Basic Black

When I wrote about my alter ego in last Thursday's Home Planet column, I talked about the effect that Pink Martini's music has on me. In my music drenched daydream, I was elegantly attired in a little black dress.
There is something about a basic black dress that is hard to resist. My favorite is the one I call my "movie star" dress. I picked it up a couple of years ago at a thrift store in Palm Springs, California. I spent hours combing through the racks looking at labels and trying on lots of gorgeous dresses from the 1940s through the 60s before I found the one that I fell in love with.
My dress was custom tailored for someone (I'd like to think it was someone on the Hollywood "A List" ) in the 1950s and cost me a whopping $14.