If you want to see a truly beautiful group of women - my mother and her sisters - living in a tiny baker's home in the hamlet of Smitshoek, Rotterdam before World War Two. They were celebrated as great beauties at the time and made up the entire church choir, because their voices were crystal-clear. Many young guys arrived to court them. My nephew Karel Zwart was so taken with their grace and elegance displayed on their wedding pictures - wearing their self-made gowns, veils ... and hats - that he has built a collection My aunt Audrey ("Ankie") who married Jacob Buitenwerf upon her arrival as an immigrant in Canada, wore a white silk dress made from a US parachute! She was an underground resistance member and built a good life for her family on Salt Spring Island, near Vancouver. An amazing woman. She and her sisters ruled the roost in that tiny cottage and feathers flew on many a day. I've been told! The girls ran a chicken coop, an apple orchard and a veggie patch in the rear of the house, my mother Janny ran a dress-design studio, and my grandmother ran a grocery shop/haberdashery from the front room. The brothers slept in the attic. Yet without very, very good organisation this miracle could never have happened... so my grandmother was of course, the most important person in the house while granddad, a manager at a local bakery chain, represented the silent majority of the male residents in the cottage... When gran died of liver-cancer, three of her six daughters were married in black dresses. affordable of the bridesmaid