MY PRINCESS DRESS

If I cared for fashion at all, I’d wear cartoon clothes.   Even maybe Minnie Mouse shoes---if the occasion were right, and if the magic spell which keeps them on works for people as well, I think they’d feel REALLY good.

And the soft lines of the dresses--- all princesses seem mired in the attire of their OWN countries and days---Grimm days and Mother Goose days and the times of HC Andersen, as well as even more ancient stories      They go straight from woodcut images in books to screen, it seems, though the blue-dress Cinderella’s semi-panniers reflect a century later than her purported origins in folk tales.

Anyway, there’s just something about the 3-D-ish fantasy curves and swirls of the clothes, with such shadows and shadings which render them all poufy and grand, and all of which look as if they should be floating in a vast closet, each dancing to and fro on Little Bird Hangers.   

They'd never wrinkle, nor grow too tight; you’d never need support garments, nor makeup, nor scratchy petticoats---just the lovely contours of the light-as-air clothes, which would make us all Cinderellas, or Belles, or Beauties.

I have ONE picture of me, in a Princess Dress---it’s drawn by GrandDaughter Gracie, when she was five.    She sat at her little crafts table for quite a while with her crayons, then handed me the slightly-crumpled page.    There we are, both in our bright pink clogs (which I think are this century’s version of the Minnie Manolos), with her hair in a Pippi Longstocking-Do and me with a waistline I haven’t seen since 1986.

“This is you and me, Ganjin,” she said.   “I’m the blonde.”