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The Red Dress Story

Every woman knows there are dresses, and then there are dresses with stories. This is the story of a red dress from 1955, the people whose lives it touched and how it found it’s way back to me after being tucked inside a box in my aunt’s attic for many, many decades.

To understand the importance of the dress you have to know some history about the woman who wore it first, my mother.

My mother was the only girl, sandwiched in between two brothers. Her father was a farmer and her mother was a farmers wife and a care-taker for her mother-in-law. They didn’t have much, but neither did most of their friends and neighbors. It wasn’t a big house and it was an old house that wasn’t insulated; hot in the summer and cold in the winters, a typical farm house of that day and time. No indoor plumbing or running water until many years later.

There are pictures of my mother as a young girl and teenager and even though they are black and white, it was easy to see she was pretty.

red dress

I don’t think she had trouble getting boyfriends and I’m sure she thought she was grown up enough to make her own decisions about who she dated but when she started dating my father I have to believe that my grandparents were probably worried.

Dad was just home from the Air Force and at 26 years old there was a big age difference between him and my 16 year old mother. They saw each other at church on Sundays and their families were friends, Dad’s cousin Judy often rode her horse over to meet mom and they rode together through the woods between their houses. I think it was on one of those rides that my mother told Judy she was going to marry my dad and Judy’s reply was, “Why do you want to do that? He’s too old!”

The night of the Fall Festival, which was the name for the school carnival, October 29th, 1955 my mother was crowned Carnival Queen and later that night she and my dad eloped. They drove south to Tennessee and were married.

red dress

I wish this picture was in color. With mom’s dark hair and blue eyes the red dress would have been stunning on her. She became a carnival queen and a few hours later a wife. Exactly nine and a half months later she was my mom.

The red dress might have no longer fit mom but it still fit other women in the family. I think mom’s cousin and horse back riding buddy wore it in a beauty contest and my Aunt Mary Alice had her engagement picture made wearing the red dress.

red dress

My aunt said that for those who didn’t live in the day before color photography==the photographer who owned Palmore Studios in Glasgow (I think his name was Paul, not sure) made the black/white picture and then colored it by hand! Quite a talent! But all color portraits were made that way then.

My Aunt Kate, who was the baby of the family and 11 years old when my parents married, remembers the red dress this way….

I never wore the red dress out of the house.
But still, I may have worn it more hours than anybody else.
When Shirley (my mom)  came into the family with The Red Dress, I was almost eleven. The Dress, was promptly named Shirley’s Red Dress and like Shirley, became a Bell acquisition. It never occurred to me to wonder how Shirley felt about everybody in the family having a go at trying to be as beautiful as she was in that dress. She moved on to motherhood. Was it like Cinderella and the stepsisters? Did the horde of sisters and cousins tear from her a prized possession?
It never seemed that way to me. To say Shirley was generous is an understatement: hers were always the best Christmas gifts; hers, the first cakes delivered to a grieving friend; hers, the first money slipped to a needy child.
So it seems to me, she willingly forfeited The Red Dress to us.
Am I right? I don’t know.
As I remember it, The Dress came to our house and never left except for its excursions onto stages for contests or to photographer’s studios for pictures or to high school prom events.
However, in between these events, The Dress got out a lot. My cousin Prissy and I spent a lot of time IN The Dress….from the time it came to the house to the time we went to college.
In my heart, IT was mine and I was a queen in it… even though I never wore it out of the house.
In truth, The Dress was Shirley’s Gift to the Bells.

The Dress Goes Missing

The last time anyone wore the dress was probably in the 1960s. How long it sat alone in a closet is anyone’s guess

Mom died in 1990 and even though I asked her about it many times, she never knew what happened to it. When we built our house and moved and I had hopes of finding it in the attic but I didn’t.

Then on the day of my 38th wedding anniversary my aunt found the dress in a closet at her house. She called to ask if I wanted it. Of course I wanted it. I wanted it since I was a little girl and figured out that my mom was wearing that dress the night she eloped with my father.

I drove over and picked it up. The rush of feelings I got when I picked it up was amazing. I do believe that dress wanted to talk to me. I suspect it wanted to ask why it had been stuck in a box in a closet since the 60’s, but good dresses are like best friends and they keep secrets.

That’s okay. A little mystery makes for a better story.

The red dress is now in my closet between my grandmother’s blue flannel house robe and my silver disco dress. I think it’s happy there and I am pretty sure I heard it whisper, “Thanks for bringing me home.”

red dress

This is a blog hop. Link up and leave a comment about a dress you can’t part with!


Related posts:

  1. Wordless Wednesday (sort of)-Can you still wear your prom dress?
  2. I Hope You Are Seeing Red Today
  3. My Mother’s Closet
  4. The Little Red Hen, A Loaf of Bread and Several Bushels of Corn

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34 Comments

  4. Wow, what a wonderful story. I am so glad that it is back. Very cool. Thanks for sharing this uplifting story with us.

    Thanks for hosting and I hope that you have a wonderful week.

  5. Thank you so much Leanne! I really appreciate your comment and that you took the time to read it. Have a great day! Teresa

  16. Sweet Joyce, the dress won’t come near fastening on me. I don’t know if I can figure out a way to do that or not!

  19. What a beautiful story it made me tear-up, Please have a picture made wearing it and let us all see you in your Mom red dress. Your mom was a beautiful lady and so are you <3

  21. Beautiful story, Teresa…and there’s a ‘Style Show’ as one of the events in the Edmonton Bicentennial celebration this weekend, and I think it would be double-awesome if you would wear it in the show…I’ll help you get into it!!! If not, how about Rachel?? Triple-awesome…third generation of the Red Dress!!!

  22. Your mother was a beautiful soul and truly unforgettable she made every young girl feel like they we’re wearing a red dress everyday it’s just who she was. To complete the story we must see you in the red dress !!!

  25. I really enjoyed the story on the red dress. Your mother, Shirley, was a beautiful young girl and lady. The first time I remember meeting her was probably around 1953 or 1954. I would have been around 8 and I went with my grandparents, Oather and Mattie Edwards, to Uncle Emory’s, which would have been Shirley’s grandfather and Shirley was there. I don’t remember who all was there but I remember Shirley was there and she was a teenager. She had beautiful dark hair that was about shoulder length and she had on a crisp white blouse and dark slacks. As a young girl she made an impression on me that I have never forgotten.

  32. What a treasure to find after all these years! Love the memories you’ve gathered here and I can picture it in your closet now, your mom close by with you again! Beautiful writing, Teresa!

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