'Do you remember the blue dress you were wearing on the Norwegian cruise?' Mrs. Tebben did remember Winifred Ross's blue dress. It was the blue muslin with white sports, five years old, on its last legs, altered, washed out, but good enough for picnics on the fiords. Miss Ross did not think that Mr Tebben, that nice young Civil Servant had noticed it.
Ah, the power of a dress. The opening question is put by Mr. Tebben to Mrs. Tebben who have been married long enough to have grown children. She wore it on the trip when she met him for the first time, many years ago, when she was still Miss Ross.
Yet years later, admiring his wife in another altogether different blue dress, he remembered that first one. Old, altered, faded it may have been at the time, but it clearly made an impression on the man who fell in love with her.
There are dresses that do that.
This quotation comes from Angela Thirkell in her novel August Folly from 1936. Many of her novels are set in the English countryside, and the characters of one novel may show up in another. I am currently reading my way through them. Her books are reprinted by Virago Books which you can find here: https://www.virago.co.uk/?s=thirkell