{ Me and My Faux Eames Rocker | NYC Living Room | 2012 }
Remember when I went through a phase of taking self-timed photos in my living room with ExerSaucers in the background because I had just had a baby and couldn’t leave the house, ever? Good times.
Sometime around my sophomore year of college, I began a half-decade-long obsession with Rebecca Taylor dresses – that’s a Rebecca Taylor that I wore for a rockabilly-themed Jordan In The House episode pictured above, with heels that really should have stayed where I found them (back in 2009). They were fancy – I would see them when I accompanied my mom on a shopping trip to Saks – and, at about $295 a pop back in the day, were obviously priced beyond what I could afford…but when they went on sale they fell down into the sweet spot where I could use a residual check from one of the commercials I’d shot in high school to pick one up for a big event. So every once in awhile – for an especially important dance, or a graduation – I bought one, mostly because they made me feel so glamorous that I might as well have been wearing custom Dior.
My first Rebecca Taylor dress was a kinda ’90s-style black silk-and-lace one. You’ve seen it here; I wore out to our first post-baby Valentine’s Day “date” (not a date). I bought it to wear to my sophomore-year Winter Formal, wore it for years afterwards, and then stopped wearing it during the years when I sprouted the kinds of boobs that come along with childbearing (and that put a solid end to my ability to wear V-necks if I wanted anybody to process the fact that I owned a face). Now it’s stashed in a storage bag in my closet, awaiting the day when my daughter asks me for it and I (begrudgingly) hand it over, along with the fringed leather jacket that belonged to my mom in her twenties and that hasn’t fit me since I was 14 and that pair of Frankie B carpenter-style bellbottoms that I can’t bring myself to part with even though I really (really) should.
In this shot, I am wearing an old Rebecca Taylor dress while shooting a tablescape post while my photographer is shooting me (you can see her in the mirror if you look closely). It is so meta it hurts.
I haven’t given Rebecca Taylor much thought in recent years, largely because what I mostly wear these days is whatever’s (sort of) clean and within close reach, and pretty, floaty, girly (and most definitely dry-clean-only) pieces are what she specializes in. But then last week I wore an old one for a shoot and realized that I love it, and remembered that I am of the firm opinion that there’s no point in owning something pretty if you don’t use it, and decided that I totally need to bring my old Rebecca Taylors back into rotation, even if where I end up wearing them to is my living room couch.
I also did a little hunting around to find some currently-available styles, and yes: still lovely and feminine and garden-wedding-guest-y; still a little too expensive; still very exciting when you find one on sale.
The below styles?
All on sale.
Ta da.
P.S. This one isn’t on sale but I love it so much I’m showing it to you anyway. It’s white and off the shoulder and perfect in all ways.
