My Mother’s Wedding Dress

I’ve just finished reading My mother’s Wedding Dress by Justine Picardi. It wasn’t quite what I expected. I’d read a magazine article had written about the book. It featured lots of pictures of clothes she had worn in the past and her reminiscing about how she felt when wearing them, why she bought them and how she felt about them now. I expected the book to be more of the same.

Instead the book was both angry and bewildered in tone. Picardi was clearly affected deeply by her sister’s death (and who wouldn’t be) and this theme of loss is one that runs throughout the book. She also seems to be rather obsessed with feathers.

However I intend to use what I expected the book to be about as inspiration for future blog entries. It made me think about clothes in books I read as a child. My favourite Enid Blyton story was The Enchanted Cloak (from Tales after Tea). I had a purple crocheted cloak (where is it now?) that I called by the name and used in endless games.

I remember the Fossil sisters in Ballet Shoes (Noel Stratfield) needing dresses for auditions. I remember Pagan, in Lace, taking her dead father’s clothes from the attic and finding a use for them and Maxim’s wonderful French style. I think Lace was the book that made me wear black and white for years because it claimed it was the best way to stand out I newspaper photographs (for maximum impact, wear stripes!). This was clearly before newspapers all had colour photographs. In fact, I’m sure I would of embraced a catalogue that came with my copy of Easy Living this month. All the clothes in it were black or white. I doubt I would have actually bought anything but I would have kept it next to my bed as a style bible.