Dress for Success Mends Social Fabric With Donated Garments

By Petula Dvorak
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

It's hanging in the back of my closet, inside the dry cleaner's bag -- lovely, with just the right nips at the waist and sharp, I'm-going-to-take-over-the-world lapels.

This suit is dear to me not because I wore it on a special occasion or because it's a limited edition from a special designer.

I have been treating this garment like the Shroud of Turin for years because of its size. It's tiny. Therefore, I was tiny. Once.

Then I ate lunch. And it didn't fit anymore. Now, faced with the reality of two children and an old house with few closets, I ought to get rid of the only tangible evidence of my seven seconds of svelte.

There's a charity that distributes suits to unemployed women to help them get a job. I've heard of it before. But honestly, is a suit really going to change someone's life?

I mean, if I fit into that suit again, it would change my life, sure. But I can't imagine what my suit could do for someone else.

So I went to visit this place to see what happens to suits like mine.

"Guuuuurl, lemme tell you: You look amazing!"

Just past the entryway, I hear a commotion coming from the dressing room of Dress for Success.

It's Danielle Dixon, twirling and posing in a sharp aubergine suit and stunning charcoal sling-backs. She flips her braids, throws a slouchy, black, patent leather bag over her shoulder and struts.

"I feel like a million bucks," Dixon says. "Now I'm gonna go make a million bucks."

Dixon, 24, was working full time as a hospital medical assistant when she was laid off. Now she has five kids and little to wear on job interviews beyond old scrubs and street clothes.

So here she is at the small Northeast Washington offices of Dress for Success.

"We're gonna get you a Gmail account, and let's work on that résumé, okay?" says Jen McNulty, executive director of the nonprofit group, after giving Dixon's new look her approval and directing her to the bank of four computers -- the new career center.

"At first, the mission was suits. Get these women suited up to find work," McNulty says.

But in the past year, as unemployment rates rose to double-digit figures -- 11.2 percent in August for the District, the highest since 1983 -- the suit place has become so much more than a boutique.

"They need to get money for food. Money to get back on the bus. Encouragement. Skills training. This year, we've seen the highest numbers come in looking for all kinds of help," said Melissa Frazier, program manager at Dress for Success. "I become a cheerleader, a counselor, a life coach."

She remembers the woman who came in to get a suit after losing her job as a manager at a pretty big downtown restaurant. When she lifted her shirt to try some clothes on, everyone sucked in a quick gasp. There were stitches crisscrossing gashes all over her middle.

"It was a domestic violence situation. She had been stabbed over and over again," McNulty says. In the drama of it all, she lost her job, her home and her dignity. Dress for Success helped her get housing, food and, eventually, a job in another D.C. restaurant.

So here we have a nonprofit that started as a nice way to get the ladies-who-lunch crowd to give up last season's Chanel in the back of their walk-in closets that is now helping to hold together our social fabric.

But while business is booming for a place such as Dress for Success, the government aid it received -- a District earmark of $250,000 was more than half of the organization's operating budget last year -- has vanished. So its leaders are scrambling to make up the difference with donations and hope an Oct. 19 luncheon fundraiser at the W Hotel, featuring Michelle Fenty, will bring an infusion of cash.

Meanwhile, they are expanding their workload as government agencies cut back on social services and a population already in peril has even fewer places to turn.

Stepping in are such volunteers as Portia Johnson, Barbara Armes and Kristen Zastrow, three retired federal workers with a combined 107 years of work experience. They come in one or two days a week to sort clothes and teach women how to reclaim their lives.

"It's not just about getting a job. Some of them don't know how to keep a job," says Johnson, 63, who put in 38 years at the Environmental Protection Agency and now mentors women on accessorizing, etiquette and basic job skills.

They have women with MBAs who were laid off and can't meet the volunteers' eyes because they are not used to charity. They have women who start sobbing in the dressing room. "They look at themselves in the mirror and just start crying because they've never had a suit on before," Armes says.

Or they burst out of the door sashaying in something three sizes too small, resulting in a decidedly after-five aura.

" 'You're not going to the go-go,' I have to tell them. 'You are looking for a job,' " Armes said.

On this day, Dixon gets a shopping bag for her suit and hugs everyone as she leaves. She has two job interviews lined up.

I head home to yank that small suit out of its time capsule. It's going to do a lot more good here than inside my closet.

E-mail me at dvorakp@washpost.com.