Pub­lished 12/20/2013

 Clothes real­ly are worth pass­ing on. Cer­tain pieces are made to last and are impor­tant ele­ments of the sto­ries that tell the his­to­ry of a love, a fam­i­ly, and how things came to be the way they are.

That hideous fur coat? It shows the streak of reck­less ele­gance that runs in the fam­i­ly, just as those point­ed leather cow­boy boots do, worn for generations.

First Ukrainian Dress I made in honor of my grandmother is here

But then some things are born, intro­duced––my sis­ter now has a wed­ding dress, two pieces that are part of her new fam­i­ly his­to­ry. It tells a sto­ry, one that includes so much about her life & love, the things impor­tant to her and the details of the way her wed­ding came about and was cel­e­brat­ed. Clothes are a way of pre­serv­ing and keep­ing tradition. 

Clothes also give hon­or––we hon­or our­selves (in the right kind of way!) when we dress nice for events that call for respect. We spend more mon­ey on things deserved, prop­er­ly earned and prop­er­ly acquired.

And in my case, I make cus­tom cloth­ing (and spend count­less hours on spe­cial pieces/garments) because it’s a way for me to express my grat­i­tude to those deserv­ing around me.

The dress I wore to my sis­ter’s wed­ding was a way of hon­or­ing my late grand­moth­er. She was an immi­grant who made her own way in Amer­i­ca, who stitched clothes to pay doc­tor’s bills, and who want­ed to live well and work for pros­per­i­ty that she and her hus­band would give to their chil­dren. Instead of buy­ing a cook­ie-cut­ter brides­maid dress, I res­ur­rect­ed and com­plet­ed some­thing my babcha start­ed with her own hands, her own idea of beau­ty to be giv­en to a loved one.

And now, as we come to the first Christ­mas after my babcha’s death, I want­ed to give some­thing to my Aunt Marusya that hon­ors her, too. Years of my aunt’s life have been giv­en in devo­tion to car­ing for my babcha as her health declined. She was one of my aunts to wor­ry about the lit­tle things before they ever became big enough to tell any­one else and wit­nessed my grand­moth­er suf­fer dur­ing her last years/days on earth.

 I want­ed my Aunt Marusya to have what I have, essen­tial­ly, cre­at­ed as a trib­ute to our roots, to this woman who was beau­ty and made and did beau­ti­ful things––a dress that is all of these things! It is sim­ple, but rich with detail, and authen­tic. It’s some­thing that will con­tin­ue as we wish to live through the things we do even after we are gone and some­thing that makes us feel beau­ti­ful when we wear it because it is real and made by some­one who “bless­es” it by her patience and dili­gence and cre­ativ­i­ty while mak­ing it.

I’ve had this project done for some­time, but need­ed to make adjust­ments before giv­ing it to my aunt and didn’t want to post any­thing until she received the gift. Below my sis­ter is mod­el­ing the dress (before the changes made).