Dress: So I’m mixed on spring. I like the flowers. I like the greening world. I really like being able to sleep with my windows open and not feel like I’m committing a wasteful climate crime. I’m less cool with pollen, spring colds, the return of the mosquitoes, and the overdependence on asparagus as side dish. Yes, I get that it is in season. Yes, it is also a delicious vegetable. But I once spent a week around Munich during peak asparagus season, and my digestive system and I still have the occasional nightmare about an parade of white asparagus, sometimes dressed in folksy lederhosen, endlessly circulating me in whimsical vignettes like some kind of diabolical glockenspiel lazy susan. Such is the month, I guess. To paraphrase Missouri’s most blowhard-y literary export,1 April is, at best, marginal.
The best part about spring is the warm weather. Specifically the warm weather that allows for minimal layers in dressing. A perfect warm weather outfit is basically just dress, shoes, underwear, earrings—not necessarily in that order. No cumbersome layers. No heavy coats. No fuzzy scarves and over-sweatering (and I say this as a person who notably loves knitwear—especially giant cardigans.) I like a shoe situation that easily allows for water access if you need to step into a body of water—pool, river, ocean, etc—and a dress that does something mildly billowy, so you can both stand around a let the summer breeze bat your skirt around like you’re Doing Capital R-Romantic and also lounge around the deck with your legs all sprawled without worrying that your mother is going to materialize out of nowhere and passive-aggressively point at your legs from across the room so you’ll sit like a lady because you are sitting like a cowboy and what if the neighbor’s see your underpants for lord’s sake?
Every spring I tell myself I’m going to pare down the black dress collection and fill my wardrobe with brilliant colors. I’ve done a fair job with the latter, but hear we go. Another year. Another billowy black summer dress.
In my defense, this one is a classic. Comfortable. Billowy. Pockets. It feels like it is made to be worn with an appropriate sunhat (for me, straw, SPF 50+, brim at least the width of a small café table) and sunglasses (cheap, round, each lens roughly the circumference of a standard size ramekin, like Jackie Onassis is your baseline here). It’s a dress that feels aspirational in that it feels like the sort of thing I might wear on luxurious seaside vacations, but also practical in the sense that I can wear it around the house while I speak terrible Italian to the cats and pretend that they’re going to arrange a day trip for me over to Capri or wherever.
Earrings: Ever go into a store that is definitely not for you? I don’t mean, like, me at like any store that sells sports equipment. I mean a store where all the signals point to We Would Rather You Not Shop Here. For me, this typically happens at either at super-fancy stores where it does not matter how nicely I’m dressed, someone will invariably sniff out my tax bracket and assume I’m either going to steal something or (worse) ask to use the bathroom. Or at the vast majority of small, local boutiques that will not stock any clothing at all over a woman’s size 10. The super fancy stores themselves are also pretty lousy for clothes that fit (though some of them have gotten better over the years). The boutiques, by and large, have not caught up . And I get the practical reasons for this. Most designers , fancy or cheap, would prefer not to make clothes for fat people. It does, however, make it hard when you are the sort of person who would genuinely rather shop in person, at small local stores, from actual human beings, instead of ordering everything off the stupid internet.
Anyway, it was nice day and I was wearing the new black dress and I took a lap around a suburban shopping center before hitting the supermarket. I decided to wander into a boutique. And as soon as I walked in, I saw the racks of floral dresses clothes the steely eyes of the cashier and knew without a shadow of a doubt that it they did not carry so much as a single t-shirt larger than a size Medium and the store was definitively Not For Me.
I have a perverse, self-destructive streak in me when I find myself in those scenarios, and instead of walking out, like I am too old and I have way too much going on in my life to stand here and let a bunch of women young enough to be my children try to mean girl me with their aggrieved, balayaged “I don’t think that comes in your size” hair toss whenever I so much as touch a sales rack, I find something to buy, as if to say, I’m going to spend money here whether you want me to or not.
Hence these earrings.
Shoes: I bought this pair of shoes a couple of years ago while slightly tipsy on Sangria at a paella party in an extravagantly beautiful Florida backyard, while the hosts (Duke fans) tried not to sulk after losing a basketball game to UNC. I think I went for a wander around the patio and shouldn’t have been allowed access to Instagram because by the time I got home to North Carolina four days later, these had been delivered to me.
Outfit: I’m in and out so much these days that finding a few hours to hang out feels like a luxury. I’ve had a bunch of work travel. Somehow I’ve ended up collaborating on a dance piece (don’t worry, it’s technically a writing job, I promise I won’t ruin anyone’s performance again).
I’ve probably told you that I won a short story prize last week. I’m still a little shocked that it happened and halfway convinced that somone’s going to call and tell me they made a terrible mistake. The prize involves to Ireland, which means I dropped everything last Friday and went for a new pic for an expedited passport renewal. The photographer had a pretty aggressive read on US Passport picture policy (and perhaps a personal vendetta against bangs/fringe of any length at all) and I was anxious about getting materials in order. The result was that my newest passport photo is a bit more dramatic than intended.
I dragged a stack of novels out to the porch to read and ending up last minute hosting a friend. I drank a Soda and Tonic in an effort to be more healthful and let a pot of ribolita simmer on the stove while I chopped herbs and ended up eating most of things I planned to put in a salad before they went in the bowl. I sat out until the light faded, looking at pictures of the Irish coast and listening to the frogs in the pond warm up for their nighttime chorale.
Dress: Marcella New York, 2024
Earrings: Undisclosed Local Boutique, 2024
Shoes: Ted Baker, 2022
- This is actually a pretty tight race. ↩︎
Tiny Commotions 