Literary Fashion - The Blind Assassin

I'm currently reading The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood.

More on my impressions when I've finished the book. At this moment in the story it's the depression, and the family, whose fortunes are rapidly declining, is throwing a party. The girls are without a mother, and are being raised by their father (whose business is beginning to fail,) a series of inept teachers, their housekeeper, and the father's girlfriend. This passage describes what the girlfriend wears to the party:

For this evening she wore a jersey dress the color of a duster - taupe was the name of the colour, she'd told us; it was French for mole. On anyone else it would have looked like a droopy bag with sleeves and a belt, but Callie managed to make it seem the height, not of fashion or chic exactly - this dress implied that such things were beneath notice - but rather of something easy to overlook but sharp, like a common kitchen implement - an ice pick, say - just before the murder. As a dress, it was a raised fist, but in a silent room.

Atwood does such an amazing job of bringing the reader in, and evoking the visceral impression of a thing - the colored light in a room with stained glass windows, the flavor of the cheese hors d'ouvres, the attitude of each outfit and its wearer. Love me some Margaret Atwood.