I have a kept a dress for more than forty years, it has travelled across the Atlantic with me, survived all our moves and even the ransacking of my cupboard by my girls in search for “something different.”

Of itself, it is not so spectacular. My wedding dress, my ball gowns from the 80s are all much more flamboyant. But this dress I wore to a garden party at Buckingham Palace which I attended with my parents in 1965. Thus it has become a tangible relic of my childhood, of life in England, of the prime of my parents, of a beautiful day in a palace garden – a different life and world.

It is a knee-length peach silk/linen mix, fitted, sleeveless with a boat neck in front, low square neck in the back. There are two rows of applique embroidery of large stylized flowers and leaves in the same fabric down the front. I wore a pale blue silk coat over it. This was also my dress for summer parties and weddings (always held in the afternoon then) that year, and no doubt for the next few years, too!

Frances Price, Toronto, Ontario