Something happened that renewed our love of Judy Garland and her poppy gown. Maybe it was the Judy movie or Judy herself trending on STARmeter or maybe it was our friendship with collector extraordinaire Charles Triplett.

Yes, the gown was always a very special possession, but we knew little of its history beyond being showcased on Episode #21 of The Judy Garland Show in 1964.

Fast forward to 2019 when publicity began for Judy, the movie. Renée Zellweger and Judy Garland were pictured side by side, each in their own poppy gowns. Judy of course in her original dress and Renée in fashion designer Jany Termine’s film version.

Then our eyes were opened thanks to Charles. We learned Judy wore the dress beyond the TV series. Miss Garland wore the dress in performances in Sydney in 1964 and Mexico City in 1966. In 1965 Judy attended Jack Jones’ opening night at the Coconut Grove showing off her poppy gown.

We recently listened to an audio of Ray Aghayan, the designer of the gown, discussing his work on the TV series. His story about the poppy dress design is pretty damn great. To quote Mr. Aghayan: “Then I did …at the point when I was really very angry, she’d been very difficult, very angry… I did a dress on purpose…the way it looked. And it turned out to be my favorite dress really. Which is a dress… it’s black sequin and it’s covered with flowers, big poppies…yellow, red, orange all over it. It turned out to be very very good.”

What more can we say…it’s a very very good dress and we love it dearly.



Marianne and Tom O’Connell March 2020