Sometimes the simplest items in our closets can hold the most memories. Take this black dress, for example. It’s an average cotton material, a simple design, and doesn’t even have a label (yup, no store or designer name here). Instead, it comes with a story.
I bought this dress for the equivalent of 12 Canadian dollars while I was backpacking through Southeast Asia. I was in Hội An, Vietnam, at the time; a city known for its row upon row of custom tailors and shoemakers. Whether you needed a ball gown, a summer dress, a finely-made suit or leather boots this place could make it exactly as you could dream it up in your head, and all for a fraction of the price that you’d pay back home.
Mind you, I was still on a very limited budget. So while my sister chose different fabrics and colours for her cocktail-style dress, I stopped in at a tiny shop that had caught my eye the past few days prior. It wasn’t much to look at compared to all the other tailors in the city (and I unfortunately don’t remember its exact name anymore), but it had a dress in the window that I really liked — and it’s the one I’m wearing in this post.
Of course, custom is custom, so the one I saw in the window was patterned and the straps were a simple halter neck instead of criss cross. But being tall, I loved the idea of purchasing a maxi dress that would actually hit the floor for me, and not hover high above my ankles like pretty much every single store-bought maxi dress has for me, ever.
Voila, the finished product. The woman worked fast, allowing me to pick up my dress the following day, and it was the exact length I needed. While I don’t wear this dress too often due to the plunging V-neck, it’s the perfect cross between casual and elegant, and it saw its fair share of sky-high cocktail bars in Bangkok, when I wanted to look good without standing out too much.
Now every time I wear this dress the memories come flooding back. Traipsing through the streets of Hội An, sipping cocktails on the rooftop of Sky Bar at Bangkok’s Lebua Hotel… the list goes on. And it’s those memories that inspire me to go back, see more, and travel the world. I can’t wait to blog about my upcoming trip… it may be months away, but it’s happening. And so many new memories are going to come with it.
Outfit Details:
Dress: Custom / Shoes: ZARA / Sunglasses: Prada
