Dress: This dress first slipped into my consciousness round about July. I spent more time than is probably worth recording trying to figure out whether its provenance was from deep within the tradwife vortex and if I was okay with that since I am hopelessly devoted to tulle (hopelessly devoted to tulle). I knew the company mailing address was Utah. I knew they had a lot of puff sleeved maxi dresses. But I’m from the East Coast, which means most of what I know about the Church of Latter-Day Saints comes from either “Angels in America” or “Mr. Brightside.” And, like, everything right now is puff-sleeved prairie dresses, so it seemed reasonably that buying one would not spontaneously generate a pair of missionaries on my doorstop.
I’m not sure whether this is the set-up or the punchline, but I ended up buying the dress in Utah. Specifically, while taking a little breather after visiting few of the titular arches in Arches National Park. I was hacking out the discouraging end of a respiratory situation that may have been but was no longer Covid. Impossible to say for sure because I’d spent the week prior in an off-season ski rental in Telluride, where the closest place to find out was 70 miles down the mountain. This is not an exaggeration. I asked the sole pharmacist in town and he told me that not only did he not carry Covid Tests because Covid did not exist there. “People here are all very thin and fit and our air is too clean for sickness. We don’t have Covid in Telluride.” Then he offered me some Ayurvedic herbs and a 250$ French facial moisturizer that he promised would absolutely erase my tragic eye bags. I countered by asking for Sudafed. He said he didn’t carry it, but he could throw in a sage smudge stick if I’d pony up for the French moisturizer. I told him were at an impasse and left the store masked and purchaseless, a fat Typhoid Mary infecting the healthy, fiy un- eyebagged locals.
My health had improved by the time we got to Moab and tested negative. However, it was approximately 5000 degrees there and my stepfather had plans to hit a national park in the desert in peak August. Living dangerously! I scribbled a last will in testament on a Kleenex in the back seat of the rental car in the likely event that melt into a puddle of heat-stroked snot on some godforsaken canyon floor, and proceeded to dawdle my way up the trail eavesdropping the whole way on a hilarious argument between an elderly Australian couple bickering over why it was necessary to visit the American southwest when “We don’t even go to the bush back home, Ronald.” At the top, I took a few pictures and was once again struck by the human fascination with visiting a landscape that, while grand, felt so obviously hostile to human beings. I thought about mentioning this to Ronald and Janice, who’d moved on to a heated debate about whether Ronald was trying to punish Janice by failing to take his blood pressure medication, but worried they might think I was talking about Australia writ large. Cue Janice: “When I said I wanted to visit the western part of America, Ronald, I believed you were taking me to Beverly Hills.” I thought. Man, I love Janice. Janice is my soulmate. And realized that I hadn’t the foggiest idea what had become of my parents and hoped they’d turned around on the hike and retreated to the car and the air conditioning. So why was I up here? Because human beings are stupid. Are we just obsessed with death? A kid came by and tried to launch himself through an arch full-tilt. He was okay, but I figured I had all the answers I needed to life’s great philosophical questions and ought to leave before I started hallucinating dogs or quoting TS Eliot again. So I skittered down the trail, booted up Instagram, and ordered the evening gown. It was extravagant and formal. I had absolutely no place to wear it. But I figured Janice would approve and it seemed infinitely less risky than hiking in the desert in August in the northern hemisphere. And also 2024, even then, at a time that feels positively prelapsarian in retrospect, had been a year full of surprises. Who’s to say it wouldn’t surprise me with a grand ball?
Who indeed.
Shoes: I spent a solid decade of my teenage/young adult life mostly wearing round-toed platform mary janes. Some were extremely tall. Some were quite delicate. Some wererugged, bordering on what the ding dong manosphere would call “tactical.” I had them in multiple colors and styles. They accompanied me on travels across the country and overseas. I was wearing one pair when I took an epic fall down the marble staircase at the Boston MFA and another when I spent a whole Thanksgiving making moon-eyes at a cute boy majoring in Revolution (not a euphemism, he went to Evergreen State) at a gloriously ramshackle house in Portland, Oregon. The mary janes were my thing. I could not imagine a day when they would not be my shoe of choice. And then, suddenly, they weren’t I stopped wearing them for something like twenty years.
But everything old is new again and much like the rest of my 90s wardrobe, the mary janes are back on trend. So I bought some fancy glittery ones for special occasions/limerence/tumbles down museum stairs, etc.
Handbag: There is nothing less necessary than an evening bag. We should all be having more fun with that.
The Event: I’m pleased to report that I’ve worn this dress twice already this season, which will either shock or delight the socialites, depending on how much of their identity rests on performative frugality. I don’t care. First was to a wedding back in November, which was one of the Top Five, All-Time Desert Island events for two of my Top Five, All-Time Desert Island people. Truly, there is no greater feeling in the world when people you love fall in love with each other.
The second time I wore this dress was on Holiday Fundraiser Gala for an organization that feels particularly essential as we head into life in Trump’s America 2.0. It’s a great excuse to get dressed up and sashay around and hang out with your similarly dressed up, sashaying friends, at a venue that never fails to make me laugh (ie: the event space inside the empty, yet fully lit UNC football stadium). I bid on, and failed to win, a wide variety of things in the silent auction, and then failed to keep a straight face when they announced a Deluxe Green Burial as an item in the live auction just after making a joke about how many of us probably wouldn’t survive to their next big anniversary event.
All told, a fabulous night for the dress, and to quote my favorite former neighbor/local politician, a great victory for the people.
Dress: JessaKae, Online, August 2024
Shoes: Marc Fisher, Nordstrom, October 2024
Purse: Amazon, October 2024
Tights: Snag, October 2024
Tiny Commotions 