How Will I Know?: The Prom Dress

was an experience.

One of the challenges of living in Peru is trying to buy something. Lima has many beautiful spacious malls that appear to rival any mall in America. Yet the selections and sizes are limited and anything imported is at a crazy price. Emily needed a prom dress and I can't say there were any prom dress stores, let alone a dress her style and her size.

In Lima there is a shopping area called Gamarra. It is large and frantic and hectic but it is where the Peruvians shop for lots of items and the only place to shop for many items. It is really the only place to shop for fabric. Gamarra is also dangerous and sketchy. While we have been here the whole area was shut down for a brief time because of riots and some people were murdered there. It is notorious for thieves because of the predictable exchange of money. I had never been there until February of this year when I accompanied a friend and her seamstress to buy fabric. I was fascinated at the amount of fabric available to buy. At JoAnn's if you want to buy prom dress fabric they might have an aisle of options. In Gamarra there were stores with taffeta and silk and lace and satin, etc. etc. and all in every color imaginable. The options were overwhelming and I loved it. Everyone told me how they hated Gamarra but I am thinking wow, this is incredible. I was only there to observe but somehow I started talking to this girl and when we parted she left me a note with her name and number and website. She is a dress designer.

To make a long story shorter we hired Claudia to make a dress for Emily's Prom. She has a beautiful showroom beside her home which is almost directly across the street from Emily's friend from school. A place we had been numerous times. That was quite the coincidence since this town has 10 million residents. While in the process of designing and making Emily's dress Claudia was invited to show a collection at Miami's Fashion Week. She won best up and coming designer there and now she has been asked to show her collection at Italy's Fashion Week.

She asked Emily what shoes she was going to wear and then said she would just have shoes made. The dress was stunning on Emily. She looked beautiful in the green. The dress was meticulously made to every minor detail. It was a really fun experience, one I will never forget.

Emily and friends and dates went together to the dance.

They met at her friends house before for pictures. (The friend that lives across the street from Claudia.) Lonny and I arrived right before Emily. She had been at another friend's getting ready.

(The nicest houses in Lima are modern, the walls are just unpainted, unfinished cement. Her friends house is so beautiful it looks like a museum with all of the art work on the walls. Those paintings were all the work of Maria's dad,(Maria is standing next to Emily)also one of Emily's friends. The houses are inside a security wall so it is safe to open the floor to ceiling windows and let the outside in.)