Line

Nika came in with a folder of pictures, all of them enormous, and spent the whole hour touching one flat piece of crepe on the table. We made the dress the crepe wanted.

The front is one uninterrupted piece from the neck to the hem, so the seams all live at the back, where twenty-six silk-covered buttons run down the spine on hand-worked loops. The boat neck sits on the shoulder point and does not move, because the foundation underneath is doing the holding.

The hem was cut on her in the last fitting, three weeks before, with the shoes she actually wore.