A major fashion wake-up…

…about how women have opted away from dresses, and hose, too!

DES MOINES, Iowa – Like nearly all you fellows out there when you were newly married, I just can’t get over my new bride’s wedding dress.

Last Friday, Sept. 2, Mary Riche of Des Moines and I were married in the rotunda of the Iowa State Capitol. I was overwhelmed in a dozen different ways. 

I felt like I was almost levitating in my new love for Mary – after a friendship of 47 years – and in gratitude that she would give me a chance.  I was nearly overcome by genuine happiness.  She had me in tears when, to conclude the vows she wrote and recited, she sang a perfect solo to me of “Love Me Tender.”  You should have heard it, rising high up under the Golden Dome: “Love me tender, love me true/ All my dreams fulfilled/ For my darling I love you/ And I always will.”

The day could not have been more fun.  (You can read more about our relationship and the wedding on our website www.Offenburger.com.)

Around all that, the beautiful new dress she wore gave me a major fashion wake-up.

Mary in her “non-traditional but perfect for me” wedding dress, as she calls it. (Photo by Mary Ann Beard)

Ask anyone who knows Mary Riche, and they’ll tell you she’s about as stylish as women of some age get in Iowa.  So it did not surprise me that, for our ceremony, she bought one of the most beautiful dresses I’ve ever seen. 

Inspired by a Japanese art form, designed in Australia and made in China, it’s of a tightly pleated, very light, lavender fabric that seems to float or sway with any movement Mary makes. It’s topped by a matching and flowing jacket. Somehow, when different lights play on the lower half of the ensemble, the color smoothly changes from the lavender to a burnished red and then back to lavender.  I was so astonished by that, I asked her if the dress had batteries tucked inside it. She also had neutral-colored, formal but comfortable shoes with modest heels.  She took my breath away.

Then she told me it was the first time she’d worn a dress in “at least 34 years”!

And she wore no hose!

“Women generally aren’t wearing nylon hose anymore,” she said, and I learned later that’s especially the case in hot weather. “My decision to quit wearing hose a long time ago was all about comfort.  Hose, especially pantyhose, were not comfortable. Now I don’t even own any pantyhose.”

What a shift in women’s fashion! Or so it seems to me. Any other media been covering this?

One of the things I love and respect most about Mary is that she was a farm kid from rural northeast Iowa.  With education and experience in politics, then her own business, and then more education and family counseling, she became – and still is – one of Iowa’s leading feminists.  She has ridden and helped direct the wave of huge change that’s happened in the lives of women the last half century.

She is thoughtful about everything, including her own style, which evolved over her career.

“Remember, I came out of college in the bra burning era,” she said. “I was a feminist who was walking into the business world as my own boss. I had to walk that tightrope of being true to my feminist values and still being able to make a living. When I opened my own marketing and PR business, I started out wearing business suits, or blazers, with skirts.  I usually wore floppy neckties with them, to have the same kind of buttoned-up-necktie look that men had with their suits.”

But “after about five years, when I had established good working relationships with our clients, then I started wearing ‘trousers,’ as I’ve always called them, just like Katharine Hepburn did,” she said. “They were always more comfortable and warmer.” 

She said she still consciously maintained a very professional look. And her favoring of “trousers” intensified as attire across the business and professional world became more casual.

For special, more formal occasions?

“Good black trousers, a blouse with a more tailored look, and I always have my signature pearls with earrings, rings and bracelets,” she said.

That’s what Mary had planned to buy for our wedding.  

Two weeks before, she went to her favorite fine clothing store in Des Moines, Silver Fox, located in the Shops at Roosevelt. She now winces recalling that she was wearing “blue jeans, a sweatshirt and a ball cap.” When she walked in the front door, sales associate Pat Schneider greeted her with, “Mary! I heard at dinner last night you’re getting married!” There was an eruption of excited chatter. 

Mary said she was a little embarrassed but then acknowledged that’s why she’d come to the store. Mary Langen, the owner, took over.

“I told her we had the perfect dress for her,” Langen said. “Mary said, ‘I do not want a dress. I want a pair of black trousers and a top.’  I said, ‘No you don’t!’  She was a little bit stubborn, you know?  I finally said, ‘Mary, this is a really special occasion – you’re getting married! I think you need a dress.’ We had the dress hanging out in view, and it was her color, the perfect length, and like I said, a perfect dress for her.  So she agreed to try it on and took it to the dressing room. She came floating out of there, almost dancing, looking knocked-out gorgeous.  She loved it!

“It just makes me laugh,” Langen continued. “We have people coming in here often, and they start off by telling me what they don’t want.  Then we often wind up selling it to them!”

The dress is by the relatively small company “Alquema,” of Sydney, Australia. Langen said that company’s founder Virginia Rouse “was more of an artist than a dressmaker.  She was a photographer and, on a visit to Japan, she was fascinated by an art form called ‘shibori,’ which is like a Japanese craft of folding and dying a fabric.  She took that artistic idea back to Australia, and had her designers start on these dresses with the very tight pleats.”

They settled on using polyester fabric because it’s machine-washable, holds its press and is very low maintenance.  “When you travel, literally, your roll-up the dress and pop it into your suitcase,” Langen said. That tricky, changing color scheme is called an “ombre,” she said, and that “it goes from dark to light as the surrounding light changes. It’s like a work of art. When the sun hits it, it changes colors.”

Back at Silver Fox, as Langen was clinching the deal, she showed she knew her customer well, saying, “And of course, you won’t wear hose with this dress,” especially in late-summer heat. “If you can get away with bare legs, it’s so much more comfortable.”

The nylon hose market has evidently given way to yoga pants. Or “tights in an opaque, dark color,” she added.

Going forward, in my new state of enlightenment about women’s fashions, I will have guidance from Mary Riche, of course, and she knows her stuff.  But Silver Fox’s Mary Langen said she and her associates will be good allies for me, too.

“You just come out here and get acquainted,” she said. “Then when you need something for your Mary, you come back, stop in and say hi.  We’ll send you over next door to La Mie Bakery for a cup of coffee, and when you come back, we’ll have a nice stack of special things Mary will just love.  We know her really well.”

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You can write me by commenting below here, or by direct email to me at chuck@offenburger.com.

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