17 Dresses

In the generation shortly before eating disorders are diagnosed and treated, Paulette quietly starves, heaves and cuts herself. Built like a ‘50s pin-up girl with a pleading pout, she detests herself and even though she lives for beauty, she cannot see her own. She takes sanctuary in the secondhand dresses scored in thrift and vintage shops, a world of storied fabrics and a beacon for something meaningful beyond the California ideal that surrounds and often suffocates her. At 15, Paulette is a rocket heading straight into mid 1970’s space. She has so little guidance and yet quite a lot of good fortune. Luckily she has a grandmother who relates to Paulette in the language of old clothing. And then there is her on-again, off-again romance with the semiotician Benjamin, who unzips more than a figure of speech. Over the course of seventeen years and seventeen vintage dresses, each frock tells a delicate tale, uttering significance and inspiring Paulette’s transformation from girl, to gal to grown. Part coming of age, part homage to the rousing world of vintage, 17 Dresses is a haute and haunting glance at the suffering that comes from not wanting to fit in to anything but that venerable dress in the window.