DKNY on the Colorado: (The Most Famous River Dress)

This is the story of what happened to my pink neoprene river dress. I don’t want to have to explain in detail why a woman would wear a dress on the river in the first place: simply, some women wear dresses on the river. Some men wear skorts and paint their toenails on the river, too. A river dress is more comfortable than shorts, easier to go potty in and easier to yank off (should you need to yank your clothes off quickly). River dresses (and skorts) are cool in more ways than one. The dress-in-question, though, was very special: It was a signed exclusive line of Donna Karan New York — a DKNY original with perhaps as much value (to some) as a signed lithograph by Andy Warhol.

Prudence gave it to me. We were in the habit of trading precious articles for coveted personal items each of us flaunted. Prudence was after my Aunt Charlotte’s pink Christian Dior silkand- lace bathrobe, and I wouldn’t give it to her despite my family suggesting a 16-foot-wide single trailer with 30-year-old orange shag carpet and four dogs and cats was not what Charlotte had in mind when she left her expensive wardrobe to me in her will. Prudence thought the robe fit her lifestyle more than mine. I argued. She insisted. I held onto it. She “borrowed” it, though I realized, once out of my trailer, that I would likely never see it again. I relented, and the robe moved to Cripple Creek, Colo., with Prudence.

Prudence used to be a wealthy aristocrat in Aspen and Durango. That’s how she acquired her taste and knew things about labels and brand names. No one knew whereby I acquired my sense of sophistication and fewer knew I even HAVE a sense of sophistication. Prudence knew. She also knew what it would take to appease me. She had in her secret stash a signed exclusive DKNY. It was a hot-pink, heavy-gauge-neoprene, body-forming party dress. The cut vastly plunged down the front-side to expose (and squish) the bosom and snuggly tapered a thin stemof- a-waist into a ballerina-flared skirt with ample flutes and waves about the mid-thigh. Anyone who zipped it on was shaped by thick, pink rubber into this Barbie-form with cleavage, whether or not they had boobies. It was a perfect swap.

My new dress debut was to be that weekend on the Colorado River. The Fezziwigs were bringing a prestigious guest: the daughter of the Vice Chancellor of Germany to the river for her first time. They had been screened by secret police types and the responsibility of her American vacation fell into their manicured laps. They invited a careful list of friends to camp and run the river sans kookiness, on best behavior, no big drunks, keep your clothes on and watch your mouth. I’m not sure if I was invited directly or how I actually ended up in their camp . . . but, I had the dress.

We ran the river, me at the helm of my own craft in my DKNY. (“Where’d she get that dress?” I would hear them ask. “It’s a signed DKNY original,” someone would answer in obvious awe.) My cleavage was bulging, my shoulders hailed the oars. I both danced on the bow with agility in my ballet attire and dove headfirst into the water (it was neoprene after all). The young German woman wasn’t all that close to me on any occasion, because she was in a separate boat, but at the Radium Hot Springs (you can land alongside these hot springs directly from the river), we found ourselves next to each other and so I felt a compulsory need to make her feel at home by speaking her native tongue, “Mein GOTT in HIMMEL!!!” I exclaimed. “Wie geht es Ihnen mit dem auto?” (What’s up with your car, babe?) “I weiss es nicht was sohl es bedueten dass ich so traurig bin.” (I don’t know what is the reason it might be that I am so sad today … ) … this being a tirade of language sure to lighten her heart and make her feel at home.

She was, maybe, GOB-SMACKED, as were her chaperones, and I am certain other persons were likely blown away that I am such a polyglot. Who would have known?

The actual reason I do not wear my DKNY dress quite so often anymore is not because of what the hearsayers say (that I fell on rocks in a drunken stupor and bled on it, that the body-forming rubber permanently creased my upper torso, or that the skirt is too short to hide the immensity of my now 50-year-old thighs) — none of which is true nor a factor in why I don’t wear my DKNY any more. The real reason is that I haven’t been invited to a river running with guests of quite the same caliber. That’s all.

Long-time MG contributor Michele Murray lives near Lake George, Colo., where she writes, rides horses and plays bassoon.