At the Ball, She’ll Reap What She’s Sewn

It’s a safe bet that the rest of Washington didn’t prepare for tonight’s presidential inaugural ball the way Loretta Sanchez did. The Democratic freshman member of the House of Representatives made her ball gown.

“It’s not that big a deal,” Sanchez said late last week while sewing in her Garden Grove condo. “I fell in love with the material,” a copper-gold raw silk. “I’m sure somebody has sewn her own gown before.”

Maybe, maybe not, says Polly Willman, senior conservator of costumes for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

“Certainly the closest a first lady came was Jackie Kennedy. She came up with the design, then it was executed by the custom salon at Bergdorf Goodman [a New York City department store]. Believe me, she did not sew it herself. All the dresses I know about, they all have labels in them.”

Making your own ball gown “is rather unique, I would think,” Willman says.

“It’s not like I set out to do it,” says Sanchez, 37, who sews on the Singer machine that used to be her grandmother’s. “I went to the stores, but I didn’t find something I truly liked. I saw a lot of things that were nice--with big price tags.” She will attend four different balls, she says, and buying several expensive gowns “just didn’t make sense.”

To three of the events she will wear gowns she bought previously.

But for the main event, she bought a simple, size-8 McCall dress pattern (No. 7590), fabric and notions. The long, close-fitting gown with a slit up one side and spaghetti straps will cost about $60 to make, she says.

“I sew because it relaxes me, and it brings out the creative side. You see the results of your efforts quickly, as opposed to, say, government.”