Dress: I don’t have many shopping friends, though I do have a few clothes friends. They are interested in shapes, fabrics, and vicissitudes of style. Most of them sew. I do not, which is both reasonable. due to my impatience with precision, and truly surprising, given how much of my youth I spend drawing dresses, spending my allowance on books about fashion history, and wandering, dazed by the wonders , through the late House of Fabrics in North Asheville.
My sewing friends are all wildly talented and useful. They are not, most of them, als shoppers. I am, which feels often feels like an embarrassing habit and a dangerous confession. Shopping feels like something I’m not supposed to enjoy unless it’s for seasonal root vegetables at the farmers market or artisan burlap composter-caddies or, maybe, obscure disco 12” by Marxist dance collectives. But, I’m a child of the 1980s. I’ve always liked shopping. I like thrift shopping. I like garage sales. I like the mall. I like boutiques. I like book shops and record stores and junk shops. I like the pen aisle at the office supply store and the make-up aisle at the drug store. I even liked the supermarket with a fresh paycheck and no dietary restrictions. I don’t even need much money. I just like to see all the things.
It’s rare to find someone who likes to go shopping as much as I do. It’s even rarer still to find someone who’ll admit to it. But I have this friend of a friend in New York who is at least as avid as I am. She’s good at finding things. Periodically, I’ll send her a note if I need something specific and I can’t find it (she always can). Periodically, she’ll send me something she sees and thinks I might like. I always do. She’s magic like that.
This dress, cotton, twill, zippered, resembling what a petty officer might wear on the Mod side of the Battlestar Quadrophenia, was something she found for me via a small, woman-owned, size-inclusive brand (all things I enjoy). I ordered if for myself sometime mid-pandemic and barely wore it out because it is very short. But I absolutely adore it. Hence.
Bottoms: A philosophical question: Are leggings pants?
When I was a freshman in college, I spent the better part of a year crushing on a townie guy who had very particular notion about what counted as pants, We would hang out downtown most nights, sitting on the tables that daytime housed a farmer’s market, talking about Maxixmumrocknroll and Kerouac and watching a local cop with a bulldog underbite try to scare off our otherwise unperturbed skateboarding friends by crusing the block in a slow-moving paddywagon. The boy had a dry, ironic line delivery—imagine Norm MacDonald with a Virginia piedmont accent—and rarely got loud unless he noticed someone violated fashion protocols by neglecting to fully clothe their bottom half, at which point he would drop conversation and yell at some poor soul whose shirt hem fell below their shorts and say, THAT MAN IS NOT WEARING ANY PANTS. YOU, SIR, ARE NOT WEARING PANTS.
This was all very silly, and mostly harmless. Most people were, I imagine, wearing something at the bottom—this was bible-battered, blue-collared, family values, fifty-miles-to Jerry Fallwell southwest Virginia, after all. And leggings were falling out of style in that era—the early mid-90s was when pants well and truly got larger than life. And the only people that wore leggings downtown, in public, at night were generally the debutante-y equestriennes from my debutante-lousy, monogrammed-collared women’s college, at least one of whom was one of my only friends on campus.
I think about the boy whenever leggings (and for that matter, long shirts and short shorts) come back in style, because we always have to collectively debate the issue again. And I’d tell you that Covid pretty sealed the deal on the issue. But it’s not a surprise that leggings are once again—depending on who you ask—maybe falling out of favor. As was the case when I was in college, it would appear that pants are once again capacious, and there is probably once again some too-clever-by-half kid on a market table in a Virginia town that would yell at me for this outfit. Whoever they are, I wish them my best.
These leggings are faux leather and are the closest thing that I’ve ever owned (and likely will ever own) to a pair of leather pants. On the bonus. They are opaque, which means you can’t London or France when I lean over in this dress. Good enough.
Boots: Covered previously
Earrings: Ibid
The Outfit: I’m not going to bullshit you it’s been a terrible week. I have exactly zero confidence that next week (and the week following, and the week following) will not continue to be at least as terrible, if not even more so. But we’re doing what we’re doing. Because my terrible week could be a gajillion times worse. Because I’m lucky only this is what counts as terrible for me. Because what is there to do, really, but keep doing.
Anyway, I made a hair appointment, because those always make me feel better. I like to wear something fun when I see my stylist because I like to let that subtly inform whatever is going to happen to my hair. I generally tell her something along the lines of “shorter, not too mullet-y, not like I want to speak to the manager” or if I’m feeling more specific “somewhere between classic English school boy and Edie Sedgwick.” She messes around. We try new things. We discuss plunging into the icy Baltic after hanging out in a sauna (note: I have not done this). I have a great time. I don’t know how many people notice. The thing about being a woman with short hair–not oh my God, I cut my hair off to my shoulders and I feel bald short hair, but thank god, I’m not self-conscious about that one pointy ear short hair–is that even 20% of the population who doesn’t think you’re mentally ill or making a broad statement about your politics/gender/sexuality because you don’t want balayage-d barrel curls to your waist is as unlikely to notice you have slightly less hair on the nape of your neck every 8-12 weeks as I am to note that the balayaged-barrel curled girl has added golden blonde highlights and a few face-framing layers. That’s just how it is. I’m not mad about it. We all have to exist in the world.
Today’s haircut is not unlike other haircuts, but I love it and believe has a slight mod flair. It works with the dress. It works with my mood. And altogether it helped, for a moment, make me feel something other than worry and despair.
And that’s about as good as it’s going to get today, my friends.
Dress: Nooworks, Art Teacher Tunic, 2022
Leggings: Spanx (don’t judge), 2020
Boots: Dr. Martens, 2022
Earrings: Night Moves, Peel Gallery, Carrboro 2022
Hair: Jaime, To The Woods, 2024
Tiny Commotions 