There are some pieces in your closet that you just don’t get rid of, ever. No matter what. Because it’s less about what they look like than about their history. The story they tell.
When Francesca and I lived together in Los Angeles, we had this very nice side-benefit that comes from living with a girl who’s more or less your size, but has kind of different taste in clothing: if I had an item of clothing that was great but not something I wore for one reason or another, I just handed it over to her. And vice versa.
There was this one piece in particular that Francesca owned – a teeny-tiny vintage Blumarine minidress – that she never really wore, and that I ended up borrowing practically every single time we went out. To the bar down the street with flats and a jean jacket, out to dinner with a big scarf, out dancing all by itself (with gold heels, of course). I’m not usually big on borrowing clothing from people just because…you know, it’s theirs, and clothing can feel very proprietary, very personal. It’s not necessarily something that everyone is comfortable loaning out. Back then, though, we traded our stuff – all of it, really – back and forth in a way that I’d always dreamed of doing with a sister; my closet was essentially hers, and vice versa.
But there was never anything I loved quite like that minidress; never anything that made me feel quite so exactly…me.
And then, after my cat-girl Fashion Week extravaganza, I returned home from New York with the most incredible dark-green knit Trovata dress. It didn’t look quite right on me…but on Francesca? Glamorous, and elegant, and perfect. And so we did an Official Swap, and the leopard dress came to live in my own closet permanently. I haven’t worn it in a couple of years just because the teeny-tininess worked slightly better on my twenty-four-year-old Los Angeles self than it does nowadays, but then on Friday night I thought I’d break out a little Vintage Me for my date night with Kendrick. And as it turns out, Vintage Me is just…me. Except maybe with a blouse on top. (Still got the gold heels, though.)
On Me: Vintage Blumarine Slipdress (similar for just $7); NYDJ Blouse; Hanes Sheer Stockings; No-Name Gold Heels (similar); Alexandra Satine Clutch; Eddie Bauer Sun Valley Down Parka ℅.
