The time I went long distance dress shopping with Nancy French

The internet is not all bad

It all started with this tweet:

If you follow Nancy French—bestselling author, wife of NYT columnist David French, notable Never Trump evangelical, indefatigable advocate for abuse survivors—then you almost certainly love her. And if you don’t, you are almost certainly a Disney villain of some kind. I challenge any normal human to resist her genuine, enthusiastic, whimsical, non-toxic positivity. Actually, let me save you some trouble and advise you not to even try because you will fail spectacularly.

That’s what happened to me when I briefly attempted to dislike her even a tiny bit, mainly in order to preserve my disgruntled-exvangelical-burn-everything-down bonafides. The first time I ever interacted with her on Twitter, I responded to her hilarious essay about marrying David young and spontaneously, then moving to New York City, where they apparently acquired David Lee Roth’s old phone number. This they finally figured out after fielding numerous calls from distraught women looking for “David” that left Nancy wondering who exactly she had married.

A totally honest mistake.

I TL;DRed the essay—which had the somewhat misleading title of “I ignored warnings from friends and family not to marry my husband. Was I making a big mistake?”—before I bitterly replied to Nancy’s post with something to the effect of, you got lucky, almost all young marriages are disasters, I would know because mine was. I had seen the title and immediately concluded that here was another insufferable evangelical with some improbable marital fairy tale that conveniently propped up that culture’s preposterous myths about love and marriage. UGH.

If I were Nancy, I would have dropped a caustic, withering response that basically boiled down to, Learn to read, Dumbass. She did not do that. She didn’t even ignore me. She replied with gracious agreement that she and David had gotten lucky indeed and that she was sorry for what I had been through. At that point, and after reading some other comments on the piece that made obvious I had missed its entire point—rather easy to do when you don’t read long enough to reach it—I finished reading the essay and was mortified.

I have long since fallen in love with Nancy French, despite being a disgruntled exvangelical who wants to burn it all down. Unfortunately for that agenda, Nancy French is an honest-to-goodness (evangelical-ish?) Christian whom you actually do know by her love, just like it says in that song evangelicals keep obliviously singing without a shred of irony or self-awareness.

I have seen her demonstrate unfailing kindness and patience with trolls and idiots. I have read her dogged investigative reporting of horrific abuse and its cover up at the largest evangelical kids camp in America and have observed her unceasingly advocate for survivors. And more recently, I have watched her fight cancer with grace and wit. I have empathized with her efforts to look pretty without hair or eyelashes (she looks beautiful), been amazed at her ability to simultaneously endure chemo and a book tour for her brilliant new memoir, and waited anxiously for news of her latest scan results. She’s even helped me with my own book, connecting me with an expert on child protection.

So by the time I saw Nancy’s post about that dress, which went on to say the price of it was way more than she could or would ever pay, I was already prepared to run through a wall for her. I decided I was going to make this happen. And I wasn’t going to buy it for her, either. Oh no, I could do better than that. I was going to MAKE IT FOR HER.

Now, I can sew, technically. I have a machine that I taught myself to use during covid, mainly because I am obsessed with African fabric and wanted to own an entire wardrobe in it. I started with easy patterns and got progressively more adventurous, with mixed success. Pretty much every sewing journey I go on includes numerous detours requiring me to rip out millions of stitches due to my stubborn tendency to low-ball the size of my butt.

I made all this stuff just so you don't think I am completely delusional.

For awhile, I also tried to make clothes for other people, and that didn't go any better. One neighbor lady gave me a dress she wanted copied in a different fabric, easy enough I thought. I’m telling you, I had to alter that thing more times than a Hollywood stylist working for a yo-yo dieter during awards season.

This dress of Nancy’s dreams looked fairly doable, I thought, unstructured and loose. I did some quick google image searches of the prints and felt decently confident I could approximate it. So I messaged Nancy and made my pitch. I confidently told her I could sew the dress for her, like some kind of mediocre white man going up for a promotion.

She seemed hesitant, but not because she doubted my abilities. No, she said it was too much to ask a stranger, emphasis on strange, to do something as awe-inspiring as sew a dress for her out of the internet. I assured her that it would not only be an honor, it might also end up being an insult. Feeling indebted to me was entirely premature if not foolhardy, like me thanking my husband and kids for the chore “coupons” they give me every year for every occasion.

“It might be amazing or it could be like that shirt Denise makes for Theo on the Cosby Show,” I admitted.

But Nancy was game. “Let’s do it!!!” she messaged me, and we were off on our fun adventure. I immediately went deep, deep, deep down multiple internet rabbit holes, finding more photos of the actual dress, scrutinizing it closely, cyber-ransacking fabric stores.

I ran into a very big problem almost immediately. I had thought the fabric was cotton, because it’s ikat print, and most ikat is cotton in my vast, vast fashion experience. Basic cotton is pretty much the only fabric I deal with because it’s easy to work with. But my sleuthing determined that this dress was not cotton—of course it’s not! Celebrities only wear cotton blended with something else like saffron threads or diamond molecules—it was pretty much the worst fabric you can deal with, apart from the green lamé stuff I forced my mother to make my high school formal out of (was that ever a timeless dress).

It was SILK. CHIFFON.

Silk chiffon is spun from butterfly wings, angel eyelashes, and evangelical integrity. It is fragile AF. In fact, I don’t think garments are sewn from it, I think they are just conjured with a wand or something.

Live look at a silk chiffon dress being made

I PANICKED. What had I gotten myself into. I asked Nancy if she were wed to the original fabric of the dress. I was about to launch into an inspiring Ode to Cotton (the touch, the feel, the fabric of our lives),

when she delivered astoundingly good news. Another Twitter fan—who apparently also would run through a brick wall for Nancy French, but I dare say not as thick and hard a wall as I would—had found the actual dress in Nancy’s size at an affordable price. She ordered it.

I was so relieved I offered to sew something for that lady. No, actually, I didn’t. But maybe I should because I have not felt such an unburdening since noon on January 20, 2021.

But I was also a little bit disappointed. I had really psyched myself up for making this dress. In fact, I had been thinking I would make myself one, too. I loved the contrasting patterns and the bold colors. Just my style. And apparently that of my new best friend, Nancy.

Also, searching for pictures of the dress and fabrics had served as really good procrastination for not doing my book edits. I had spent hours on it, and I wasn’t quite ready to let it go. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if I could also find the actual dress in my size for an affordable price? Then Nancy and I (and Naomi Watts) would have matching dresses and would obviously have to be best friends.

So I plunged back down into the depths of internet searching and LO and BEHOLD I ALSO FOUND THE DRESS. It had some weird European size that meant nothing to me (but should have been a Samuel Alito-level flag), but they also listed the dimensions of the garment so I could at least confirm there would be enough fabric there to cover the surface area of my American body. It had to work, because math.

I ordered it and excitedly told Nancy that we were going to be twins!! She was so overjoyed to hear that her would-be seamstress-stalker—whom she had successfully deterred from making what might have ended up being some kind of skin suit like in Silence of the Lambs—was going to be dressing exactly like her. Yayyyy.

A few days later, I got a message from Nancy.

Huh, I thought, sounds like she got a raw deal. Random fluke no doubt. I’m sure I at least will look like Naomi Watts.

I got home from my trip last night to find the package waiting for me. I ripped it open, put it on and….

I did not look like Naomi Watts.

Maybe Isaac Watts.

Joy to the f-ing world

Or a giraffe wearing Naomi Watts’s dress.

Naomi Watts is apparently the height of Tom Cruise. They are both garden gnomes. In fact, the longer I live and the more celebrities I encounter IRL, the more I am convinced that Hollywood is one massive optical illusion pulled off by tiny people.

To be fair to myself and especially my math skills, the fabric did cover the surface area of my body, technically speaking. Horizontally speaking. The problem is the distance between my armpits and waist is several hundred miles too long.

Nancy wisely sent hers back before taking a picture of herself in it. Honestly, she is so beautiful, I bet she looked good despite her protestations. As for me, I am neither as wise nor as good-looking as she, and so I leave you with this parting shot.

Thanks for the fun, Nancy! Let’s do it again soon…Maybe.

By the way, if you haven’t read Nancy’s memoir yet, get right on that. It’s funny, compelling, heartbreaking, heartwarming, all the things.