She prepared a canvas material of the size she wanted and had it fixed on a wooden panel. The materials she used included paint brushes, a rag, an apron and a sponge along with the paints. The contents of the painting, My Dress Hangs There, are an empty dress hanging, a trophy, a dollar sign fixed around the cross and a church. Also visible is a toilet, a telephone, a statue of liberty, tall towers, dark grey water, industrial smoke pipes and dark stone wall. There are two pillars, a garbage bin, fire and smoke and a lady kneeling down.
She chose to paint this in order to express what she felt about American society she was living in. The empty dress could mean that though she was in America, her soul was not there and could probably be in her motherland, Mexico. She expresses the high regard of sports by the American society by placing a trophy on top of a column. This could mean that achievement is highly regarded than anything else including human dignity. The whole painting portrays how much she was upset with American society, the inequality and how human life was least regarded among other things.
The painting is unique as its name goes, My Dress Hangs There. This because unlike her other paintings about herself, where there is always her face or her body in the painting, this painting only shows her dress hanging and empty. Neither her face nor any part of her body is visible. She is completely absent. Frida Kahlo's my dress Hangs There painting can now be found at Hoover Gallery, San Francisco, California, U.S.A. currently. One of the artists who inspired Frida Kahlo was her husband Diego Rivera. In this painting, for instance, My Dress Hangs There, came as a result of her being in the US with her husband. She had no alternative but she travelled with him to many places. Her experience with him gave her many ideas about paintings.
