The Dress Department
- L.B. Browne
- Sep 30
- 10 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Winner of the 2025 Broad Ripple Review Prize in Fiction
Giulia has only to rehang this evening gown, a column of mint chiffon, before she can close the register for the night. But the woman in sunglasses is still here, flicking through beaded sheaths and A-lines Giulia should have waited to straighten.
Perhaps Giulia should ask the customer what she asks every other woman who steps into her designer corner of La Rinascente. Mi scusi, do you need assistance? A question that repels as often as attracts a sale. But the way the woman moves, with both gravity and fluidity, steeps the question in a sense of vulgarity.
Faint metallic clicks, hangers tapping rack—intimate ticking sounds that Giulia enjoys when she is not so worn—pause. “Mi scusi,” the woman says. “May I try that on?”
The woman is zipped and strapped into the editorial blacks and grays of Milano street style. Her eyes are spidery shadows behind dark lenses. Her broad nose is tipped down to the mint chiffon in Giulia’s hands.
In the fitting room, the woman requests privacy. By the time she hands Giulia her credit card, the register should be closed, the lights on the floor should be off, and Giulia should be opening chapter five of Didion’s L’anno del pensiero magico while riding the 62 home. Well, at least, on this last day of the month, she has finally met her sales target.
The following day, the woman in sunglasses is back. “Too much cleavage,” she says, draping the dress across the counter. Its tags are still attached, its skirt still pressed, but from the fabric drift traces of an outer world, the musk of a library book.
“May I suggest a replacement?” Giulia asks. She prefers to issue a store credit or exchange. A refund will be deducted from her total monthly sales. And she needs to beat her targets; she needs this job. But the woman smiles politely and leaves with her refund.
The woman is back three nights later, just before close. Giulia can already hear her mother’s nagging, her father’s silence, when she again arrives late to pick up the kids. Your whole life’s falling apart. And you, hiding away in that magazzino pomposo. You’ll never find a good man. These boys need a father. What Guilia needs is cash. To stave off an eviction notice, a move back into her parents’ appartamento, the grumbles of three young boys with bottomless pits for stomachs.
“Maybe this one,” the woman says, raising the hanger to the fluorescent light.
Winter white, floor-length, satin stretch, off-the-shoulder, ruched at the bodice. One of Giulia’s favorites, and the last one of its style. Tending the floor alone, she has been tempted to slip into the gown. Just to see. But the color and cut remind her of a dress she wore once and never again, and from fear of feeling silly or something worse, she has never taken it to the fitting room.
When Giulia offers to assist, the woman says, “No need,” in a voice so soft the salesgirl must lean in to hear. Giulia glimpses the customer only briefly, stepping through the curtains to inspect herself in the communal floor-length mirror. The dress makes a woman look as regal as Giulia had imagined. Later, while sitting on the chipped plastic of the 62, Giulia pauses her reading mid-sentence. Why hadn’t she tried on the dress while she still could?
But she can. As soon as the following morning, if she still desires. The woman is her first customer. Same glasses, same broad nose, same gentle voice. “Wrong color,” she says, draping the dress across the counter. As Giulia inspects the return, her prior fears surface. The desire to zip herself into the gown feels too complicated. She is unprepared for the emotional possibilities. Its tags are still attached, its skirt still pressed, but from the fabric drift traces of an outer world, the salted air of an ocean breeze.
“A special occasion?” Giulia asks. Perhaps she can suggest something better suited. But the woman smiles politely and leaves with her refund.
Weeks of this puzzling waltz. Every third night, just before close, the woman buys an expensive dress, always carefully selected, always returned. Too difficult to zip. Too narrow in the hips. Too wide in the hips. Too sheer. Too, just…”not me.”
Guila accepts each return without question. Tags attached, skirt pressed, fabric scented: eucalyptus, citrus, evergreen. She begins to press each dress to her face, identifying the fragrance by name, as soon as the woman walks off.
Giulia has heard anecdotes of serial returners, though she had never encountered one herself. Had supposed the phenomenon was yet another wasteful behavior reserved for Americans and parents of toddlers. Perhaps the woman is American with a good Italian accent. Not impossible; not likely. An internet search now warns against four types of returner personas: the compulsive shopper, the wardrober, the social media wardrober, and the bracketer.
The compulsives have mental health issues, buying to relieve anxiety, returning to relieve guilt. Hoarders, essentially, only saved by a reflex of remorse. The wardrober is more calculating and utilitarian, using the purchase as a free rental, wearing the garment outside the home before the return. The social media wardrober only uses the free rental to snap photos and collect likes. A behavior that reads as sad to Giulia, but questionably more ethical. The bracketer buys the same style en masse, just different sizes or colors, with the intent to return most of the purchase.
The dresses Giulia sells are intentionally tagged on the outer fabric in a way that cannot be hidden. Aside from the unusual fragrances, there is no indication the woman wears these dresses out. Nor does she buy more than one at a time. And hard to believe a woman of this age and refinement would stoop to social media. So, compulsive?
Obsessive, Giulia becomes as the weeks wear on. Perhaps she should stop accepting the returns. No good for her numbers. She is now reading an Italian translation of Kübler-Ross on her commute. La morte è di vitale importanza. But progress is slow; her attention wanes. In the many books on grief she has studied, she has yet to find any words that help her cope with the memory of returning home to her husband’s scientific mind spattering the bedroom headboard. Nothing to help her understand why he, without hint or warning, could no longer stand a life with the wife and boys he had professed to love.
Giulia’s mind often drifts off the page and into speculation. What can the woman possibly be doing with all these dresses? The glasses. Perhaps those are a clue. Perhaps she is blind. Does she go home and show the dresses to a neighbor who reeks of homemade perfume and tells her how awful each purchase looks? But if she were blind, she would have a guide dog or at least a cane. Perhaps the perfumes are hers, and she is searching for love on a dating app, and the men never fail to cancel right before she cuts the dress tag. Perhaps she accepts invitations to social events that anxiety, a case of mild agoraphobia, keeps her from attending. Perhaps she too is losing her mind.
On the morning Giulia decides to follow the woman, she warns her mother she’ll pick the kids up late. A date with one of the store managers after close. Her mother, lamenting the humidity that has turned her gnocchi dough to glue, trails off. At the mention of a man, the wreckage of lunch is forgotten. Her mother’s silence, rare, signals pleasure.
Nearing the end of her shift, Giulia prepares the department’s closure in advance of the woman’s arrival. She refolds and rehangs, makes a list of items low in stock, counts the till, verifies receipts, balances the register. Tonight, the woman purchases a cocktail dress, tart red. Giulia’s hand trembles as she passes back the credit card. The woman seems to be studying her with greater intensity than usual. She must sense something. Maybe tonight is not the night. But when is it ever the night to stalk a stranger? Not stalking. Just, observing. Perhaps the mystery lies in the woman’s composure, as if she carries a heavy weight with enviable self-possession. When the woman leaves, Giulia has only to secure the register and grab her bag tucked beneath the counter.
Hanging streetlights and open windows bathe the Via del Tritone in a muted glow, an amber luminosity diffused by air filmy with impending rain. Down the street, a cross flickers neon green. The pharmacy selling salvation in the gathering dark.
The woman is already halfway down the block. Can she see, behind those tinted lenses, where she is stepping? What is the right distance to keep? And what if the woman realizes she is being shadowed? How would Giulia explain? The woman turns the corner. A droplet of rain taps Giulia’s cheek. Her heels echo as she picks up speed.
The woman does not look back as she weaves through the decaying alleys of Rome’s historic district. Wherever the woman is headed, it must be near enough to walk. Just when Giulia’s heel, rubbing its shoe, begins to sting, the woman slows, approaches an arched double entry, and pushes through. Bad luck, Giulia thinks, almost certain the door will be locked. But to Giulia’s surprise, the graffitied door creaks open. She creeps into the courtyard, where ivy clings to crumbling ochre walls and rainwater beads the terracotta tiles.
The door to a garden apartment clicks closed. Giulia approaches a square window, open but netted, with pale curtains drawn aside. Moonlight shades the room within, revealing the contours of a large bed. The inner light snaps on to reveal a dresser holding a decanter of amber liquid, two glasses, a jewelry box, a vintage record player. Crouched below the narrow sill, Giulia watches the woman enter the frame and lay the department store’s smoky white garment bag across the foot of the bed. The woman is still wearing her glasses and moves with precision, as if she knows she is being watched and enjoys the opportunity to perform. She uncorks the decanter, pours herself a drink. Glass refracts light as she raises the drink to her lips. When she sets the needle on the record player, crackling static yields to the soft ache of a soprano, an aria that sounds more like a dirge. The woman unzips the bag and lifts the dress from its wrapping. She turns to the window, without warning, and Giulia, fearing she has been seen, drops out of sight. For several moments, Giulia sits unmoving under the sill. The soprano’s vocals spill into the courtyard. The rain is steady and hushed. Giulia holds her breath, afraid an exhalation will give her away.
Sudden low murmurs, just audible over the music, coax Guilia back to the window. The woman is now turned to the corner of the room, closest to the window and out of view. Except for her dark glasses, the woman is naked, holding the red dress in front of her, as if up to a mirror. Her voice is low. Difficult to catch all the words. Giulia hears, “Is that you?”
The woman circles to the far side of the bed, selects one perfume bottle from many, walks back to face the corner of the room, spritzes the dress. The scent of vanilla drifts through the open window. The woman buries her face in the fabric.
But the red dress goes limp in the woman’s hands. Or perhaps the hands go limp. The dress falls to the floor. The woman’s body is long and pale in the lamplight. She reaches for her glasses, still positioned on the bridge of her nose, hesitates, and then with tremulous hands, exposes her eyes. Swollen, rimmed red, her expression almost stunned, as if she has seen a ghost or a stranger or herself for the first time. Tears catch the light as they slip down her cheek. Giulia lowers herself to the flagstone. She feels like the intruder she is, has the awful feeling that she has stolen from this woman, that things are somehow more valuable when stolen. She feels the moment before the sob, when you still think you can hold yourself together.
Guilia’s husband had not even left a note. An explanation, he had at least owed her that. Her wedding band still rings her finger. She had not allowed herself tears. She had worked, rehung dresses, counted sales, complimented strangers. Her blouse is soaked through, sticking to her chest. Her face is wet. The woman murmurs, “Is that you?”
“You’re a mess,” Giulia’s mother says. Her look of disdain demands to know what kind of man does nothing to protect his date from bad weather.
Guilia says, “I wanted to feel the rain.”
The next morning, the woman does not appear in Giulia’s department. A week passes. No return. Another week. Giulia stops reading the books she had hoped would show her how to grieve. She feels unmoored. She wanders through racks of disembodied dresses. The store feels empty.
On a night long after Giulia has accepted she will never see the woman again, a customer arrives just before close. The woman is wearing glasses. Could it be? But no, the lenses are clear, prescription, and this woman is only here to browse. The customer leaves, but the ghost of the woman in dark glasses lingers, even as Giulia secures the register and retreats to the stock room to collect her sweater and bag.
Both items sit on the chair where she left them, but she suddenly feels pulled to the far corner of the room, to a pile of forgotten gowns. She digs through them on impulse until she finds the one she is searching for. Winter white, floor-length, satin stretch, off-the-shoulder, ruched at the bodice. One of Giulia’s favorites, and one she has kept hidden all these months.
In the fitting room, she holds the dress against her chest. She knows even now the fit will be right. The scent of the ocean washes over her as she slips the fabric over her head. She stands here a long time, inspecting herself in the mirror. She feels afraid and unfamiliar, then familiar, then something braver than both.
About the Author
L.B. Browne is a writer, editor, and physician based in New York City. Her work has been published in The Sewanee Review, LIT Magazine, ABCNews.com, and Public Seminar. She currently serves as fiction editor of LIT Magazine. She holds an MFA in fiction from The New School, an MS in journalism from Columbia University, and an MD from Duke University. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and an NIH Clinical Research Training Fellowship. She recently completed her first novel.