Sacrificial dress
I’m in a little pickle with my tailor. And it may end in the dissolution of our relationship.
Let me clarify.
I’ve been going to the same tailor for several years now. She has always done a good job with dresses and pants and whatever else I needed altered. I’ve been quite happy. Almost two years ago, I took a Homecoming dress in that just needed help with the sleeves—we agreed on the time and price. When I went to pick it up, it wasn’t done. You can read more about that story here. That experience should have been a red flag, but I figured it was a fluke. Everyone has off days, right?
I haven’t had a lot of tailoring needs lately. Frankly, I forgot all about our bad experience. Eventually though, something needs to be altered.
Sigh.
The latest chapter in this saga involves a new dress I found for one of my girls, a sister who borrowed the dress for an high school choir performance, the discovery of a pretty big tear in the back of the new dress, some yelling, accusations, feelings of betrayal, and tears—both of anger and regret.
I looked the torn dress over, but the fabric looked shredded. This wasn’t just a simple torn seam. I didn’t know how to repair it, so I drove to my tailor shop and handed the seamstress the dress with cautious optimism. She told me she would call me in a few days and give me the price.
“Ten dollars,” she said.
“That’s it?!”
I was elated. I was ready for a much higher price, probably more than the original dress even cost! She told me it would be ready the following Thursday.
SWEET!!
Crisis averted.
For a little context, this happened the end of May 2025. On the designated Thursday, I walked into the tailor’s store. I opened my purse where I was SURE I had placed the claim ticket, and couldn’t find it. I panicked. Where was that stupid paper? I went back to my car and looked in every spot I could think of. Nothing. I had lost the ticket.
I walked back in, and explained what had happened. She looked at me incredulously, then told me to look around at all the hanging clothes, maybe I could find it.
I got to work.
I looked everywhere. I looked in the front, and then I walked in the back where all the sewing magic happens, and looked on every rack there. My daughter’s dress was GONE. It was nowhere to be found. While there, I heard another customer complaining that her clothing had also gone missing.
What the?
What was happening??
Maybe it was a bad day…again.
I walked out.
Summer was here and our days were filled with camps and vacations and lazy hours at the pool. Last week, I was running some errands and decided to drop by the tailoring shop again. This time I had a picture to show her. No, I admitted, I still had not found the claim ticket. 😬 I was told to look around again. I looked and looked. I searched in the front, in the back, on every rack I could find. I mean, at this point, what good would a dumb claim ticket do???
The dress we all loved so much had disappeared.
BOOOOOOO.
I’m not even sure how this happens. Maybe someone else also lost their ticket and saw my daughter’s dress, liked it better that what they brought in, and stole ours? Did the tailor love it and bring it home for her own daughter? Did our dress get thrown away? Did it get put in another person’s entire bag of altered clothes?
I’ll never know.
What I DO know is that my tailor is no longer my tailor. I’m breaking up with her.
It’s over.
Irreconcilable differences!
Some lessons cannot be learned without a sacrifice or two. In this case, it cost my daughter her dress. But we learned so many valuable things—
guard your claim ticket like you would your life! Seriously.
when you borrow something, take care of it.
if something happens to an item you have borrowed, admit it upfront. Don’t try to be sneaky.
if your tailor loses your clothes, get a new tailor.🙄
I guess I’ll consider myself lucky that I learned all these lessons and it only cost me a dress.
But it was really cute.
