The "Princess" Dress

I already mentioned in my weekly "happy post" that I wore my "princess dress" at the Salzburg Festival. I can't remember whether I bought it in 2004 or 2005 (I would know if I had started blogging before November 2005 as I always rely on my archives for shopping trivia such as this), but I do know for a fact that I wore it to 2 weddings in 2005, one in Austria and one in Turkey. Back then, I still worked at Coma HQ and a lot of my friends were getting married. Sometimes I would have 3 weddings a year lined up and of course with overlapping guests you can't wear the same dress twice. One of the shops I would try back in the days when they still had a branch in Vienna was Laura Ashley. For my meagre "office lady" salary full-priced items were too expensive and so I would always wait for the sale. Well, to be honest, this is my m.o. even if I were a millionaire, I just love a good bargain. In the case of this silk dress with flowers embroidered onto the skirt part, they had one in my size hanging there and I loved the fact that it also had a tulle underskirt that gave it this girlie, princessy look and feel. I had a gut feeling that it was too "wild" for the usual Laura Ashley customer and would still be waiting for me in the summer sale. Sure enough, I managed to get it for  50-70% off. I can't remember the exact price, but I think it was EUR 75 or something like that, definitely under 100 EUR. It had been hanging around, literally, in the drycleaners' bag for the past 10 years, until I decided to try it on. It still fit me, even though my back seems to have gained in width a bit and I could not for the life of me manage to close the zipper with a bra underneath. Well, no problem if you are not the most buxom lady and so I simply wore it without one Don't tell anyone. That red crocheted cardigan is even older and was bought to match another Laura Ashley wedding (guest) dress back in the days. It is from H&M (!) and equally uncharacteristic for the brand. I wore my new rose gold André kitten heels (bought for 28 EUR in Nice) and my Alexander Wang "Rockie" (similar model here) and felt very princess-like indeed. I'm all for weeding out one's closet from time to time and not holding on to stuff you know you'll never wear again, but I could never give away classy items that I loved wearing first time round and still feel nostalgic about. It makes me truly happy to shop my closet from time to time and step back into time with a vintage item.