I reread Stephen King's Carrie last night, because I last read it when I was nine, and mostly what I remembered was the false bill of goods it provided on the wonders of puberty. (Still waiting for my telekinetic powers....)
This morning I am shelving books, minding my business, when suddenly I get burn-the-school-down mad over this:
In the book, we're told that Carrie's mom supports their household on an entry level job at a laundromat. We're not told, or given the impression, that Carrie has a job.
Yet Carrie has enough money to make a crushed velvet prom dress with a princess waistline and Juliet sleeves. The book describes this in detail. (So much detail, in fact, that I wonder if this was Tabitha's influence. I have never heard that Stephen King had any interest in sewing women's dresses.)
Here are some things I know about velvet, princess waistlines, and puffed sleeves:
1. Velvet is not cheap. Velvet has never been cheap.
2. A princess waistline dress with an ankle- or floor-length skirt would require a MINIMUM of four yards of fabric on a woman of average height. A "'princess waistline" doesn't have a waist seam; the panels go all the way from the neckline to hemline and are cut to curve inwards at the right places. (They're uncommon today in non-stretch fabrics - like velvet - because they require a custom fit, but they're very common in stretch fabrics and garments that are supposed to look baggy and not quite fit anyone, like Lularoe dresses.)
3. Velvet has a nap. To make anything with panels out of velvet (like a princess waistline dress), you actually need twice as much fabric, because you can only cut pieces in one direction; you can't, say, cut one panel from one side and then rotate the pattern to cut the other half from the other side. Sewing paneled pieces from velvet produces a LOT of waste fabric, which is why it was associated with royalty for so long. Only rich people could afford to waste fabric. It's also why velvet details, like collars, cuffs, and covered buttons, were and still are far more common than full-velvet garments.
The Internets estimate that in 1979, velvet ran about $6.00 per yard. So that's probably $50.00 for eight yards plus thread, buttons, zippers etc., which we know Carrie would have had to buy because the dress was red, a color her mom didn't let her wear, so she wouldn't have had red thread/buttons/zippers in the house already.
(Presumably she could have gotten the puff sleeves from the overage left by the panels, so I'm not adding a yard for those, nor am I adding any money for interfacing or lining, because interfacing is always white and we're not told if this dress was lined or if so in what. A basic muslin lining could easily have been made from fabric Carrie already had.)
A standard ready-made prom dress cost about $20 to $30 in 1979. It would literally have been cheaper for Carrie to buy TWO ready-made dresses than to buy JUST THE FABRIC for the one she made. Yet, somehow, that didn't matter, even though her mom worked a job that wouldn't pay the light bill today.
Fabulous economy. Is anyone else tired of winning? I sure am.
(For the record, MY prom dress was baroque satin, because that doesn't have a nap, so I didn't have to buy eight yards. I had to buy six, because I, unlike Carrie, insisted on a full skirt. It was not princess seamed and had no sleeves.)
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