Dress: My dad and I went to Ireland in Fall of 2015. We were at the end of the Obama administration, my thirties, my career in record stores, and the years of my life when I went to (roughly) 4-6 weddings every year. From a 2024 vantage, the era feels almost prelapsarian in rearview. Note:
We went to Ireland because our first international trip together (to Scotland, the year before) had been a success. Our goals were mostly the same. Golf (him). Wandering around (me). Good dinners. Nice views. Dad being slightly confused that there were a good deal more tech bros than folksy flat-capped men in cable knit sweaters. Me having long conversations with chatty vintage store owners about inherited grandmother costume jewelry and people that name their dogs after members of U2 ( I will never forget the yippy Pomeranian named Bono). Also having to buy a carry-on because I bought too many books. [1]
It was good trip but a weird one. I didn’t do the Guinness tour or the Jameson distillery. I’m not an American that claims any ancestral ties to any particular old country. I let the Mormons do my DNA some years back before I considered how that might imperil my chances at a life of crime and the numbers came back White Person. My ancestors all staked their claim on the wrong side of history long before it was cool and way too many generations ago for me to claim anything close to a meaningful connection across the pond.
I bought this dress about a week before the trip and threw it in the suitcase at the last minute, not expecting that I’d wear it twice. It’s breezy and twirly. It also has zippered pockets which means my phone is less likely to fall out when I’m kneeling to look at a bottom bookshelf or record bin. This is the kind of thing you need when traveling. I saw the Trinity College library long room the first day I wore it and the Book of Kells, which was impressive but not nearly so fun as the elderly docent at Marsh’s Library talking about Jonathan Swift’s lady friend running off a burglar in her underwear and how she thought there was absolutely zero chance that Bram Stoker was heterosexual. I know things, she told me. And I believed her.
The night I wore this dress I met up with Dad at a little French restaurant on Exchequer Street and the quality of the light outside was so borderline unreal that we could barely get seated for failing to capture it on film. I told Dad about running into actors in period costume shooting a Showtime series up at Dublin Castle and “Did you know there’s an actual Tower Records that is still open and also a Phil Lynott statue?” I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t know who Phil Lynott was or care about Tower Records, but he told me about Kit Carson and the American West, which he had spent most of the day reading about in our hotel room. We have different travel styles, Dad and I, though we (generally) travel well together. I could wander for hours, deliberately getting myself lost. He could dawdle around golf courses and paint vistas from hotel room windows for days. There’s a lot of traveling alone when we travel together. On the bonus, it means we always have notes to compare over dinner.
Sweater: I don’t have the luck thrifting for clothes like I used to. Mostly because I live in a college town so heavily picked over that the odds of me finding anything worth wearing are not in my favor (Housewares, on the other hand . . . let me just say that the twenty-somethings are not competing with me for the $4 Waterford rocks glasses. And no, I won’t tell you where I’m finding them. I can be the very soul of generosity, but I am also the granddaughter of an antique dealer for heaven’s sake).
Anyway, I bought this cardigan at one of favorite local thrift stores, once located by the Whole Foods. I used to do a circuit on the way in for fancy cheese or the hot bar. I found plenty of treasures there. That it has since been replaced by a chain fitness boot camp and an overpriced chain pet food store is truly a disappointment. Sic transit gloria mundi, etc.
Outfit: I wore this to Target, where I wandered around for a goodly period of time and bought nothing but a single tube of lipstick, a box of Altoids, and some kitty litter.
Dress: Eshakti, 2015
Sweater: Thrifted, no label, 2016
Earrings: AllSaints, 2019
Boots: Dr Martens, 2022
[1] This your annual reminder from me that Ireland is full of fantastic bookstores, and I spent money in a a lot of them. But Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop in Galway is an all-timer. The selection is A+, the staff very helpful (even though they were quite literally unable to help me narrow down my column of novels—“the problem is that these are all very good, but we can point you in the direction of a shipping company”—and necessitated the aforementioned carry-on purchase. Also, I met the then mayor of when I accidentally wandered into some kind of civic event with cookies and tea in the back. I told him I thought Galway was charming (true) even though I’m lukewarm on most traditional Irish music (also true).
Tiny Commotions 