My favourite dress.

I have a favourite dress. Every time I take it to the streets or out on the town, I have a positive experience. No matter what I'm doing.

The affectionately nicknamed French Maid dress (it's black silk trimmed in white pleats) has seen better days. First wash I put it through, I totally ignored the 'Dry Clean Only' tag and gave it some Tough Love in hot water and the company of whatever else was currently carpeting my bedroom floor. It came out smaller, crisp pleats crumpled and not so white, and decidedly slightly transparent. Still beautiful, I thought.

And when my drunken friend borrowed French Maid and tucked a lit cigarette inside her pocket just before entering a nightclub (for later, you see), I didn't get mad, I just poked my index finger through the hole and pretended worms lived in Frenchie whenever I was the drunken one. Hello, little wormy. Oh, look at you just worming around, you invertebrate you.

I've done the longest Walk of Shame of my entire life with that dress (admittedly, I was wearing a borrowed jumper over, which was so long it reached French Maid's hem and made me look like I was only wearing a top), but it was still there, rustling about under all that acrylic and smell of boy.

I have to ask myself whether I can ever wear my favourite dress again. I get the feeling that if I ever wore it again, somebody would make a remark. A negative one. It is, after all, bordering on downright ratty.