Corduroy Faux Victorian "Maid's" Dress

Fiber Content: Polyester corduroy, I think
Year purchased: 1986, I think
Purchase price: I have no idea
Store: I have no idea. I want to say someplace like Dress Barn, but mainly because I find Dress Barn to be a funny name for a store.
Additional information/Oddities: This is the oldest dress in my collection.
How I wear it: with an apron, it is the perfect maid’s costume.

I was in high school when I got this dress. I took out the tag when I bought it because I didn’t want to know the size or the manufacturer and I hadn’t quite yet grown into my whole “buy it because you like it, not because of whose name is on it or what size it pretends you are” philosophy of clothing. A bunch of girls (blonde, designer oriented, honor students—needless to say, we didn’t keep in touch) with whom I was friends at the time kept saying it was a Laura Ashley and I let them say this. Except that Laura Ashley isn’t really known for doing black. (I bought a black Laura Ashley jacket at Salvation Army because it was Laura Ashley and black and I had to have it because of Cynthia Heimel. But I find I actually wear the jacket a lot right now because it is black and lightweight and goes with everything.)

This dress is quite flattering, in a severe, Victorian sort of way. It has a definite rural community/Amish "good dress" quality to it--as in "the dress worn to church and funerals." I have worn it with an apron in a number of acting class scenes where I played the maid (though now that I say that, I can’t remember a single one. Did I ever play a maid, in or out of acting class?)

I wanted one of my actresses to wear it for the photo shoot for My Sister In This House, but it turned out it didn’t actually fit her, despite what she claimed were her measurements on her audition sheet. Yes, this was the same actress who had her weight listed as 105 pounds and said "Well, I'm not 105, but I look 105." For all you actresses out there, don’t lie about your weight and measurements, you are only making life difficult for yourself and your costume designer. (I know Tyra Banks tells all the girls on America’s Next Top Model that they should have two sets of measurement-one which they give the client and one which are the real ones. I have no idea how that works. If I lied about that sort of thing, I would be too terrified that I would find myself in a costume which didn’t fit. I was once in an industrial for Wendy’s and they had asked us for our sizes on our audition sheet. I told them I was a size 6, because I didn’t want to be surprised on the day of the shoot. Sure enough, we get our costumes and everything ran small and all the girls who claimed to be size 2 were running around trying to trade their costumes with me, saying stuff like “but you are skinnier than me, I think this will fit you.” So heads up, saying you have a 23 inch waist doesn’t mean you will suddenly have one and the camera adds ten pounds so saying you weigh twenty pounds less than you do is a costume accident waiting to happen.)

Another nice thing about this dress is that it is warm.