nonrefundable my eye

So the dress from China came. It’s a little…weird. There’s no zipper, for one thing; the only fastening is the lace up the back. The boob cups in the front are small in this strange way, and it has a double lining for no apparent reason whatsoever. Also, it doesn’t look much like the picture on the site.

After some diligent Googling I finally found the actual designer and model of the dress. It’s a Sophia Tolli from about two years ago and retails for about $1000. I found some detail pictures of it, and really the dress I’ve bought is quite a poor imitation.

I called a friend of our family who is an extremely competent seamstress, and she advised me that if I wasn’t completely sure, I should send it back. I wasn’t, so I’ve decided to send it back. I read the return policy carefully and learned that I had only three days to ship it back or it would not be accepted, and that I had to contact them before returning it. I contacted them, and they told me that they don’t accept returns for custom dresses. I reread their return policy, found that they were double-crossing me, and copy-pasted the policy to another email, telling them I was sending it back today and expected a refund. To be honest, I don’t expect a refund; I expect them to hang on to my delicious American dollars for dear life, but I’m going to try my damndest to get it back anyway before I give up. If I don’t, eh, it’s $200 – not a fortune. I can either sell the dress on eBay, making no bones about how non-nice it is, or I can use some of the material for the custom-made dress that I’m planning.

Yeah, that’s right. The friend of the family I mentioned told me that she was willing to help me put together a custom dress, by finding patterns, and either by finding a seamstress or by sewing it herself. This is what I’ve wanted all along, a custom dress, and after thinking it over this morning I’m pretty darn sure about what I want it to look like. I’m apprehensive about having a friend make my dress (I think she really wants to), because if it turns out wrong or she goes in a direction I don’t like, I won’t know how to deal with it without ruining the relationship. But I’m just trying to go with the flow right now and see what happens. She’s definitely a skilled enough seamstress.

I’m not disappointed that this dress didn’t work out, because truly the design was too romantic for my personality and I wasn’t necessarily expecting something perfect from China, but I am extremely disappointed that the dress-shopping isn’t over.

I also got the contract from Chautauqua yesterday, but there are things about it I need to talk over with the facilities woman. I’m not sure if some of the terms apply to us, and if they do there will be trouble. Our major deposit isn’t due until January, so that’s a load off my mind; a smaller deposit is due in late May, but we can definitely handle that one.

In other news, I spent the last three nights watching Jerry Maguire for the first time in installments, and I was really, really impressed. I never thought I would like that movie, it seemed too populist for me, but I had no idea how well it was written and how marvelous the performances were. The unpredictability of Cameron Crowe’s films, the way that they twist and turn such that you really don’t know where he’s going with this, is a delightful change from the staid structure of most American film, and the characterizations were really a nice treat. I thought it went off track starting about 45 minutes from the end, but it was still an interesting set of choices.

Gotta get to work. Laterz.