Long ago, when I was nearing the end of my teen years, I was blessed with my first dress. It was a bit tight for my first one but I loved it anyway as it helped grow confidence in myself and my body. It was pink. Almost Barbie pink. You will come to know that I subconsciously favour the colour pink over many others quite often.

I had never worn dresses until my mom bought me that one, which I hand picked for myself from one of the famous clothing brands in South Africa, Factorie. I remember my mother asking many times if I was sure that I liked it, would I wear it a lot and not just wear it twice and let it collect dust. I told her I absolutely loved it and I definitely would wear it.

Now at that age, life seems a lot more exponentially dramatic than it is. As a teenager, generally most to ALL things matter. I see now, as a young adult, that I feel it still matters the way I look and feel in the clothes that I wear. Back then, six years ago, it was ten times worse. Unfortunately, the standards for young girls and women are unnecessarily and unfairly at a degree that most of us cannot and never will meet. Don’t even get me started on the patriarchy of society.

I knew that whenever I would wear that dress, I would have to make sure my stomach was flat one way or another. Even in the image above, you can see if you look long enough that I had an insecurity regarding my stomach. Which is not right or fair, but it is the world I was born in. Despite that one factor, I genuinely loved the way I looked and felt in that dress. And that’s all that really should matter when women buy clothes.

The pink dress today makes me feel like that one main character, Rebecca Bloomwood, in the famous movie called “Confessions of a Shopaholic.” Maybe not exactly like that, but a similar feeling. That’s how I feel about my pink dress, even though I have not worn it in ages. It has a special sentiment in my life, taking me through the end of my teen years into my adult life.

The older I got, the more I came to love and appreciate dresses. But I have also had my different phases with the different types. I loved the tight and shortish ones, and the more time that passed, the more I loved the summer, beach flowing kinds of dresses. And now….I honestly don’t feel like I am in shape to wear any type of dress, which is why I am going to the gym as often as I can and doing my best to eat cleanly.

In the end, as I keep repeating, it is all about what makes us happy. I felt inspired to write about my first favourite dress, from a photo that was taken in a different time and stage of my life, when I was blooming into womanhood.

I look back fondly over my old photographs and it’s mainly why I love taking so many photoshoots and videos along the way of life, so that one day you can look back and see yourself from the future, and maybe feel inspired to bring some old parts of you back. I know I want to bring back the spark I had at that age and I think it’s slowly returning, simply because I am following my dreams!