Today, a dress came back to me. An ice-blue pleated dress, bought from Le Louvre on Collins Street. I first met this dress 25 years ago together with its original owner, a wonderful lady name Fee.
She had worn it to her daughter’s wedding. While I remember the dress, I also remember Fee as she often visited Irene’s over the years. I’m not sure at which point a customer becomes something more. We look forward to seeing them. We know their clothes, their stories, their families. We share little pieces of one another’s lives.
Fee has since passed away. Today, 25 years later, her beautiful ice-blue dress back in my hands. It had passed from mother to daughter. It was a very expensive dress when Fee bought it. Yet somehow it seems infinitely more valuable now. Clothes can be beautiful because of the fabric, the cut or the workmanship. Occasionally a garment becomes something more. It carries a life within it. A memory. A particular person. A moment we thought had passed.
This simple interaction reminded me why I have loved caring for people’s clothes for all these years. Sometimes we aren’t simply entrusted with a dress. We are entrusted with a little piece of someone’s history. It was lovely to see this beautiful blue dress again – and in a way, remembering Fee too.
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