When I Thought I Was Molly Ringwald

The year was 1988. I don’t remember exactly how we came across the dress, but I want to say we found it a trunk in granddaddy’s barn. I can tell you I fell in love with it immediately. It was a satin, strapless prom dress in a dark champagne hue, and my mom made it herself about 30 years before. She would have been just a little older than me at the time when she wore it.

I was in the 8th grade, and my small school’s formal athletic awards banquet was coming up. I knew this was going to be my dress. I’ve always loved vintage, and this was a retro find beyond any other I’d come across at the time.

I imagined myself as Molly Ringwald recreating something of her own from Iona’s old prom dress. I would be sketching and cutting all to synthesizer music and it would be (like) so awesome!

Yeah. I was a Pretty in Pink fan. Anything Johns Hughes filmed made me swoon.

However, there were a few problems to be managed. The dress had a few spots where the fabric had not aged well. The satin was fragile from the less than ideal storage conditions. The biggest issue was the fact that it was strapless. My school had very strict rules when it came to modesty, and srapless didn’t fit the bill.

Also, I couldn’t sew. I had to rely on my mom for that.

She was more than willing to let me use the dress, and like me, immediately saw the potential for an amazing upgrade. But we had very different ideas on how to recreate this dress as we have always had extremely different tastes.

It was agreed that we could use lace to cover the worn satin where needed. That was about as far as our agreement went. I had envisioned a creamy lace that would compliment the champagne satin. It would be very Victorian. She, however, ended up purchasing more of a dark burgundy lace. I could not envision her plans at all. Burgundy over champagne sounded horrid to me. (Note: I also have a bit of colorblindness. I don’t see color the way other people do, but it would be another two years before we realized it.)

My mom is an artist. She is also a very accomplished seamstress. She knew what she was doing, but still… I CRIED over that stupid burgundy lace. I am talking FULL drama, “you are ruining the biggest moment in life” type crying over that lace. I just knew I was going to look like a “floosy”. (I went to a small Christian school in the south. We had our own culture of words. Don’t judge.) I was convinced my Andrew McCarthy was NOT going to tell me he loved me in that dress.

I know it doesn’t look like it, but I was a mere 13 years old in that photo above. That burgundy lace, I have to admit another 25+ years later, is one of my very best colors. She found a way to make the dress more “modest” by allowing the lace to fall over my shoulders, yet she made the dress “off the shoulder” which may have still pushed the modesty standards of my school. (We both share a slight rebellious streak, I won’t lie.)

But my very favorite thing was the pearls she sewed into the lace that fell over my arms. I still love pearls. So. Much.

And I still have that dress. It’s getting close to 60 years old now. It’s stored carefully in my cedar hope chest this time, in hopes that one more generation might like to wear it at least once. I plan to snuggle up with my daughter on the couch soon and introduce her to Andie and Duckie and Iona and Blane from my favorite teen flick. Then, I’ll tell her my own dress drama story and how I was a total snot to my mom a quarter of a century before.

And maybe… my own mom will read this today and know that when it’s all said and done, I sure am glad she picked that burgundy lace, and that I’m sorry for all the drama over that time I wanted to be Molly Ringwald.

Do your remember a time when you gave your mother a hard time about something she was ulitmately right about, anyway?

Sasha Johns is married to her chiropractor and doing her best to homeschool three little kids. She writes for middleplaces.com on Tuesdays, and recreates new things with old things at True Vine Gifts. You can catch her daily antics with family and art on Instagram when you look her up as middlesistersasha.