I love dresses. This is a very recent development in my wardrobe, probably due to watching so much Project Runway (I have seen every episode; we're on season 9). My favorite designs are cute, ready-to-wear dresses that I just want to steal from the work room and wear. I guess a little bit of innovation is okay sometimes, but as one-note as it was I still love Leanne's collection.
I get that the judges like to see different things, but this collection does have a range of styles and fabrics. It just happens to look like basically the same three things over and over again. I wouldn't actually wear any of these dresses - but that is because I already own too many dresses.
Some time between when I started watching Project Runway (2008) and today, I discovered that I owned a crazy number of dresses (currently it is 32, though a couple of them are very loosely defined as dresses and are more like cover-ups or really long shirts). I probably had a few before I watched the show - but not many. I only went to one high school dance and we weren't allowed to wear tank tops to school so my main venue for wearing dresses was church. This would have still afforded me plenty of reasons to own lots of dresses (you can't repeat church dresses very often) but my church doesn't require dresses. I would get a new one every spring or summer just to add to my wardrobe of jeans and t-shirts so that I could wash my jeans and shorts less often. But that period of my life was not to last.
When I was younger, I had all kinds of dresses - cute little girl dresses, dress-up dresses, Easter dresses, match-my-sister dresses, match-my-doll dresses. And then I became Too Good For Dresses. I was fine in my shorts, thank you very much. I outgrew my old dresses and didn't bother to replace them. If I had to dress up, I had nice pants and a few emergency dresses. But Project Runway transformed my life. I got a dress for a wedding - a birthday party - then a grad party - then I got a dress for a vacation - graduation - I couldn't be repeating outfits, everyone would know! (This was also the beginning of my use of Facebook, and I contribute my paranoia to the fact that I wasn't actually being paranoid, just aware of my changing society and its expectations.) And then I got to college. I still didn't consider myself a Dress Person - I had about three to choose from for convocation and I was surprised when I learned that I had to use one's first appearance up so soon. That semester, I was kept in check by a lack of access to stores and a wariness of online shopping.
But as soon as I got home, I found that I was in Target withdrawal. The first thing I did, after immediately and completely unpacking, was get Chipotle (of course) and then go to Target and buy a dress. I felt good about this purchase even though it was a summer dress and winter had just started. Another semester passed (I got a dress for King and Queens).
Summer came - but first, Rockbridge. And I had to have a new dress for Rockbridge, for the end of the week photo sesh. None of my current dresses seemed nice or floral enough for such an occasion, and besides, I had worn them all recently. Look at this picture: where would I have been without a floral dress?! Clearly, they would've disowned me. I went and got a dress to avoid this embarrassment.
When I got home from Rockbridge, I had a week and a half to chill at home and watch the finale of Lost. In that time I decided that I was seriously in need of dresses - I considered myself deprived. Where had all of my dresses gone? Had they just disappeared when I left for college? I assumed that I had way more than I did - but I was just looking at my past wardrobe through rose-colored glasses and assuming that I had a proper number of dresses throughout high school. This was false. In any case, I was desperate for a nice dress that I could wear out to lunch or to church, something casual but classy.
I went to JC Penney and came home with four dresses. All of them were fantastic finds, and all of them fulfilled that gap in my wardrobe, but I felt extravagant. I felt like I had truly become a Dress Person. And I embraced it. I met this girl, Taylor, who loved Pokemon and Disney songs and dresses and chemistry (I forgive her) and had a pretty blue car and I decided that we had a lot in common. I had found another Dress Person. Over the summer I got a lot of use of my new dresses, wearing maybe two a week (except some days I just sat in my room and watched videos all day because it was so hot outside...I did not get good use of my dresses or myself on those days).
Now we've arrived at sophomore year. I made my first online clothing purchase. And my second (this one for campus golf). I don't really believe in buying things online because you have to pay for shipping and you can't try it on or even feel it or see its colors in different lights, but sometimes, when you see the perfect dress, you just have to buy it. I still had to talk myself into buying them (with help from my roommate).
And then came Dress Week. Taylor and I realized that we had a ton of dresses. I realized that there was no way I was going to get use out of all of them unless I started wearing multiple dresses a week - I actually had enough that I could go a whole month with nothing but dresses (February, but who's counting?). Of course, a lot of these would be fancy dresses and that would be kind of silly. So a week of dresses sounded like a much better plan. This would also allow people with smaller dress obsessions, and less commitment to crazy ideas despite weather fluctuations, to participate. And being me, I knew that this week wouldn't be any good without photographic evidence of its existence. Hence, Dress Week occurred this April 10-15 (I think I skipped Saturday because I wore two dresses on Friday due to King and Queens and also because I was tired of looking so great and also I had to wear a t-shirt for the activities fair, but I don't really remember which justification I used at the time). We invited lots of friends to participate in a Facebook event (because nothing is official if it's not on Facebook), and lots of pictures were taken and joy was had by all. It actually was super great for several reasons:
- I got to see Taylor and Katie every single day!
- I was so popular - everyone was texting me being all like, where u at (this was Katie) so that we could take pictures together.
- I looked good for a whole week...believe me, that is a real win in the college girl's war with apathy/busyness.
- I got to see a lot of people who I don't normally see during the week - because everyone has time to take a quick picture outside on a beautiful day!
- It was a super busy week leading up to an even busier one, and if I did not have dresses and friendship to make me happy I would have been pretty stressed out. Instead, it was just a challenge to get as many pictures as possible!
But there were some parts that made me sad:
- I didn't get to take my picture with a lot of people who were wearing dresses that week.
- It was really, really cold on Wednesday so I wore a dress for part of the day but wore a skirt for another part of the day (I don't remember how that worked out - I'm getting old).
- I didn't wear a dress on Saturday. That would have been nice.
- I felt like I couldn't wear any of those dresses ever again because there was public documentation of each of them. I didn't repeat any of them that semester (I only had four weeks left). It made it incredibly difficult to pick a dress to bring to Rockbridge. It was like having six Rockbridge photo shoots, except way less intense and all featuring me. So, not really like it at all.
Despite these shortcomings, I anticipate a return of Dress Week, which was essentially the best week of the semester.
This summer I somehow found myself with four new dresses, though I wasn't intending to add any more to my bulging closet. Now I have to choose which ones to take to school and which ones to leave here, and I wrote this blog to help me procrastinate. I love all of my dresses and I wouldn't want to ignore any of them - because if I leave a summer dress here, I won't wear it again until April at the earliest. I have enough dresses for any regular-sized month, but I still don't know how many to bring back to school to avoid over-filling my closet, wasting space in my car and of course getting a dress extra wrinkly for no reason. I am just putting way too much effort into trying to plan all of my outfits for the next four months which is really, really silly. And yet...I still want to make the best decision possible. And I still haven't made up my mind about anything.
I always have the most valid, tragic complaints in my life.
Speaking of which - this is my last tangent - it's kind of funny how I've adjusted to a new level of dresses, but it's not that surprising. Today, if I suddenly only had three dresses I would panic - what if I wanted to wear a purple dress? But before I was fine. This also happens with wealth. Just because I have a ton of dresses doesn't mean that I'm satisfied with my dress collection - in fact, it makes me more aware of the dress types that I don't have. Similarly, if I suddenly doubled my income, I would spend a lot of it on things that would slightly improve my standard of living, but I would still see people way richer than me and be unsatisfied. Never mind the fact that I'm richer than my previous neighbors - now, in my bigger house, I have all this extra space so I need a bigger tv and I'd better get a new car because everyone else is getting a new car. This is actually not true - I would know better than to get a bigger house - and my current income is clearly not enough to get me a house (I'm unemployed, so doubling my income would literally not do anything) - but it's something to think about when I really, really want one of those classy dresses I could wear to work, despite the fact that I still don't work.
I have so many first world problems.
