"It'll be ready Scuba fabric within the hour," Roy said. "Fifty dollars."

When I picked up the finished dress, it seemed less mysterious and regal than I remembered it. Shorn of the train and several inches of skirt, it looked ... ordinary.

Rather than real Victorian elegance, it resembled a rendering of Victorian elegance, as imagined by the nameless designers of Anthropologie.

I had such visions wrapped up with the wearing of the dress, of how I would be transformed.

I held on to them the way I had kept my grandmother's monogrammed silk handkerchiefs long after the fabric had begun to tear, making them pretty useless; similar to how I refused to throw out my father's nightshirt after he died, even when the cotton became whisper-thin and smelled of sweat no matter how many times I washed it.

They became talismans, representing times that no longer existed, the last physical connections to people I would never see again.

The dress would come with me when I left New York, but as something lighter and less complicated. After so many years it was, finally, a dress and nothing more.

Tissu Premier confirms its role as key regional fabric show

For more than 30 years, this Lille-based event Tissu Premier has been bringing together fabric manufacturers and putting them in contact with European chains and the distribution sector.

In the former spinning mill in Saint André-lez-Lille, 76 exhibitors presented their latest collections to nearly 1,000 visitors last month.
http://www.knittingfabric.cc/