Red Carpet Worthy Dressing

Octavia Spencer at the 2013 Academy
Awards wearubg Tadashi Shoji - again1
Photo by Getty

What does Octavia Spencer and the Mommy of the Bride have in common?

We both love Tadashi Shoji.

But it’s not what you think.

We’re not interested in him romantically.

Just fashionably.

Earlier this week Octavia walked the 2013 Academy Award Red Carpet in a Tadashi Shoji gown. He’s the same designer she wore last year when she won the best supporting actress Oscar. His dressmaking has a knack for flattering less than perfect female figures with strategially snug tucks of material over their assets and a flow of fabric over their liabilities.

I wore Tadashi Shoji to my daughter’s wedding. Off the rack TS. Actually, off an eBay store site.

The online gown caught my eye after a number of disappointing visits to bridal shops. It’s  difficult to find petite sizes, even in these specialty stores. (My once-favorite Marshalls department store has shrunk its petite department so much, it no longer exists).



Bride and MOTB (in her Tadashi Shoji gown).



When I saw that the Tadashi gown was available in a range of sizes, including my petite-medium-ish domain,I clicked it into my cart and let parcel post do the rest.

Once out of the package, all it needed was a steaming.

Tadashi Who?

Man of the Hour-Glass Mannequin (present company excepted) NYTimes photo by Jonathan Browning

Fashion plate is not a dish stacked in my china cabinet or clothes closet, for that matter. I’m not exactly the anti-fashion either. Let’s just say the leaves settled at the bottom of my post-shopping cup of tea spell out off the rack, not runway. Clearance rack, whenever possible.

I like the quality found in the limited and generic clothing stock of a warehouse store like Costco: Docker slacks, diggers, and shorts. Lee jeans. One-hundred per cent cotton tops. Better yet, tunics. Neutral toned. Clothes usually don’t add measurably nor take away from whatever impression I make.

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Bride and MOTB (in her Tashi Shoji gown).

Yet, based on an article featured in the New York Times a few days ago – Fashion Section  even -- the  gown I wore to my daughter’s wedding (six months ago) bore the label of a trending designer. A guy at the top of his game who has dressed Oscars winners both before and after Em’s wedding. Hefty winners, referring to these ladies' talent and hip sizes..

Go figure.  Figure like in the pear-shaped dimensions I’ve sported since adolescence. More rump than rack, that’s for sure. Like the generic-ware at Costco: neither eye-catching nor eyesore. Presentable, like my mother use to say. Not necesssarily pretty.

Yet,  Tadashi Shoji, the designer of my dress - bought unused off  eBay -- is the same Tadashi Shoji who has become  The Man  of the Hourglass Mannequin. He has a knack for creating eveningware that smooths out lumps and bumps that shape most women to  an “illusion of tall and thin.” His words.

I wonder if it's too earlier to start trending a nomination for Time magazine’s  Person of the Year.

Mail Order (Mother of the) Bride

When the package appeared on my porch, I still pretty much doubted my fashion mission - accomplished - with an eBay order. A 12” X 14” priority-mail box doesn’t exactly emit MOTB gown-worthiness through its cardboard. The 10” X 12” plastic bag of merchandise inside the official USPS parcel evoked even greater hesitancy. This is probably going back I thought as I scissored a careful slit through the see-through wrapping, careful not to damage the goods (or not-so-goods) inside.

I unfolded a brown mass of chiffon out of the bag. Deep brown and deeply wrinkled - from packaging. Yet, on a hanger the dress fell into a long line that had – let me say – possibilities. This mail order wasn’t a wash – yet.

I hooked the rather crumpled garment onto a hanger and set it  behind the bathroom door. Took a shower. Emerged, myself, slightly wrinkled. The dress, however, seemed to have ironed itself out in the steamy after-bath. The thin pleats above the slightly raised waist of the dress, straightened. The flow of the A-line skirt below the pleats, softened. Nice hanger presentation, I had to admit.

But a perfectly-engineered standard hanger and the imperfect construction of my torso are vastly different display apparatus. Still dubious, I donned appropriate undergarments.

Appropriate undergarments, in my mind, were my best undies. Not any kind of upper corset or lower girdle that would allow the dress to fit like casing over a sausage. I wanted a gown that would comfortably fit over everyday (er) foundations and allow for easy  (er) execution of everyday (ahem) functions.I 'd heard too many horror stories about breath-constricting zip ups and impossible zip-downs from MOTB’s I have known.

I gathered  the skirt  and put my head into the circle of its hem, up through to the deep V-neck of the garment. The bodice set firmly against my upper body. The bottom seemed to float over me from the waist down. Hmmmmmm. 

But the gown hadn’t passed the zipper test yet. Until it did, I thought it best to err on the side of doubt  as I reached back to the pull tab and raised it from hip . .  to waist . . . to mid back . . . to . . . BINGO . . .   the top stop. 

 Then I turned my back toward  the mirror.Metal teeth meshed smoothly.  I turned again . Viewed classic lines.  Tasteful décolletage.

This garment – with tags that affirmed its Tadashi Shoji design, not to mention its full price, slashed to half price, slashed to eBay price – this gown was a keeper.

Let the Buyer Research

I had my doubts about the eBay  Mother-of-the-Bride dress I happened upon, but the ad guaranteed quick delivery and no greater risk than the cost of return postage. This was nowhere near the gamble taken on by the way too patient bride-to-be I had read about. She spent two months waiting for a wedding dress from ‘China Nation’ on eBay (cost: 170 pounds --  $275 U.S currency) I would have cancelled the order after a week or so and hustled to the local bridal shop. Her eBay buy  finally arrived two weeks before her wedding – wrong size, cut, material, the beading patchy and peeling.  





He designed this MOTB's dress



Too bad the hapless bride of the misbegotten gown didn’t do the kind of online research that led me to her predicament. A search term as generic as “eBay gown complaints”  directed me to a general eBay warning to stay away from copies of British gowns made in China . My gown of interest, a never worn Tadashi Shoji  design -- tags included --  would be shipped out of Kansas. The  seller had good ratings. The eBay warning  site also offered a link to an Internet guide on how to spot a fake designer label.

After I found the designer carried in Nordstroms and Bloomingdale's and checked out celebrities in his gowns, I felt ready  to take the plunge as  deep as the (almost) off-the-shoulder neckline of his 2010 gown that caught my eye. When the package arrived, three days later, I wondered if my next blog would be a yay or nay.