But the details and decoration on these clothes — the plumes, pleats and featherlike scissored chiffon — were so exquisite that the show lifted in spirit.
The letters of thanks I received testify movingly to the lift in spirit he gave them.
Her sister, Venus, shouted from courtside: "Stay strong!" and her spirits seemed to lift in bursts of brilliance.
The Australian venture capitalist, who is returning from Silicon Valley to head the national research agency in January, also told Guardian Australia his "first priority" was to lift spirits in the CSIRO, which has lost one-fifth of its workers in the past two years and seen morale plummet, according to staff surveys.
But when Never Miss a Beat, Every Day I Love You Less and Less and Ruby fire out in quick succession, it's clear that the Kaisers could lift spirits in a collapsed mine and start mosh pits at a G8 summit.
Fly Away Peter, Carriageworks, Sydney, from 2 to 9 May Parties on the western front, pop concerts in Vietnam, opera in the jungles of New Guinea... performance has often been used to lift spirits in times of conflict, from the trenches of the first world war to the camps of Afghanistan.
It will lift spirits in Syria, where another reformist revolt is under way.
There is already speculation that ANOTHER meeting might be called over the weekend, which is bound to lift spirits in Brussels, Athens and beyond.
The survival of the film's key players would have been one way to lift spirits in the wake of Rogue One's bloody torrent of intergalactic death and destruction, but that would have felt like a cop-out.
And how we chuckled at young Steve Smith when, barely a year out of his teens, he came into the Australia side and appeared to suggest his role was not so much to bat or bowl but primarily to act as court jester to lift spirits in a flagging team.
Bright sunshine has graced the closing weekend of a festival that has helped to lift spirits in Britain".
