Good morrow dear readers, are you OWOPping?  I am and I have (foolishly?) chosen to re-visit the pattern and indeed the very garments that I wore for the inaugural OWOP.   What pattern could hold such sway I hear you say?  Well it’s this:

Vogue 1739 (1996).  The bleached out looking dress on the right which is, and I quote:

“Fitted, A-line, lined dress, above mid-knee, has back zipper.”

Exciting stuff, hey?  Here’s my almost-but-not-quite-Vogue-1739 in liberty carline:

I adore this dress.  It wasn’t the first that I made but it was my most experimental.  It’s cut on the bias, I left out the zip and I’ve hacked at the neckline and made a weird keyhole/tie/button thing.  If we were to meet in person I would tell you the whole backstory to the weird keyhole, I would point out the remains of a yoke piece at the back and I would draw your attention to some very shoddy shoulder stitching.  But hey, I’m going to save you from all that, I’m going to tell you that this dress cheers me.  I save it for high days and holidays.  Days such as the one in 2011 where we took a trip to London Town to see Tate and Tennant making Much Ado About Nothing:

I love that this dress has been saturated in the joy of this and other Occasions-with-a-deliberate-capital-O.  It’s as if that joy is captured and reflected back on the most ordinary of days.  Sometimes we all need a bit of reflected joy.