Mother buys daughter-in-law a dress from Spirit Halloween to wear to her husband's graduation: 'I didn’t ask for a dress'

Sometimes a gift can be more than a gift. It can be a backhanded comment. 

The way that we dress can be so personal to us. It reflects who we are and what we like and what we believe. If you're a person who takes stock in your style, you probably do a lot of thinking about it. You enjoy shopping and putting together outfits, and you enjoy the feeling you get when wearing something that you love outside of the house. This is why clothing is such a tricky gift to give somebody under any circumstance. Unless you know their exact size and exactly what they want, buying somebody a clothing item is always going to be a swing. It might be a swing and a hit, but it will more likely be a swing and a miss. It can be hard to define what you like about an item of clothing. You might like the way it feels on your body, the way it drapes, or it might remind you of a character that you love from movies or TV, or a moment from the past that you're trying to capture. It's hard to appear in somebody else's head and know what they're thinking about an item of clothing. This is why I generally avoid giving clothing as a gift. It's just way too risky. And you never know you might end up offending somebody by buying them something you think they would like, and they don't like. But more than that was happening here. This dress was an offense to anybody.