Dress: In September of 2021, I took a long delayed, ten day sojourn to New York City, where I spent a week with my best friend and we did many and various things around the city, up to and including ending up steps from Ground Zero a few hours shy of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. This was not intentional, exactly. It’s just that I was coming up on my favorite cousin’s Covid-delayed wedding and desperately needed a dress or two, and I’d been just about everywhere I could think of and was like, hey, what about Cos? And my best friend was like, cool, they have one of those in the Oculus and it will take us less trains to get there.
COS, if you’re unfamiliar, is the more upscale, minimalist Scandinavian gallery owner aunt in the H&M family. They make the kind of clothes you might be into if you like to use architectural terms to describe the shape of your blouse. The Oculus, is what happens someone makes you ride Space Mountain 4000 times and then immediately gives you 4 billion dollars and tells you to create a mall and a transit hub. It’s the kind of place you might be into if you’re like what if they put an Eataly in the bleached ribcage of a Lovecraftian Horror?
It was a weird grim day to be down there, rainy and gray, even without the weight of history stacked around the sidewalks between the cops and the media. We avoided saying much about any of that. I wandered around the white light alien cathedral interior worried that I might be getting Covid (I wasn’t). At Cos, I bought a navy satin dress that resembled a choir robe, and feeling restless, reckless, and certainly a bit feckless stacked an additional cardigan (which I loved and left in a Hampton Inn full of probable murderers in rural Maryland—long story) and this dress onto the pile, while my roommate, quite coincidentally, took a call and got offered a new job.
It’s probably because of this event (which we celebrated afterward with a glass of wine at the afore-mentioned satellite Eataly) that I neglected to ask her what color she thought the dress was. Green? Blue? Gray? It was like a wearable New Order song. Sophomore year of high school, I had a shirt (and, God help me, a hat) in a similar shade, which I’d worn on St Paddy’s believing it green and was told by absolutely everyone that it was, in fact, quite blue/gray. I’m still conflicted about this, and have never forgiven you if used my color confusion to try and pinch me (you know who you are).
Earrings: I bought these on an extended lunch break when I was working in the office in Asheville back in 2022. I wandered down to Lexington, got heckled by gutter punks, and picked these up off the cheap earring rack at Minx. They are among the more ridiculous earrings I own, and I own a lot of ridiculous earrings. I like to think they say it’s always Carnival somewhere or maybe to celebrate your many years of service as a showgirl at this seedy casino hundreds of miles of The Strip, we induct you into to the order of the scarlet fringe.
The Day: Superstitiously I think that, because I had a slightly better day yesterday, the universe is all in on making this day that much worse. It is challenging to be anxious layperson in pain, hungry but worried about eating, and in possession of just enough incomplete medical information to be dangerous. Exercise still kind of hurts so my only real strategy for relief here is fluffy cats, 800 mg Ibprofen, and will the new Kelly Link novel actually distract me? So far, kind of. But it’s not ideal. It’s very easy to think I’ll never feel normal again. To which the only appropriate response is, what exactly do you think normal is, you big weirdo?
Touche. Touché. Tucci?
Dress: Cos, 2021
Earrings: Minx, 2022
Tights: Sheertex (I am not kidding when I tell you they are worth it) 2023
Boots: Dr. Martens, 2022
Tiny Commotions 