Did you ever dream of a dress? Not just any dress, but the dress, the dress that will make you perfect. The dream dress.

The Dream Dress and Other Stories explores how garments, shoes, and fabrics shape women’s lives as they navigate aging, memory, desire, and power.

Across boudoirs, nursing homes, Niagara’s waterfront, funerals, and garment factories, these stories explore body image, family dynamics, trauma, and resilience. Beads, lace, and gowns carry history and hope as the women who wear them wrestle with judgment, memory, and the line between glamour and fragility.

These are stories that both bite and charm; tender moments of connection sit beside sharp examinations of societal expectations, while the dresses themselves become agents of change, conflict, or quiet revelation.

A luminous blend of vulnerability and voice, The Dream Dress and Other Stories is a collection to wear again and again.

Coming Fall 2026

“Scharper gives respect to a subject too readily dismissed as slight … loosen(ing) fashion’s stranglehold on the discourse on dress… emphasizing the inescapable links between outer surfaces and the inner life.”—The Toronto Star

“The tone and dramatic arc are carefully wrought; Scharper’s controlled expression and understatement [are] touchingly illuminating….”—The Globe and Mail