Dressing in Strangers' Clothes
My good friend and moon sister Carolyn recently had me over to try on some clothes a friend who broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of the apartment they shared gave her but which didn't fit Carolyn or her roommate my other friend Kendall.
Does this make sense to you? It's awful hard to write the logistics out.
Anyway, said friend is clearly size the of Lauren circa the golden days of high school, so most of it barely fit over my birthing hips. But the above simple navy shift was a miraculous size Medium and was of the New Englander-J. Crew-when-it-was-just-J. Crew-nice-normal-young-mom proclivity look I've been trying to nail since I gave up on trying to be the best-dressed young dummy in New York. Where I once tried to pull off an oversized sheer blouse over nothing but boyshorts and a bra, these days things around here (gesturing at female form at large) are decidedly less Teen Choice Awards and decidedly more... idunno... TJ Maxx commercial? Ah, being 25.
Anyway, it's a great dress. It displays a high tolerance for color-pops and statement jewelry. I thought it was going to have dumb gathered fabric at the shoulders, but it does not after all. It was not too short for work. I can wear it in wintertime, with tights, or in summertime.
What is not as simple as the good dress is the concept of wearing someone else's dress. I know people thrift and buy consignment and all that--so do I--but there is something weirder about wearing a dress that belongs to someone that is definitely two degrees from knowing you in this universe. It is like you are a shade of her. A parallel her. A tree that grew from an eyelash she lost. A her with a bigger nose and an entirely different life, except, of course, for the part where you're friends with Carolyn.
Second from feeling like an astral do-si-do partner to this unknown woman while a dress that she purchased and wore rubbed against my skin all day, I also fear that this dress might bring some of her unluck into my life. I mean, she and live-in boyfriend break up, she moves out, she gives excess stuff to Carolyn, Carolyn gives navy shift dress to me... sisterhood of the traveling NOTHANKS, anyone? Sisterhood of the traveling I FINALLY FOUND ONE MAN WHO HAS NEVER CALLED ME CRAZY PLS DON'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME, anyone?
But then again, it fits very well; it drapes nicely. The former flesh-tone-leotard wearer in me likes its stretchlessness, and the way it hikes up the thigh a little when I move my legs a certain way.
I'm going to take my chances. It's going to be like Jumanji in that way.
If in a year or two I offer you this dress during a post-break-up fit of downsizing... well, consider the drape, is all I'm saying.
Dress, MNG Basics, whatever that is. Necklace, gift from Joe, J. Crew Outlet.