Tulle Death Do Us Part Read Online Free PDF Page A

the Golden Jubilee, but what does everyone else wear? Vintage clothes from any era?”
    “They can wear what they wore to the fiftieth, if they want, or whatever best represents their own history.” My dad chuckled. “I can just imagine the preponderance of academic robes,” he said.
    Aunt Fee nodded in surprise. “That’s true. I plan to suggest military uniforms, as well, so I can thank people for their service to our country.”
    “Make thanking them part of the event,” I said. “They and their families will appreciate it.”
    While my father and Aunt Fee congratulated each other on my brilliance, I realized that attendees would feel safe playing dress-up, because who knew that clothes had tales to tell? “I hope I’ll have plenty of time to examine the outfits submitted for the
This Is Your Life
segment?”
    “Of course. Eve and I intend to help you,” Fiona said. “You know, handle what you tell us to.” She gave me that “between us” look, because she knew there would be certain clothing items I might not want to touch.
    “Come on, Mad, say yes,” she urged. “We’re also going to have a contest on the night of the event, and there’ll be prizes for the best vintage outfits. Most outrageous, most original, most famous designer, greatest vintage find, best oneof a kind.” Aunt Fee bit her lip. “Will you be on the panel to judge those, too? You’ll love the event! Think of the outfits you’ll get to see and you get to wear your favorite yourself.”
    My father squeezed her waist, like maybe she shouldn’t have told me about the second round of judging quite yet. Then he pulled me against his other side. “Nobody can judge vintage clothes like you can, dumplin’.”
    “Oh, bring out the big guns. When I’m Daddy’s dumplin’, I’m ruffled and starched.”
    “Is that a yes?” he asked.
    “No, but you can keep trying.”
    “As we said, you only have to choose five
This Is Your Life
rs,” Aunt Fiona said. “That’s all we’ll have time to get into the segment.”
    “You have some pretty good arguments, but I have a better one: I can only choose one. I’ll alienate half my local clientele. They’re my bread and butter.”
    Aunt Fiona’s grin grew. “You won’t be choosing people, dear. You’ll be choosing anonymously owned outfits.”
    I couldn’t stop my shoulders from sagging. It had been a long day, and I was worried about a girl named Robin. I didn’t need this pressure, too.
    From her caramel lizard-skin box bag by Nettie Rosenstein, Aunt Fiona took a stack of assorted photos—square, oblong, jagged- and straight-edged, dated and not, with some streaked old Polaroids we had to squint at to see.
    Fee didn’t know it, but I probably would have caved sooner if I’d noticed her carrying the bag I gave her for her birthday. In the fifties, that Nettie Rosenstein bag was a pricey sought-after piece of vintage magic.
    I perused the photos, some color, some black-and-white, with an unbiased eye and great interest. Several group candids and posed shots, then pictures of attendees dancing in an awesome assortment of gorgeous vintage formals, the kind you wore crinolines beneath. My heart picked up speed, until the sight of one, where just the hint of a chevron pattern made me sit hard on my mom’s old wing-back chair behind me.
    I believed in Aunt Fee’s sense that my psychometric gift was a mandate from the universe, but did I have to get hit upside the head with it?

Four

    There is a playfulness…reflecting the growing sense that women were rebelling against the conformity of the 1960s “Mod” look and now wanted to plunder the dressing-up box of history. This new romanticism must have felt startlingly new and would continue as a big influence throughout the 1970s. It was from this moment that the miniskirt went into a decline.
    — DESIGN MUSEUM,
FIFTY DRESSES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

    I examined the next photo, one that would literally change the course of my life.