I found 'the' dress a few months ago... out searching for a wedding outfit. It found its way to me in the form of a navy blue one-shouldered cotton number - classic and understated yet elegant and soft. I knew it was 'the one' for me. Needless to say, I did all of the above in that dress at that wedding and fell in love (with the dress, I was too busy dancing to find a man). Obviously 'the' dress needed a good wash, but I was eagerly anticipating its next appearance.
Stupidly, I decided to wear it to Glastonbury Festival a month after the wedding. I had a Sunday ticket... surely not much could go wrong? I though, I've never been to Glastonbury as a punter (usually work on Info or in the Pussy Parlure for the duration of the festival), so I will glam-up and arrive looking and feeling fresh. No such luck.
The dress got splattered with mud the moment we squelched our way on site. For the duration of the day the dress managed to stay neat and sweet. I got a ridiculous tan mark from the one-shoulder aspect, but was blissfully unaware of this until the following day.
No, the real trouble started when I met up with Charlotte - and we were, to put it mildly... a bit sloshed. Both a bit bored of the naff dance routine that Cool and the Gang were brandishing on stage, we decided to head to Shangri-La before everyone else descended. What fun we had at Arcadia, dancing to the energetic Gentleman's Dub Club. What fun we had with the reggae crowd in the London Underground... even donned some fake moustaches in order to dance around and watch a few queens perform in the NYC Downlow club. The piece de resistance - and when 'the' dress got really wrecked happened at the pinnacle of our odyssey.
Charlotte and I stumbled upon the Snake Pit, a massive club which was fairly crowded when we got in. The music was thumping, so we decided to get a place at the front. Through the stage curtain, we could see two nearly naked women being dressed in balloons - covering just there private areas. As they came out onto the stage some crazy techo-sleaze came onto the sound system and the 'strippers' began bursting the coloured balloons with giant pins. What we didn't realise was that the balloons were filled with paint: UV paint. We were standing targets and swiftly regretted our front-row positioning. Next thing I knew Charlotte was staring at me with a UV yellow eye. Ekkkk! It was inside her eye... she tried to get it out. I thought we'd have to go to first aid... but she insisted it was ok. Eventually she got it all out, but then we looked at our persons. Uh oh, guess what was on the dress?
'The' dress looked like a Jackson Pollock, had he experimented with LSD. At first I thought (drunk remember), well, it'll be cool. I can still wear this. Except for the fact that I'm 28 and I can't get away with the fluoro look any more. Surely the UV paint will come out, if they're going to use it in a show, surely it has to be 'health and safety approved'?
I didn't dwell on the paint for long, Charlotte was recovered and we carried on our adventure. The next day, I had to put the dress back on and then I felt like a bit of a disgrace. The paint was brighter than ever, and didn't look like it was going to budge. Once I got home, I asked mum what I should do. We soaked it, and tried to dislodge the paint, but it looked like it was acrylic-based.
I tried several other methods, but nothing seemed to work. Scraping appeared to be the only sure way of extracting the particles, but that was time consuming.
The dress will never be the same, it peaked too soon. I should have been more respectful.
It serves me right I suppose. 'The' dress should only come out on very special occasions, that's what makes it timeless. Sigh.
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