​Robin, the bride, was referred by a friend in a I-think-you’re-maybe-the-only-one-who-can-take-this-on kind of way. The bride’s mother wore the dress in the ’80’s, but someone had worn it before. There is mystery around the provenance — maybe it came from an antique store, maybe from an aunt — but the bride’s mother isn’t here to tell the full story, which is why Robin wanted to wear the dress, the closest she could be to her mother on the day she married her partner, Jess.

​The sheer cotton batiste and eyelet lace dress had been home made, perhaps in rural Indiana, with stitches so small I couldn’t get the tip of my seam ripper beneath, with areas so fragile they blew apart in my hands. I saw the dress in February, before it was sent away for cleaning and restoration* — it was yellowed, stained and had been suspended on a wire hanger for decades, partially covered in plastic.

I worked with the dress after it returned to Alaska from a cleaner in California. According to the bride, the professionals began with dry cleaning, then a wet cleaning process with Orvus paste, then a gentle bleach soak over several days, checking at critical points to ensure the fibers weren’t stretching or tearing. The transformation was stunning, but it took time.

My part of the project required properly fitting the dress, textile stabilization and updated finishing. Gathers at the waist became pleats. Metal hooks and eyes at the center back became hand made loops and silk covered buttons. I replaced the skirt lining. I repaired areas of stretched or ripped lace by hand. I trimmed away excess. I steamed, I pressed, and thought about the woman who first made this dress, the women who had worn it since, the woman who would wear it again. Connected, I became another link in a line of of makers and women crossing thresholds.

​And this is the difference between working on wedding gowns in your 20’s as a seamstress/sewer/pattern maker/shopgirl/designer/assistant/or whatever else I was referred to, and working on a wedding gown as a mid-40’s artist and mother. My energy and intent had nothing to do with proving myself, and everything to do with respect, curiosity and creating the most supportive, most nurturing experience I could for another woman — for 2 women, actually — during a life moment when the experience should be beautiful and easy for a couple, but often feels overwhelming.
​
It’s also the difference between choosing to work with a vintage gown or making all new. Old cloth holds stories, secrets. It’s always my preference.

During the process, I was able to share discoveries about Robin’s mother -- she had a 24-inch waist when she got married, and had likely been losing weight since the seams at the hip had been taken in 3 times…the final time by hand, maybe stitched at the last minute, maybe the morning of the wedding. These are small things, small curiosities. But I wanted Robin to know that part of the story. ​

The rest of the dance belongs to her and Jess.

If you are interested in having a vintage wedding gown cleaned and/or restored, here are some resources:

National Gown — www.nationalgown.com

American Institute for Conservation -- www.conservation-us.org
See pdf:  "Guide to Caring for Your Treasures" 

List of Conservators (this list was originally provided by the Anchorage Museum, although they don't endorse anyone in particular. Refer to the above website to find a conservator near you):
​

• Margaret Geiss-Mooney, Petaluma, CA, (tel) 707-763-8694, (email) meg@textileconservator.com
• Denise Krieger Migdail, San Francisco, CA, (415) 931-1085, (email) dmigdail@asianart.org
• Yadin Larochette, Santa Monica, CA, (tel) 310-808-7979, (email) yadinl@gmail.com
• Susan Schmalz, Los Angeles, CA, (tel) 323-857-6169, (email) sschmalz@lacma.org​
• Cara Varnell, Long Beach, CA, (tel) 562-209-1039, (email) carav@earthlink.net
• Nancy Wyatt, Tacoma, WA, (tel) 253-572-5863, (email) ncwyatt@aol.com​

Don’t:

• store in plastic or “sealed” boxes from the dry cleaner
• store hanging on a hangar
• store in a cedar chest or against wood of any kind without some kind of barrier. Wood is acidic.

Do:

• have the dress professionally cleaned before storing, even if it appears clean. Body oil, lotions, perfumes and perspiration will emerge as yellow stains over time. 
• fill the bodice and sleeves with acid-free tissue paper and gently fold the skirt around more tissue, resulting in a loose bundle. *Amendment: Margaret Geiss-Mooney, one of the conservators listed above, contacted me with this advice: "Use fabric/yardage/sheets to stuff out sleeves and bodice (don’t use paper tissue as the tissue becomes acidic over time and, in the event of a disaster involving water, becomes paper pulp which is very difficult to remove) ... The fabric used to stuff out sleeves/bodice can also be re-used by just rinsing in the washing machine."  Thank you Margaret!
• wrap the bundle in clean sheets or unbleached muslin and store in a lignin-free box, off the floor or away from possible leaking pipes or dusty ventilation ducts.
• unwrap the dress once a year and re-position the folds before storing again. (okay, okay, my wedding gown is stored this way, but have I EVER taken it out of the acid free box since 1993? No. I probably should have a little look-see).​

​

The 15th boxes of mystery.  ​(Part of the Inheritance Project).

Box of mystery. (The catalyst for the Inheritance Project...have I really been working on this for two years?)

​

​On March 24, 1989, the super tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef -- a charted location in well-traversed Alaskan waters, a known marine hazard -- spilling nearly 11,000 gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. Accounts list wildlife fatalities as high as this:  580,000 sea birds, 5,500 sea otters, 200 harbor seals and 22 orca whales. Fishing families lost their livelihoods, many marriages didn't survive this environmental, financial and community devastation. Think about the long term effects of that last part. 

At the time, I was about to graduate from high school thousands of miles away, on the cusp of my own self-centered life, with television images shaping the memory of this thing I never experienced. 6 months later, I would meet my husband. 28 years later, we are bringing our children to this place. Still wild. Still seemingly pristine. But probably a shadow of what it once was. We are not a part of that collective memory. Our experience is in its infancy, this, only our 8th season on these waters.

We have been cleaning beaches for 4 of those seasons. 2 adults, 2 kids (sometimes a few friends), a couple of double kayaks or a dingy, and a roll of contractor-weight trash bags ready for unfurling, snapping and often re-use. We've found everything from rubber gloves to Happy Meal toys, rusted wheels to cargo nets to balloons and syringes, and more exploding styrofoam buried in moss and seaweed than I care to recount.

​We've also found dead animals.
​

We clean up trash because it's there and because we see it. Does it make a difference? Not really. This year was our season to leave much of it behind -- our shore vessels too small to safely transport large objects back to our boat. Our boat too small or too full to safely haul objects back to the Whittier harbor for recycling or disposal.

This area (above) used to be a neatly stacked detritus pile above the high tide line on the east coast of Perry Island (outside of Day Care Bay), but it's a jumble this summer -- animals, weather and perhaps other well-meaning beach goers to blame. Despite the sprawl, much of it is bagged and contained, waiting for pick up...but we don't know who intends to do this work, where the money or man/woman/kid power will come from. We've watched it grow for 3 seasons. We remove what we can, when we can.
​

At other locations this summer, we've been the ones to haul and stack items above the high tide line. These are hiked-to beaches, reached through bog and mosquito forest, spilling onto rocky shores or weather/tidal conditions too unsafe to land a dingy or kayak -- a description that fits so much of Alaska's 6,640 miles of coastline. We've left bright markers (like that green plastic container), but don't know who to share them with or who will see them. 

We tell ourselves we'll go back for retrieval. When it's safe. When there are more of us, or better, less of us on the boat.

We've found evidence of celebration. And fragile, intact reasons to celebrate.
​

I've read that the spilled oil is still there, black sludge just a few inches below the surface on various gravel beaches. Of course it is. It has to be. I haven't dug for it, but sometimes I'm convinced I smell it.

But how do you distinguish one smell when low tide is such a combination of the beautiful and terrible? 
​

30 years from now, this place will have changed again. My children will return, or not, but theirs will be the voice of recollection -- so much louder and insistent than my own. They will describe salmon streams filled with enough wriggling bodies to bump and lift their kayaks, family hikes with so many piles of bear scat and obstacles back to the boat that by the time we return, it takes an hour for the hair on the backs of our necks to settle. They see more animals in one morning out here, than some children see in a year or more. Their earnest childhood conversations are peppered with words like "juvenile," "sign," "habitat," "species," "identification." I was still breast feeding Astrid when we began the first tentative journeys into Prince William Sound. Our children are now 11 and almost 9. 

Their perception of abundance moves forward from this point in time. It breaks my heart to know they will recognize a difference some day.
​

​*     *     *

To view a NOAA timeline chart for post-spill recovering species and habitats, click here. 

We aren't alone in this endeavor, here or elsewhere. There are a number of other people all over the world who also clean beaches. I follow some of them on Instagram. They are a mixture of scientists, biologists, wandering gypsy souls and artists:

@cleancoast_angel
@kittiekipper -- Ghostnet Goods
@seasheperdmarinedebristeam
@crochet_the_ocean
@plasticfreemermaid 
@joannaatherton -- UK coastline
@trashybeach
@kellyalance -- Central California coast 
​@balloons_blow -- BalloonsBlow.org

To read more about our family commitment to clean beaches, check out the blog sidebar category
Beach Work, then scroll past this post, which will show up at the top.