Dress: Let’s get this out of the way. It’s mesh. The dress is mesh. Panty-hose-adjacent stretchy mesh. I don’t have a lot of positive associations with mesh. I get that this is confusing, given that, I once glimpsed a mountain maybe, thirty tulle crinolines in the back of a shabby seamstress shop in my hometown and have ever since described the pile as my happy place. But tulle is a wholly different beast than mesh, as anyone old enough to have experienced both the “Lawrence Welk Show” and “Solid Gold” on broadcast television can attest.
Mesh always seems like it’s going to smell bad, probably because I’ll always associate it with those red mesh scrimmage vests we had to wear in Junior High for PE class volleyball. The gym teacher would haul out a mildewed cardboard box from Hell’s storage closet and the mesh tops inside reeked like they had not been laundered since (roughly) the Bronze Age. The odor was so intense it could burn your eyes and cause your throat to seize long before you got hit by the rich-bodied, cloacal bouquet of generations of unhappy, oozing, evidently unwashed adolescents enveloping you in the phantom stink of their suffocating despair.
Post compulsory athletics, mesh mostly belonged to weird dudes. A friend’s haughty, bald, East German ex-boyfriend who (allegedly) got deported after stealing firewood from one of America’s top research universities (not a metaphor). An old coworker who would put on obscure dub records at such high volume in the record store that I worried my fillings would crack. A recovering alcoholic at a punk rock show at an Atlanta nightclub who, unsolicited, told me he was into industrial music and Jesus and asked if I’d be interested in going with him to a sex party in Decatur (I was not).
So mesh is kind of gross, but this is cute dress. Super 90s throwback though, right? The roses. The teal. The side slits. Like super-specific 90s throwback. Like, this dress wants a choker and some very dark brown/purple lipstick. And it’s going to play you some Concrete Blonde and open a tattoo shop in L.A. named after the Samantha Mathis character in “Pump Up the Volume” and maybe see Keanu once at the Viper Room and babe, I have some stories, but eventually she goes back to school, and becomes a therapist and goes vegan and starts wearing a lot of linen and tells her nice, cyclist/green-building architect husband she doesn’t remember why she has those tattoos exactly but she totally does and periodically texts Blaze or Coyote or whoever has the matching ones to reminisce about that one weekend they ended up spent sleeping off a bender in Slash’s bathroom with Jason Patric, Dave Navarro, and Shannon Doherty’s body double or whatever. Because those were the days. [1]
All of this makes the dress feel a little shameful. Possibly dangerous. And I’m not just saying that because I bought it to wear on a trip that immediately got ixnay-ed due to Covid.
Sweater: We’re something like five years into the puff sleeves and it still manages to surprise me whenever I find evidence that I’m participating. I went to my first formal in the twilight of the 80s puff-sleeved era, and have trauma to show for it. I spent the not-quite-yet-entirely-pear-shaped two decades after the 1980s cringing and rolling my eyes at my mother for her attachment to shoulder pads and big sleeves. They are so flattering, she’d tell me.
We’re back in the shoulder pad puff sleeve era. So I’m having to deal with this. Again. And I have all kinds of thoughts about whatever tradwife, polygamist brainwashing is subtly going with current surfeit of prairie dresses (they’ve got to be going away soon, right?), and I’m doing my damnedest not to be swayed by the shadow Mormon influencer mafia that has somehow started taking up real estate on my Instagram feed (I am a maximalist. I have been trying to make #rocococore a thing for, like, a decade[2] in a world of overachieving Xennials who are triggered by any color other than greige. But there is no compelling reason to put tiered ruffles and puff sleeves on everything, like suddenly we’ve all been hired to do Mother Ginger in an all-clogging performance of “The Nutcracker”).
I’ll admit this: the puff sleeves can be a little flattering. Especially if you’re trying not to call attention to the fact that your hips are wide enough to contain multiple zip codes. Big shoulders make your waist look smaller and your bottom half more proportionate. This is a thing men’s tailors and jacket makers have known for years, but the critical thing is the subtlety. Go too big and you’re Joan Collins. Go to bulky and you’re Tim Riggins.
This cardigan is a solid sweater. It looks good with things that are tailored at the bottom. It once convinced a woman in New York that it was a designer piece. I bought it at Old Navy for ten dollars. I call that a win.
Purse: My mother has been putting up with a whole lot of my bullshit this week because I’ve been anxious, angry, uncomfortable, and A-L-O-N-E and sulking about all of the above. Our regular phone calls have pretty much devolved into me yelling about the overwhelming, meaningless catastrophe that is my currently overcast, lemon-filled life and her suggesting ways by which I might rediscover hope/faith whilst making silver lining lemon chess pie. They mostly haven’t ended well. I feel hugely guilty about that, which makes me sad and probably her sad. And on and on.
But my mom is the best even if I remain an indefensible world-class asshole. To wit: earlier this week, I received a package in the mail containing this bag as an early birthday present. The note she stuck in the box said something like, I’ve never seen anything that looked more like you. And she’s right. If you pleat my soul into soft leather, it would probably come out shiny oxidized green with clangy, monkey-bar handles. I have, in moments of madness, this week looked across my room at this back, sitting on the dresser, and it has filled me with such love and joy, not just at the bag itself, but at having a person who knows me well enough to recognize how much I would love it. I am very lucky to have people like that in my life.
The Outfit: One of my best friends had a birthday this weekend. I drove to Raleigh to have dinner with her and two of her friends at a tapas restaurant in the part of downtown that I’m pretty sure did not exist five years ago but now there’s somehow an Urban Outfitters.
The restaurant was insanely crowded at 5:30 pm for reasons utterly inexplicable. We squeezed into a table and I did a lot of people watching. Most everyone looked young and like they’d fully fund a luxurious retirement by 30. Sometimes I look at the young and successful (or at least those that cosplay as young and successful) and wonder if I might have been a happier person had I invested more time in my youth building a solid career plan and less on trying to write weird fiction and alphabetizing rare and reissued post-punk records for minimum wage (+employee discount). I don’t know. But I can tell you this for free: if I had it to do all over again, I would probably make all the same dumb choices again.
Dress: Free People, Nordstrom, Fall 2023
Sweater: Old Navy, 2019-ish?
Boots: Dr Marten, 2023
Earrings: AllSaints, 2021
Bag: Hobo, Talloni, 2024 (Thanks, Mom)
[1] This is probably the right time and place to admit that I have never been to L.A. An early lack of opportunity led to a complete lack of interest and moved into a soft boycott territory sometime around the mid-90s and I’ve never entirely backpedaled. I feel like Los Angeles would be fun, in theory, if I could time travel, either to the noir era or, like, into Slow Days, Fast Company or something. In general, though, I prefer vegetation that comes with rainy days, not having to deal with earthquakes, carbs, and people who would die a little on the inside before admitting they are interested in being noticed (even, especially if they are, in fact, very much interested in being noticed). Deserts scare me. Also, I don’t like to drive. I am, however, interested in mountain lions and intrigued by the Griffith Observatory. I am willing to be convinced, but I’m going to need some serious incentives.
[2]Bienvenue, fellow Fragonerds.
Tiny Commotions 