Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Red Tarvydas dress of Rebecca Twigley

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. Euryalus (talk) 12:24, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Red Tarvydas dress of Rebecca Twigley[edit]

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Non-notable red dress. Would suggest redirecting to the page of the dressmaker, but she doesn't have one. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:39, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fashion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:39, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Non-notable in what context? I'm not an avid watcher of red-carpet events but I seem to recall that this dress is mentioned quite regularly in TV and radio commentary about sport events such as the Brownlow medal count. I see it on a par, in an Australian context, with the black dress of Liz Hurley from 1994. Perry Middlemiss (talk) 02:42, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. This is one of those articles that makes wikipedia look stupid and trivial, but it clearly meets our notability guidelines, so it will have to stay. Sigh! --Bduke (Discussion) 05:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I created this article, and my reasons for doing so are well stated in the two previous posts. Yes, the subject matter of the article may seem trivial, but it has been mentioned or discussed in the mainstream media pretty much every year for the last 10 years, both in connection with football and in connection with fashion, and is now routinely referred to as "That Dress" (as is Liz Hurley's dress). In fact it is arguably the second most famous dress ever worn in Australia (after Jean Shrimpton's Derby Day dress). Additionally, the wearer of the dress, the person she accompanied to the event, and the maker of the dress all fit the notability requirements, although the maker is not (yet) the subject of an article. Bahnfrend (talk) 06:30, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update - Mabalu has now created an article about the designer. Bahnfrend (talk) 23:59, 17 October 2014 (UTC))[reply]

Keep - Despite the inevitable shudders of those who consider anything related to fashion, dress, and "women's stuff" trivial and automatically non-notable (a well documented attitude throughout art and design history), this dress certainly passes notability. Will have to bear it in mind for the 2004 article when I get back to those. Mabalu (talk) 09:44, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, as silly as I find these articles personally, I can't deny there's enough coverage to propel this past the WP:GNG. Eagerly looking forward to a world where the human being inside the clothing is considered more important than the clothing itself. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:29, 17 October 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Response. In this particular case, the wearer became a person of sufficient notability to warrant being the subject of her own article largely because she caused such a stir by wearing the dress. Bahnfrend (talk) 23:59, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Also a friendly note to nominator - apart from notable exceptions such as Jean Muir, many fashion designers don't care for the term "dressmaker" which is seen as dismissive of the work they do. Mabalu (talk) 14:33, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Question: why can't this be trimmed, compacted, and redirected to Rebecca Twigley? Quis separabit? 02:15, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Answer. There are at least two reasons. First, the dress is independently (or, at least, separately) notable. You might as well ask why the article isn't redirected to Ruth Tarvydas (or 2004 Brownlow Medal for that matter). Secondly, the Rebecca Twigley (Rebecca Judd) article, if modified as suggested, would give undue prominence to the dress. Judd has now been a public figure for more than 10 years, and she has done a lot more than just wear one dress. Bahnfrend (talk) 04:06, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okey-dokey. Quis separabit? 18:52, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep: per reasons cited by article creator, @Bahnfrend. Quis separabit? 18:52, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawing vote -- no longer am sure. Quis separabit? 21:57, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect. OK, I know that I should gracefully bow to the general opinion here and withdraw this. However, I'm with Bduke that this kind of article makes us look trivial and stupid, so I'm going to try to explain why.

Notability: This topic is not notable. It gets about 27 hits on Google, and every single one of them derives from this article; it gets 0 hits on Gbooks; removing the quotes from the title raises that to one useful hit.
Topic and title: We don't do this here, it's a kind of WP:SYNTH. We don't have articles on the Apocryphal Elizabeth-trodden muddy velvet cloak of Sir Walter Raleigh or the 10-inch diameter Alec Issigonis wheels of the Morris Mini-Minor or the Gold-plated Rolls-Royce-coachbuilt London taxi of Nubar Gulbenkian or the Small square black moustache of Adolf Hitler or the Prominent implant-enhanced breasts of Pamela Anderson, even though these are all topics which have been discussed in innumerable sources and are fully notable (though not necessarily under those silly titles) by our standards. Those topics are covered in their respective parent articles, just as this one should be.
Event: This isn't really about a dress, it's about one particular occasion when one particular person wore that dress, a single event. I don't believe it satisfies our requirements at WP:EVENTCRIT.
There's nothing here that couldn't just as well be covered in the excellent new article on Tarvydas (chapeau to Mabalu for that). If it is absolutely to be kept then it should be moved to an encyclopaedic title such as Ruth Tarvydas red dress. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It follows the titling convention for other individual dress articles on Wikipedia (see Green Versace dress of Jennifer Lopez. I think that if it was added to Ruth Tarvydas there would be undue weight on the single design when she did other dresses, to the effect that it would appear as if she had only done one dress in a nearly 50-year career, and having looked into it, I think it is a notable dress in its context. It has received commentary and coverage over a period of time. While not AS significant as the J-Lo dress or Jean Shrimpton's Ascot dress, it still has had sufficient impact. I wouldn't have created the article personally (although I am thinking about doing a few for significant historical dresses myself), and while I'm not completely unsympathetic to your point of view, I think the fact it's been done, done properly, and done well, makes it a clear fait accompli. Mabalu (talk) 23:53, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also - searching by the exact article title as quoted? Of course the Google hits are going to be skimpy. A search for general strings such as "Tarvydas red dress" pulled up an article about the dress itself and dozens of articles mentioning and referencing this exact dress - tens of thousands of Google hits, many of the first hits from newspaper articles specifically describing the dress, the controversy, and the sexual-political and social issues that it inspired discussion of. Similar results for Rebecca Twigley red dress and other logical Google searches. I think that this is clearly a very significant design from an Australian fashion viewpoint. In fact, we have a number of very similar articles on individual objects and have had for quite a long time - J-Lo's green dress was recently assessed as a Good Article. Individual dresses can be treated and considered as works of art, anathema as the idea may be to some. Perhaps in this instance it is also comparable to a book - people looked at her, and read all sorts of things, and then discussed their thoughts and interpretations to such an extent that the dress ceased to be merely a dress, but became a text. (I did MA History of Textiles and Dress - so I speak this kind of frock wittery fluently!) And many years after the fact, when so many other frocks have been long forgotten, it continues to be talked about and discussed and reflected on. Personally, I find that quite interesting and noteworthy. Mabalu (talk) 00:14, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All of what Mabalu says is true. Here are some further comments. First, the dress was the catalyst for a major change in the Brownlow Medal ceremony. It went from being a footballers event to being a WAGs plus footballers event. Secondly, the dress greatly increased the prominence of its (also otherwise notable) designer - a good example of someone who worked very hard for many years to become an "overnight success". Thirdly, the dress really did make an overnight success of its wearer, and she's still a public figure, well known in more than one big city. Fourthly, it has had long term coverage, and not only about its original public outing - eg of its auction, of its later sale to someone else, of its being the centerpiece of its designer's retrospective, etc. Not all of these points are obvious as yet from the article, but the article is a work in progress. Bahnfrend (talk) 01:32, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to the dressmaker, who does have a page. The best justification for a separate article would be if it were an artifact of substantial enough cultural or artistic value to be in a major museum. The effect as catalyst for a change in one aspect of a medal ceremony is not sufficient. One can interpret extensively any object, and if this is done over time by sufficiently important sources, it can cause notability: perhaps this will eventually be a major example of fashion history, not just something incidental. But given the sources in the article, that is not now the case. Every sufficiently sexy dress worn at a prominent occasion brings forth newspaper comment. DGG ( talk ) 04:40, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Response. For a start, what about the wearer and the event, both of which also have a page? But let me engage with your key point. The article is not in a major museum because it is privately owned. On the question whether it would be accepted as a donation to a major museum, there are two obvious possibilities, the National Sports Museum and the National Museum of Australia. According to the latter museum's Collections Development Plan, pages 24-25, focus themes include "... Australian participation and interest in sport and other leisure pursuits from elite to local levels ... [including] popular interest and involvement in public commemorations, celebrations and other festivals", and collecting examples include "... material culture of sports and leisure pursuits, including objects related to people who have made significant national contributions in these fields ...", and "... material culture of people who have made significant national contributions in the field of ... cultural arts." I would have thought that the dress easily fits the first of these criteria because of its association with both football and its (notable) wearer (a model and long time tv presenter), the second criterion because of its association with both the wearer and its (notable) designer, and the third because of its association with the designer. It is, for example, easily the most notable dress the wearer will ever wear, and also the most notable dress the (now deceased) designer ever made in her 40 year career. And remember, we're looking here at the collection policy of a generalist national museum, not just a regional or specialist museum (such as the National Sports Museum). Isn't that enough? Bahnfrend (talk) 05:41, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Response: "Every sufficiently sexy dress worn at a prominent occasion brings forth newspaper comment." - Yes, but not every dress continues to receive coverage or attention on this kind of level days, or weeks, or months, after the fact, let alone years - and it is more than passing mentions. This dress, out of thousands of others like it, lodged in awareness and consciousness in a wholly unprecedented way. It doesn't even have the excuse of being worn at the Oscars or for a major ceremony, or worn by a royal bride or even by a huge celebrity - it just happened to capture all this attention. Any other dress could have done it, but this one did. Why? Search me. But yes, I do believe this one is very notable - and the level of coverage and detail in the article means that wherever you merge it to, it will overwhelm the article it is merged to, giving undue weight. Mabalu (talk) 09:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as per Mabalu's various comments. It clearly has passed GNG, and it wouldn't be correct to redirect this title to the article about the event, the wearer, or the designer. Of course those other articles should include mentions of this article and link to it. Witty lama 20:46, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.