The New Dress by Virginia Woolf
Written around the same time that Woolf declared her now oft-cited interest in “frock-consciousness”, The New Dress details the searing embarrassment of Mabel Wearing who has turned up at Mrs Dalloway’s party in a “pale yellow, idiotically old-fashioned silk dress”.
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Enthusiastic about her appearance in advance, Mabel is immediately deflated on realising her jarring incongruity with the other guests. This realisation triggers a deep-reaching internal crisis about self, truth and identity, reinforced each time she catches herself in the mirror: “dipping into that dreadfully showing-up blue pool”.
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