The Age of Innocence

This evening I am thrilling to the news that Carol Grant is alive and well. For my eighteenth birthday my mother commissioned me my very own ballgown from a lady in Oxford. I can remember her shop well because it was near my house and my friends and I used to cycle past and admire the sleek, magical dresses in the window. It was a huge surprise when my mother offered to buy me a made to measure dress from the almost otherworldly shop, because the prices were otherworldly too.

Grant made me the most beautiful kingfisher blue and lilac shot silk dress, long enough to look like a princess, short enough to dance in. It was glorious. I wore it to my eighteenth birthday party on a boat, and danced with my beautiful Vicomte boyfriend all night. I danced in that dress in chateaux all over France, and it reminds me of that romantic, innocent time.

Carol Grant moved away and I heard nothing of her for several years until this evening, when I found her shop on the internet. She now has a shop in Shrewsbury, and as far as I can understand one in Oxford. She is the best designer I have ever known.