At the time that I designed and made this dress, I wasn’t wearing much of the clothing from the line. It sounds absurd, but I only started wearing Birds of North America in early 2014.

Oh, the things this green sweater has seen. Professional wrestling matches. Both islands of New Zealand. So, so many graduate school classes. Baby goats. Approximately a million backyard bonfires.

You know those short periods in your life that are incredibly transformative, but you don’t realize just how many things were changing until you look back later? For me, the biggie is spring/summer, 2012.

Here is my favourite outfit. Well, my favourite jeans really. I call them my PhD pants, which is fitting because I purchased them for the occasion of my dissertation defense. Some ladies wear dresses to this kind of event. Others wear power suits. I wore PhD pants. I paired them with a blazer and felt comfortable, confident, and even stylish.

I like things that last – old things, forgotten things, things that keep going. I’ve always gravitated towards colour and light and styles that have a bit of longevity to them. Being in the world feels so volatile sometimes: I want to know I can depend on something, and fashion has always afforded me a modicum of control.

I was 30, living in Kingston, Ontario with my grad-student husband and two children. I had gone on a girls-day-out kind of trip to Ottawa, and Bouclair Fabrics was the prime destination.

The question of my favorite outfit really got me thinking about what would constitute a favorite for me – something that I wear a ton but will eventually get rid of like my current favorite jeans, something of sentimental value like a wedding dress or concert tee, a rare vintage find?

I purchased the red dress in Italy on a choir tour. The trip was a noisy tumble-dryer of emotional highs and lows fueled by countless bottles of red wine, singing, and my tears of guilt over the fact that I had left my family at home to deal with the very short and shocking timeline my mom had been given just before I left.