Batik Dress

Compliment from Shiloh, one of the 4-year-olds: "Aunty Rachel! You look so beautiful! You look like a popstar! But...if only your dress was a little bit....shorter."

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Isn't it funny the kinds of things those kids notice?

I spotted this dress at the shop attached to a local batik factory. Batik is a method of dying patterned cloth that is native to this region of the world. I've always been a fan of batik, and have gotten to observe artists working on hand-drawn batik patterns in the past. It's incredible what they can do! This dress isn't hand-drawn batik, but the wax patterns were made with a stamp, repeated over and over again.

I fell in love with this dress at the shop, but you're really not supposed to buy things for yourself a few weeks before your birthday, and neither Angel, Anna, nor Lizzy (the ones who came out to the shop with me), seemed to show any interest in or appreciation for the dress, either, so I left it on the rack without even trying it on, assuming I'd never see it again.

Then...

Imagine my utter surprise when I opened it up on my birthday! The girls had finagled a way to make it back to the shop without me knowing about it and had bought the exact dress I'd had my eye on. It fit just the way I imagined--perfectly colorful and summery--appropriate for a land where summer never ends. I love the color, the neckline, the sleeves, and the length, too, regardless of Shiloh's opinion that I could approach popstar-dom if only the skirt were a few inches shorter...