The Dress Hunter

(The writer in her dress, left, and friends in Hanoi. All in recently tailored digs.)

A swanky night in Vietnam hinged on fashion

Champagne trickled down my hands. Overflow from my glass. I licked my fingers, and it tasted sweet, expensive. My sequined cocktail dress sparkled, and I felt buzzed from already downing a few fresh lychee martinis. Still somewhat sober I remembered my true identity and actively tried to hide its markers. Bruised, dirty, and cut-up, in purple Old-Navy flip-flops, my feet screamed “backpacker”. That night however, sipping cocktails and Moet in Restaurant Bobby Chinn near Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, my travel partner Jess and I assumed the roles of fabulous expats, diplomats perhaps.


(The writer and her travel partner, Jess, and Bobby of Restaurant Bobby Chinn, with friend Steven at Restaurant Bobby Chinn, Hanoi.)

From the ankles up we looked the part. Jess in a blue-satin dress, purchased earlier that day, and me, in The Dress. The best dress. Ever. Hand-sewn silver sequins cover the scoop-neck bust, an empire-waisted black jersey skirt lands eight inches above my knee. Scandalous, but my 34 inch inseam can handle it. It had been made a week earlier in Hoi-An, a UNESCO World Heritage site and Vietnam’s most famous tailor town. Once the country’s largest port, Hoi An morphed into a colonial culinary and clothing destination. Plastic mannequins donning tailor-made clothes line winding, cobblestone streets, which by night shine with the lights of thousands of hand-made silk lanterns. Despite the town’s mile-long white beach and restaurants on the river, I spent hours my first day at an internet café, perusing the web for clothing ideas. My backpacker’s budget would take a hit, but I refused to leave Hoi An without a few new pieces for my wardrobe. I had a black taffeta strapless dress designed for a family-function, a few roman-inspired sandals, and a brown tube dress with a patterned silk bust for casual evenings. But I knew a month later I’d be on the beach in Koh Phag Nan, Thailand, for one of the country’s famous Full Moon parties, and in need of something fabulous, sexy and striking to don while dancing until sunrise.

I established simple stipulations for the dress. It needed to have sequins and it needed to be black, short, and low-cut. We found BLUE, a small tailor shop recommended by a local, crammed with rolls of silk, taffeta and cotton, with colors that ranged from neon green to dark brown. Yum Yum and Tam Tam, two middle-aged women with prematurely lined faces and broken English, ran the shop. Three non-English speaking women sat quietly in the corner sewing suits for Westerners. Yum Yum asked for $40 US, for the dress - a little pricey because the sequins would be hand-sewn. I bargained it down to $30, a more appropriate cost for my meager budget and the equivalent to backpacking for two days in South-East Asia. One of the quiet ladies took my measurements and we settled on a sketch without speaking. We communicated with symbols, drawings and thumbs-up. I left the tailor-shop and agreed to come back the next day for my first fitting. It would take three days, Yum Yum promised, the rest of my time in Hoi An.

The second fitting, on my final day in Hoi An, made me anxious. The dress fit perfectly but only a quarter of the bust featured sequins. They told me to return early the next morning before my departure, and it would be done. But it wasn’t. The women complained that each row took hours, and they had been up all night sewing. My prepaid tour headed to Hanoi that afternoon which meant I had to go. Yum Yum promised to send it to me and told me to call with my hotel address in Hanoi. When I left the paid-for dress, I looked at it, bid it farewell, and accepted I would never see that sparkling, perfectly-fitting, piece of art again. I imagined some other tall, lanky globe-trotter seeing it on a mannequin, and buying it assuming some foreigner had forgotten it. I thought of her wearing it to fabulous cocktail parties in New York, for Sake nights in Tokyo, maybe New Years Eve in Dubai.

I called Yum Yum upon arrival in Hanoi, but the language barrier proved tricky for relaying our Hotel’s address. We stayed at The Victory Hotel, a clean and air-conditioned two-star, and the last hotel on the prepaid tour. It seemed regal compared to the co-ed dorm rooms and bug-infested three-dollar-a-night guesthouses that populated our travels. But we’d only be at this hotel for two nights. When our tour ended, we would return to more budget-friendly digs. (A standard room at Victory costs $35, but I prefer single-digit prices).

For the next two days I pursued all my typical interests in Hanoi. I spent hours at the Dong Xuan market. I marveled at imitation designer handbags, but ones I would never call my own because of money and space restrictions. I ate French bread by the lake and it tasted authentically Parisian - crusty outside, soft and warm on the inside. A French influence permeates Vietnamese cuisine because of the country’s colonial rule which lasted over 50 years. I strolled down Hang Gai, a street known for its artisan crafts and silk. Store fronts display hand-sewn silk pillow cases and tribal-inspired kitchenware. But sequins lingered in my mind constantly. The unknown future of my perfect dress lurked beneath every smile in my photographs. At a perfect tourist photo-op on Huc Bridge on Hoan Kiem Lake I wondered if I would see it again. Snap. I had legitimate reasons to worry.

Yum Yum and Tam Tam had my $30, so selling it to someone else would mean double-the-profits. Also, locals warned me the post office in Socialist Vietnam often sequestered “suspicious” packages, and one with a foreigner’s name might as well carry an anthrax label. At the end of each day, I returned to Victory hoping to see the parcel waiting for me at the front desk. But when the moment for me to check-out arrived, the dress remained MIA.

On I went, backpack in tow, plus one turquoise ring purchased on Hang Gai, minus one perfectly-fitting dress. We checked in at Hanoi Backpackers, the only “European style” Hostel in Hanoi ($7 a night, breakfast included). My kind of place. That night, we met three young guys from Montreal. I had my eye on the tall, dark, and rugged-looking, one. But before we embarked on our evening, Jess and I stopped at Victory hoping to find the package. Of course, it remained AWOL. I called Yum Yum for the third time, who assured me she’d sent it days earlier. I imagined it being held hostage by the silent woman who almost lost feeling in her fingers from sewing it.

At the hostel I geared up for the night, and put on my nicest going-out attire - a black tank-top and skirt, both cotton blends, my flip-flops, and my navy-blue fanny pack. The hot Montreal boy flirted with me despite my grungy look, and after several drinks I found myself on the hostel’s rooftop, sweaty, up against a wall, making out with the cute Quebecer. Not too bad for a gal carrying a fanny pack.

On my final day in Hanoi, slightly hung-over with matted hair from my high-rise hook-up, I stumbled across the city for one last hopeless attempt at reunification with my dress. Irritated by my previous efforts, the girl at the front desk knew me. But this time, when I strolled in off the dusty motor-cycle packed street, wearing the tank-top from the night before, and a bandana to quell my coif, she smiled.

“It’s here,” she said.

I had no idea how to react. I felt like I won the lottery or that a pregnancy test came back negative. A sense of relief washed over me. But when she showed me the package my spirit sank back to its now comfortably low position. It had been opened and resealed with masking tape. It looked smushed, creased, folded, the exact way a package holding a sequined-dress shouldn’t look. For a moment, I thought my last evening in Vietnam would be the remarkable one I imagined. I intended on going to Restaurant Bobby Chinn since I planned the trip, a recommendation from my travel mentor at home. A bona fide world traveler, you call him and when his machine picks up you start imagining all the places he might be. I go to him notepad-in-hand, before every trip. He urged me to go to Bobby’s in Hanoi, a fancy restaurant in the heart of the city, and I had to meet Bobby, an old friend. He described him as crazy and eclectic, and I longed to meet him but felt too shy to go in my cotton uniform. The dress gave me hope, but when I saw it crumpled in manila packaging, my dreams of a fabulous night floundered.

I approached the package like a SWAT agent moving-in on a potential bomb - with apprehension and fear. The woman explained the package had been seized and inspected at the Hanoi airport. Typical, apparently. I unpacked it from the mess of tape and envelope. I shut my eyes, held it out, and held my breath. With one eye opened I looked it up and down. I exhaled in relief. Not a hand-sewn sequin missing.

In the dress that night I schmoozed with “eclectic” Bobby, who uncorked bottle after bottle while telling stories of living in Egypt and China. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar, fanny pack and flip-flops out of sight. Sparkling, with champagne-glass-in-hand, I felt very expat-chic, but without the slightest idea, this would be my first, of many, fabulous nights in the dress.

(Written May 2, 2009)