How is she dressed, pray tell? By her clothes, surely we will know her.
Her dress is blue. How descriptive. But of what color blue?
Ye, of course in better years we too attended spectacles where nymphs and water sprites yearned for mortal men, where mermaids brushed their hair and admired themselves in flashing mirrors. You woudl have us picture, then, the backdrop of that theatrical Sea: the billows of cyan silk, the azure pasteboard waves, the ultramarine netting, tangled with sea horses and starfishes, flung to represent an aquatic paradise. We will close our eyes and do as you command. Ah, how cool they look while we sweat in the theatre of a hot summer's night, spying on their underwater world with its hierarchy and despot king and chorus of rebellious daughters; a world so rich and foreign, yet so happily fraught with the politics of our own. Now, to that cool, blinding blue, we are to add the color of our play's artificial sky, appreciating the scene painter's ability to reach back into his childhood and extract the extinct shade of cerulean that floated over the River Wear before the factories were built. Yes, we are old enough to remember that color. We are old enough, certainly, to remember a good many other things besides.
To the complex blue body of her dress, you would have us add wide-blown gigot sleeves swelling from bare shoulders and a matching belt cinched at her narrow waist, creating the inverted-triangle look so popular among fashionable women of today. Festoon the entirety with tulle and white bouffant in three puffy tiers from knee to ankle-length hem. Tie her up with a handful of bows down the bodice. She is a sumptuous, fantastical wedding cake. A walking confection. A tasty morsel. And yet, still you hesitate. Certainly no one other than the finest lady might afford such a singular dress. So what is wrong?
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