Songfacts®:

• Here, Lana Del Rey reflects on "a simpler time" when after graduating, she spent a year living on Long Island working as a waitress "wearing a white dress." It was then that she began writing songs and performing in nightclubs under various names, including Lizzy Grant And The Phenomena.
• Del Rey "felt free" at the time, as she was only 19 and yet to become famous. The singer looks back fondly on this era, recalling how she first "felt seen" at the Men in Music Business Conference in Orlando. On the bridge, Del Rey concludes that if she could go back, she would do it all again. Though she has gone to become a successful artist, that period in her life was more fulfilling, as it "made me feel like a god."
• White signifies purity, and Del Rey uses the color several times throughout the song to show those more innocent late-teenage years. Not only does she wear a white dress, she also recalls "listening to White Stripes when they were white-hot."
• Del Rey first mentioned the song in an interview for the September 2020 issue of Interview Magazine, calling it "White Dress/Waitress." She later included it as the opening track of her Chemtrails over the Country Club album.
• Del Rey wrote the song with its producer, Jack Antonoff (Lorde, Taylor Swift, St. Vincent). Antonoff also plays all the instruments on the track: Guitar, bass, drums, keys, piano.
• Constellation Jones directed the video, which sees the singer's double skating down an open road in the desert. The camera frequently cuts to Del Rey with her arm in a sling. The singer explained the cast she's wearing has no deep meaning, rather it's the result of an accident when the klutzy singer, "after a long day of figure eights and jumps in the twilight of the desert," fell and fractured her arm.
• Lana Del Rey sings of being 19 and working as a waitress.
  
  When I was a waitress
  Wearing a white dress
  Look how I do this
  Look how I got this
  
  Looking back on her waitressing days, Del Rey told Mojo magazine: "It kind of makes me feel that I was better off. I'm sure the grass is always greener, but I had a lot of fun dreaming about what was going to come next.
  
  Also, I really liked being of service and I still do – I do lots of little things in my spare time that put me back sort of in that service space. How I kind of grew up was to be a man amongst men and a grain of sand on the beach and I prefer to stay in the middle of the boat in that way. Sometimes I feel, with fame, it can put you on the periphery, where the vultures can pick you. It's dangerous on the edges."
• Talking about her whispery vocal on "White Dress," Del Rey told Mojo magazine it was not only close to unedited journaling, but also "not too afraid about being kind of stupid." She describes the way she sounds in the chorus as "not great."