Little Green Dress: On Fashion, and Fraught Politics

Little Green Dress: On Fashion, and Fraught Politics

The dress I’m holding in the photo is one I wore in my mid-teens. It’s homemade. I love its bell sleeves, that simple silhouette. Later, during my college years, my parents bought our family farm. The house had few closets, so Mom took garment bags full of outgrown clothing to my Salli grandparents’ house. The bags hung in a closet there for decades until an aunt found them and returned the things that had survived an invasion by moths. My mother then gave each of us adult kids the clothing that had been ours, the little green dress among them. Since rediscovering that dress, I’ve felt strangely anxious about it. I knew the dress had something to say, if it would just declare itself. A few days ago, I realized—anxiety is the point. The dress reminds me of my lifelong anxiety over fashion. It speaks to me of my fraught relationship with politics.

Donna Salli - Seated - Color

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