In a bedroom under a grey London sky, a young Caribbean woman is wearing a dress meant only for indoors. Hiding from the wolves outside – the men who have used her, the women she doesn’t trust – she is taking refuge in an object of beauty worn close to her skin. This sweeping column of bright blue and red, patterned with ornate white chrysanthemums, drifts into a long train. It’s dramatic and excessive, a dress to conjure with. As she ties the wrap at her waist, feels its fabric gather around her feet, touches the ruffle at each wrist, she is briefly far away from this room.
The young woman is Jean Rhys, and the house dress probably dates from the 1910s, a few years after she had arrived in Britain from Dominica, aged sixteen, accompanied by her aunt and a sense of expectation that would quickly be disappointed. Rhys grew to hate the grey, the cold and what seemed to her the closed faces of this country. As a white West Indian, she had never felt that she belonged anywhere. She clung to beauty like a raft. I cannot know precisely when she wore this beautiful dress or how she felt when she put it on. I can only speculate. But I do know that a dress meant to be worn at home has a good story to tell.
