Winter Blossoms

I like to think of my closet as having an ebb and flow to it... some dresses flow in, like the lovely Winter Blossoms.

And, finally, some are flowing out. Disco Mondrian is still up for grabs, but some people have wondered what became of our first Dressopotamia Giveaway. Little Moebius was on the verge of going homeless until one brave soul stepped up and left a comment on Facebook...

The lucky winner's name is Bojana Coklyat, or as I like to call her, internationally renowned art star Bojana Coklyat, also known as one of the few people whose closets I envy. We go way way back, but there's no favoritism here... now that I think about it, she also got my wedding bouquet by virtue of being the only one around who wanted it.

Bo is a mega-talented painter, as you can see, and also happened to give me Winter Blossoms, even before she knew that it would someday become famous.

Does that count as the circle of life?

Winter Blossoms had one drawback: a coffee-colored stain right on the crotch. Dry cleaners shrugged their shoulders at it and told me to try my luck elsewhere. But I couldn't resign myself to having an unwearable supercute dress. I experimented with wide scarves as belts, hoping that the ends would sway just so and cover up the stain. No dice.

Then my friend Jon wrote me concerning Electric Avenue, another beloved besmirched beauty. He suggested using Biz on it, which gave me hope and sent me to The Hairpin's excellent (no, really) column on how to clean things, which suggests OxiClean for basically any kind of stain. So I tried it on both dresses, and — sacre bleuing! — the stains lifted out as if by magic. This opens up a whole new world of vintage.

I am always a sucker for a matching beltlike accessory (can't quite call this a sash), not least because Winter Blossoms is a little big and this matching beltlike accessory gives it a bit more shape.

The print is just abstract enough to be dramatically ambiguous. Do I just see flowers in everything? Perhaps.

My favorite design element here?

The zipper.

They don't often go all the way up like that.

It doesn't go all the way down. That would be a little weird for a dress.

In conclusion: I love it when my friends pass clothes along to me, I love passing clothes on to my friends, zippers are always a good idea and OxiClean works miracles — pass it on!

All photos by Claire Loeb!
All paintings by Bojana Coklyat!