The Ayoun dress and clutch from Baiastice for the July round of Collabor88 is a delicately feminine little frock with a dropped blouson top and a gently gathered flounce skirt. With spaghetti straps and a deep cleavage, it bares a lot for the summer sun. It comes in ten solids and five prints. What is so exciting is that the five prints are all different, not just recolors.It seems the essence of summer. The lovely clutch purse has a subtle nod to summer with the fabric rose on the flap. 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

My mother wanted to be an English teacher when she was growing up. Many of her older siblings went to college, but when she was still a child, my grandfather’s bank manager ran off with all the money in his bank. This was before FDIC, so people could have lost everything. Instead, my grandfather sold his mill, electric company, his farm and his house and made all the depositors whole even though he was not obligated to do so since it was a corporation. This left him impoverished and having to start over from scratch in his late sixties. He began again as a dairy farmer on contract to a local creamery, paying $1.00 per acre, but obligated to sell his produce only to that creamery for 30 years, a northern form of share-cropping.  This ended any chance my mom had of going to college.

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