While white vintage dresses represent the expectation of female purity, this one has been heavily stained by contact with leaves and natural dyes, a metaphor or the marks and scars of life and growth. 
The armour of soap bars represens the constrictions imposed upon women by their traditional duties to Clean, Cook and Care. The title exhorts to clean the dress in a revolutionary act not to recover its prinstine original white, but to dissolve the heavy load of the traditional roles and to expose the true non-virginal nature of a life fully lived.
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