Dear Shaded Viewers,
In the foreword to Mary Adams' lavish tome, "The Party Dress Book" recently published by Watson-Guptill, Amy Sedaris recalls walking past Mary's dress shop on NYC's then-dilapidated Lower East Side in 1993: "All you could see were ruffles. They were everywhere . . . It was a deaf person's dream–a vision chock-full of bright colors and dramatic textures." Shortly after, Sedaris ordered her first Mary Adams dress and wore it to the Obie Awards. "Ethan Hawke approached me and said I had on the prettiest dress that night. I told him it looked better on the floor, and watched him run away."
Glenn Belverio: How did the book come about?
Mary Adams: I was fitting a bride and I asked her what she did for a living and she said she made sewing books. A week earlier one of my interns was telling me I should write a book so I mentioned that to Julie (the bride to be) and she said, "Oh would you want to do a book with us?" At the time I remember thinking, Who in the heck wouldn't want to do a book? I thought, I would do a book just to have a cover! After her wedding she brought the executive editor, Joy Acquilino, and she proposed I do a book on my party dresses.
GB: In the book you talk about moving from Portland, Oregon to New York
