The Dress: It was a cold dark night in October of 2023. I’d been forced out of a much-needed New York city hiatus by the Covid I’d managed to evade for 3.5 years, recovered via antivirals taken in a couple days at the beach only to return home with what the kids call the “paxlovid rebound” just in time to miss Halloween. I was in a particularly dark corner of a dark room of a dark place that has been periodically detained my heart for the last few years. As is often the case when I find myself trying to wade out of boggy melancholy, I was drinking entirely too much black tea, listening to an Orange Juice-heavy playlist, and looking at dresses on Instagram.
The algorithms are devious and cruel. I know this. Many of my friends complain about how they are served ad content that is condescending or inappropriate or somehow insulting. Why do I only get served baby food and fitness apps when I neither have children nor exercise? I don’t know. I both can and cannot relate. My algorithm is, by contrast, pretty awesome. It is designer evening gowns, spectacular hotels/home rentals in exquisite little corners of the world, expensive reissue record labels, and art. My algorithm has me nailed. Down to the very style of the art. And the gowns. And the particular micro-genres of music. And this would be glorious, my algorithm is built on wonder and aspiration, but my algorithm thinks I am very, very rich.
How rich? Well, let me put it this way. I decided last week to treat myself to an lovely white blouse I got served on Instagram—for my birthday, I’ll splurge—and clicked through to a price tag of several thousand dollars for an otherwise plain (if lovely) white blouse. More than I’ve paid for cars. More than I pay for a house payment. More than I make in a month. And it wasn’t, by a long shot, the most expensive blouse I’ve gotten served. The good news about such head exploding price tags is that they absolutely, 100% obviate any desire to have own said nice blouse, eject you from your hazy internet daydreams and send you reaching for your comfort reads about the French Revolution.
To be clear, it’s not that I think that designers and artists don’t deserve that kind of money. They absolutely do. There are a lot of things wrong with the notion that we shouldn’t have to pay for the art that we like. Or rather the notion that artists somehow subsist on naught but likes and exposure and will be ultimately made replaceable by you plugging some word salad into Chat GPT. Other professionals charge a couple hundred dollars an hour for a single appointment? How much actual time does it take to make a blouse? How much physical effort? Certainly longer than it takes me to write a headline.
On the other hand . . . who is that blouse for? And how wild is it that enough people can afford that kind of thing that a dumpy middle class lady in North Carolina sees their Instagram ads? Wild.
Before I get to how many kids could eat for a month for the price of that blouse, let me cop to the fact that I did buy this dress for a fraction of a fraction of the cost but it was still a splurge so please feel free to roll your eyes whenever I start walking toward the barricades with the red flag. Let us recall that my Instagram serves me ads of fancy dresses and fancier art and fanciest destinations. And it does so because I click on every single one of those ads. I ogle. I oogle. I fill shopping cars with things I have no intention of buying. I aspire. I fail, on ever reasonable level, to whittle myself into an contented ascetic. I wonder, shouldn’t I be making a more meaningful impact on the world? Then I think but would this voluminous taffeta skirt complete me?
What to say about this dress? It’s printed with ribbons and woodland creatures, including an arguably larger-than-lifesize fox. It has an elaborate neck bow that I refuse to call by its other name. It has pockets. I bought it. I had no idea where I would wear it, which pretty much meant I could wear it anywhere. And I have. I wore it to physical therapy. I wore it to see my California best friend when she visited in December. I wore it when I hung out with my family at Thanksgiving. It is an unbearably cute dress, well past the borderlands of whimsical and edging into the heart of twee. If I ever worry that some of my recent fashion purchases nod back to some dark, sulky, goth-adjacent version of myself in the 1990s that I never actually was, this dress is a kind of corrective.
The Outfit: Last Wednesday was my actual birthday. I celebrated by taking my car in for an expensive service bright and early and dropping by the cottage on the back side of the Town Hall to vote in the primary. I took a winding path home because it was overcast and the wind was up in that particular way I like, but warm and salty, even though I’m 150 miles inland. It felt like I should be standing on the prow of a ship, or on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea with some romantic coat streaming out behind me as I contemplate poetically. Instead I dawdled at the mail house, reading catalogues and came home to do some work.
I put on the dress to go meet my friends at the Social Club. I drank a martini and entertained conversations about the dress and the Fox on the dress. His name is Francis. I’m pretty sure he’s also into martinis. Several friends came out. We chatted around and then wandered down my old street to book club. I miss the old street. The way the streetlights make tunnels under the branches.
We ate homemade carrot cake and discussed Maylis De Kerengal’s Eastbound, one of the loveliest, yet shockingly action-packed short novels I’ve read in a while. Recommended.
Dress: Maeve, Anthropologie, 2023
Earrings: ALC, Edinburgh, 2019
Leggings: Spanx, Nordstrom, 2020
Boots: Dr Marten’s, 2022
Tiny Commotions 