I'm in love. I searched far and wide for this one, and it is breathtakingly perfect, I just wish I could include more photos.

Dayenu! Dayenu! If this beautiful rayon '50s dress just had mushrooms on it but no shawl collar and front bow, it would have been enough. If it had mushrooms, and a shawl collar and bow but no little people using the mushrooms as parasols, it would have been enough. If it had mushrooms, the shawl collar plus bow, and the little people but no late '50s squiggle pattern in violet and bronze vibrating on a frequency that is changing my brain chemistry for the better, well, dayenu! (translation: it would have been enough.) I could go on and on: it's reasonably priced, it's made of that sturdy satiny-type rayon that doesn't wrinkle and it's available now.

So here's the sorrow at the heart of my joy: it's too small for me.

I know, I know: my hero and role model Schiaparelli often said: never fit the dress to the body, train the body to fit the dress. But Saint Schiap, I alas, am not a countess and there are only so many hours in the day.

A big thank you to Jumblelaya, the ebay seller in Portland who has posted this dress. It reminds me that the world can still be beautiful, even during the dreaded drought.

I am not a bodhisattva. It wasn't easy to post this one, since it's something of a Holy Grail for me.