What was she thinking?

I called into Clegs today and found my attention caught by a bolt of the material Haley Bracken chose for the "bodice" — I use the word loosely — of the dress she designed herself for the Alan Border presentation. It's a gruesomely fascinating image — her hair, her dress, her smile, her breasts — that I can't quite bring myself to post on my blog. If you haven't had enough of an eyefull, go here. The material itself is quite pretty, in an ornate sparkly fairy princess kind of way. And the layers of blue and green in the long wavy skirt and its train? Ditto.

But I couldn't help but wonder: what was she thinking? Glamour, cameras, fame, and all the mystique of The Dress that will transform you, and, in this context, take on a life of its own, I guess. But apart from the sexual politics of her choice, there's a more prosaic question, about the imaginative process by which she negotiated the passage of seeing all those beautiful materials in the shop, choosing this combination and those shapes to end up with the finished product?  I used to be quite good at negotiating those tricky waters: today I became paralysed and indecisive. It's not that clothes shopping is that much fun: but at least when you try something on you can see what it looks like.

I'm also struck by the oddity that I can barely tell the faces of this one and the other blonde WAGS apart; but that I could pick the textile of her dress, out of context, in a flash.