Checkmate. You know I can't resist anything chess-themed, not even a felt circle skirt. Alas the diagram doesn't show the Queen's Gambit. I'm also worried that those rooks have plastic googley eyes, which would be entirely de trop. This skirt may be what Ms. Dress A Day calls a stunt dress, and it's true audience is perhaps a 3rd grade class.

But maybe you teach elementary school. So then it's all right, isn't it?

It's a shame the chess set isn't functional. If only the board were bigger, and the felt pieces could stick on by virtue of their feltiness. (What happened to the felt boards of my elementary school days? That was a solid low-tech teaching aid.) But I don't know that I'd want a chess game taking place on my left hip. Though I do like the idea of a fully operational felt chess dress, with this diagram and the late Bobby Fischer as inspiration.

I've gotten to the age where all my famous people are dying. I can no longer hope to run into Jacques Derrida or Yasser Arafat walking in Central Park. Nor to share a cab with Edward Said, or Susan Sontag. Find Julia Child or Kurt Vonnegut haggling over vegtables at the greenmarket. Nor to engage in a shouting match with Bobby Fischer.

I find it remarkable that none of the obituaries of Mr. Fischer use the words "paranoid schizophrenic". Why tip-toe around what was so obviously madness?

Perhaps the chess motif could serve as a pocket? And in that pocket you could have a handkerchief printed with actual chess diagrams.

The skirt currently weighs in at $35, with a tiny 24 inch waist.

I take comfort in the thought that I can still run into Sofia Loren or Peter O'Toole. Liza Minelli might drop into the Luigi's dance class, and I could possibly even play a hand of bridge with Omar Sharif.