Polka dots, to be precise! My love of polka dots must have started when I was about 6 or 7, when I received my Toni Fashion doll for Christmas. She was dressed in a red and white polka dotted dress, with a lovely tan coat, red hat, and high heels. Here she is, over five decades later:
This dress could easily have been featured in Vogue Pattern Book for February/March of 1957!
Christian Dior, who died in 1957, was a big fan of polka dots. Here’s what he said about them in his Little Dictionary of Fashion (first published in 1954 and now available on Amazon, published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2007):
“…They are lovely, elegant, easy, and always in fashion. …According to their color, they can be versatile… Black and white for elegance; soft pinks and blues for prettiness; emerald, scarlet, and yellow for gaiety; beige and gray for dignity.”
For my “going away” outfit when I was married in 1973, I made a beige silk suit with a red and beige polka dotted blouse. Sadly I no longer have either the suit or the blouse, but… never one to throw away any scrap of fabric that can be used for something, I found a piece of the silk blouse fabric in one of my “fabric” drawers. It was an odd shape, but the more I looked at it, the more it became apparent that I could actually make a scarf out of it. Here’s what I did:
I cut the silk into two pieces, each with a true-bias end. I marked it with chalk to get a precise cutting line.
I joined the two pieces together with a flat felled seam and hand-hemmed around all four sides.
Here it is finished and ready to wear.
Last summer when my husband, Tom, and I were in California to see our son, Nate, I made a memorable trip to Britex Fabrics on Geary Street in San Francisco. I knew when I saw this fabric, I wouldn’t be able to leave the store without it: pure silk charmeuse – by Dolce and Gabbana, no less!
Here it is propped over two pegs.
They also carried the matching silk chiffon. I have been looking for the right pattern to make a blouse out of the charmeuse, and the chiffon is now this scarf, which gets comments whenever I wear it!
In my opinion, dots are stars!
fiftydresses 
