relationships?
Well, she hadn’t worn any of these exquisite garments in over two decades. She was now 70. Still the same shape, same weight, but her once-dark hair was decidedly silver, and her face, once smooth-complexioned was now weighted with wrinkles. Her eyes no longer bright, her carefully articulated eyebrows thickened, yet now barely visible. She was a ghost of what she once was. A faded, wrinkled elderly companion to her now-elderly husband.
Now this was something she rebelled against. She didn’t feel elderly. And there were times when she could look in a mirror and feel good about herself. Which she knew was entirely attributable to the fact that her faculties too were fading; her eyesight nowhere near as acute as once it had been. From a distance, viewing herself in a mirror, she could hardly make out the wrinkles, though the absence of her dark hair was remarkable enough. Her breasts did not sag, but her conformation had altered with the onset of menopause; her waist had managed, somehow, to thicken and her stomach to broaden. But not her derriere, and her legs looked as immaculately smooth and shapely as they always had.
But even if she had an occasion that demanded formal wear to attend, would she wear one of those dresses? Hardly; they would be a mockery; she, elderly and wan-looking in those scrumptious gowns crying out for a slender-waisted, sprightly young woman to adorn. (Even if her waist was still sufficiently slender to enable those long zippers to close.)
She felt guilty, nervous, carefully folding and packing the first of the gowns into a bag, and taking it along to the Salvation Army store. Leaving it there. As though she were abandoning something that had once meant something dear to her. As though she was leaving behind a bit of herself, her history. Preposterous to be sure, but she did find it difficult to part with them, even while she ardently wanted nothing else but to heave them out of her life, her cupboard, her home.
Five of those ball gowns were disposed of. She had no idea what had become of them. Who might have been attracted to them, who might have taken advantage of owning so elaborate a garment. Or what price might have been put on them. Not much, of that she felt abundantly certain, given the clientele of the place. But who knew? It had recently become attractive to many middle- and upper-middle-class people to recycle, to shop at such places.
One dress only remained. The bright red silk gown with the clusters of seed pearls sewn thickly over the bodice, with its hooped skirt that had a mind of its own when it was worn. Its puffed sleeves, and cinched waist under a shaped bodice made quite the fashion statement when it was worn. The skirt had swooshed about her as they had danced, away back then. It would also be the most difficult to part with. She had no idea, really why she felt so conflicted about their disposal, dispersal.
They represented a time long past, a tradition of excess that was no longer recognized in a society given over now to relaxed attitudes and lapsed social mores. They might be useful to someone as a costume representing a throw-back to another social era; to be worn to a masquerade party, or for Hallowe’en, for all she knew.
But she did know that difficult as it had been to shed herself of their ownership, she felt relieved finally to be rid of them. She slid back the door of the clothes cupboard, and carefully lifted the heavy, brocaded and beaded garment that shone with a life of its own as the bright satin caught the light from the overhead chandelier, and gently placed it on the bed. Then began folding it onto itself. No easy task; the overlapping skirts refusing to lay in place, the stiffened underskirts unfolding themselves as though resisting the intent to remove the garment from its long resting place.
It had to go. That long-ago time was just that, long ago. The gowns had little meaning for her now, though they were regarded by her husband as works of apparel-art, appealing to his aesthetic appreciation of creative objects spanning all categories of art production. He hadn’t noticed the absence of the other gowns which she had surreptitiously removed and taken away to the thrift shop. Nor would he notice the absence of this last one, until a complete inventory of their belongings was undertaken. And it would be.
Their collective property was to be categorised and inventoried and evaluated. Many objects of value would be retained, but many more were to be de-acquisitioned, sold to the highest bidder. In a general dissolution of joint ownership. Needful, since they were dissolving their intimate relationship. She would become an elderly, single woman, a divorcee. He was destined for another marriage, and she was bloody well damned if the much-younger woman whose welfare he had focused on as his future second wife would inherit anything that she had once worn.
Utterly illogical, she knew. But she also knew she was distraught, devastated, intellectually disabled, and there was logic to that.
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