Happy Pi Day!

As we celebrate this March 14th, also known as π, 3.14, or Pi day, I happen to have a little story for Pi day which involves my pie dresses. I say pie dresses because I am in fact the proud owner of three of these dresses. So, here's how it all went down. Back in the 20-teens, 2014 was the year I believe, ModCloth released a dress called My Kind of Pie. The fabric was originally made by Robert Kaufman under the name Confections Cotton Fabric and came in three background colors: Pink, Yellow, and ModCloth's blue.

The dress was released by ModCloth's brand, Bea & Dot, and also by a brand frequently carried by ModCloth called Fervour. My Kind of Pie was a huge success, featured constantly in the customer gallery and worn by bloggers everywhere from Kate Gabrielle to The Soubrette Brunette. I don't remember what I spent my dress budget on that month instead of this dress, but I do remember it was a seriously close call. So, I let this dress get away, but I always had a little crush on it.

At some point, maybe when Susan sold the company to Walmart or maybe before, I don't really recall when and I never really knew why, ModCloth re-released a series of their best selling dresses this time under their own ModCloth brand label, Bea & Dot having disappeared. At first, I thought fortune had smiled and I would have a second chance at this sweet dress, but there was a stone in this cherry.

According to reviewers at the time, the quality of this second string was somewhat second rate. Colors weren't as bright, fabric wasn't as soft, and they just generally weren't as good as the originals yet cost the same. I've actually seen this happen a number of times where people hold up a re-release to an original and the quality is visibly different. In a side by side comparison, those reviews were correct. (I don't really want to post the pics here though, because if you didn't know, you wouldn't know and I don't want to ruin it for someone else.) I know it must be difficult to make something exactly the same as it was when there are years between the first and second, but I have to wonder if retailers know they can cut corners the second time around by decreasing quality to increase profit margins. It's just a theory.

Since I didn't have the money to spend on a dress that wasn't quite like the original, I decided to pass on the second string. But, you know me and my inability to forget a dress I once loved. For some reason, it suddenly struck my fancy all these years later to see if I could find this dress and finally make it mine. I think the reason obesession struck was because Betsey Johnson had just released a Cherry Pie Crossbody Bag that I was gaga for and I thought, Wow, I love this, but what would I wear with it? And then I remembered the My Kind of Pie dress.

The original Bea & Dot is hard to find and still costs about $100 on resale sites even though by now all these originals have some wear and tear to them and the Fervour version is exactly the same. Undeterred, I kept searching. Finally, I found an original for well under $100 and bought it. After a week, however the dress hadn't shipped and the seller hadn't responded to my messages, so I decided I would cancel the order and try another.

I found a second dress but the seller never responded as to whether it was the original or re-release version and then the dress sold, making it all moot. So, I found a third in my price range and approximate size, but it was the re-release. Oh, well, I thought, if I never see the original, will I ever really know the difference? So, I purchased it from a different re-sale site. The payment wouldn't go through, so after messaging the seller, the seller and I agreed to just cancel the order. The search was on again and I managed to locate and purchase a fourth dress, also re-release and this time the sale went through without a hitch. I thought, Finally! I'm going to get this dress! And then things went awry.

The first seller messaged me at the last minute (before the order auto-canceled) and said they shipped the dress without initially adding tracking info. but it was on the way. The seller added the tracking info, and the order couldn't be canceled. Then the third seller messaged me and said she had figured out the issue with the payment processor and had also shipped the dress (even though we agreed to cancel), so it too was in the mail. I now had not one, not two, but three pie dresses all on the way. Oh my, oh my, oh so much pie. I think this was right about the time I began to realize that I had a significant problem with my shopping.

Now you, like the alternate-universe-pastry-chef-version-of-Sir-Mixalot, may be wondering, Whatcha gonna do with all that pie? I wish I had an answer for you, but the best I can think to do right now is just set two aside and wear the other non-stop, every week, until it becomes my signature piece and neither I nor anyone else can remember a time in my life when I wore anything else and at my funeral the picture will be of me in this dress (or one of them) and the eulogy will mention how I was probably born in this dress and definitely breathed my last in it as well. For today, though, I'll just wear the original to celebrate Pi day and be grateful that this dress is at very long last mine indeed.