wall to wall no. 01: do I look good in orange?
The story of a dress on the run & a new segment of LAOR.
Meet Wall to Wall, a new segment of Love and Other Rugs, A place for all the love and all the rugs in between issues.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from
asking me to write about obsession. She was hosting an event for the 1-year anniversary of her publication Shop Rat. I asked if I could write about sex merch, but I clearly hadn’t read the prompt closely enough. I tried again. Well, I said over email, what about this dress I found at the Maryam store then didn't buy and it haunted me? This is perfect, she said.You can hear me read the piece on Shop Rat Tales: E1 and read the full story below :)
Since we last spoke..
I’ve been on one (1) hinge date. We went to Rodeo and talked about book publishing and metal smith work—it wasn’t love.
I have begun what will inevitably be a long hunt for a new desk and dresser—here are some passes from Dobbin, Humble House, Good Behavior, and Quarters.
I ate at Dilly Dally, Brass, Vinegar Hill House (get the chicken), Caviar Krispa (a bday treat from my old bosses), and Gem.
I drank plenty of wine, sampled a two-sipper martini at Brass, saw blue grass at Sunny’s in Red Hook, and had a spicy margarita (and a mousse) at The Lowell uptown.
I had a facial at Spencer’s in Soho, after I saw dream girl
go—it’s all very chic.My friend Kelly was on the cover of Wallpaper (the magazine) and I finally found her in the wild.
And now for some words..
A dress on the run.
I just want to know, I asked with the confidence of 3 glasses of wine and an extra dirty martini to a man across from me, are we on a date? It was nearing 11PM and we were at Elsa, a cocktail bar that sits at the top of Atlantic Avenue near the waterfront. I told you you’d look good in orange, he said. We’d been talking about Martha Stewart and prison. But he doubled down, not many people can pull off orange. It was a compliment, maybe, but not really an answer to the question. Was this a date? And more importantly, did I look good in orange?
Years before, I was on a never ending quest to find the perfect dress. It was the fall of 2019, and I had been asked to fly to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri and speak at my university. A women’s conference on career paths, career shifts—what lead me to leave the editorial world and start peddling vibrators. For almost a month, every moment that wasn’t work or a date or sleep was circling through my favorite vintage stores and resale shops for something that said cool, professional, stylish.
Three doors down from my acupuncturist, a woman I credit with saving my life, is the Maryam Nassir Zadeh store. Occasionally, I’d go in a hold up a shoe I couldn’t afford or ogle the accessories. Then, amidst my search, one fateful day felt different. Maybe I’d walk out with something worthy of me sitting on a stage with a mic in hand.
I was immediately drawn to a pair of jeans with flowers pressed into them almost laminated into the denim and begrudgingly threw in a seemingly ordinary sleeveless strappy dress made from suiting material into the dressing room. It was almost coral but also somehow felt like macaroni. I ended up spending 20 minutes in the dress, walking around the store, taking photos, before leaving empty handed. I was late to acupuncture, plus the dress was $700, a touch out of my budget.
I went on with my search and ended up wearing something I didn’t love from a sample sale—forgetting entirely about an-almost-perfect dress that I left behind.
The dress however did not forget.
You see I have this rule, one that I almost never break unless my credit card bill is a little too high: If you try on a perfect dress, buy it, you will find an occasion for it. I had a special asterisk for sample sales or holiday markdowns, because something about percentages off makes our brains lie about how we define perfection. Regardless, my years not breaking this rule had never led me astray and the times I did, I’d be haunted.
Flash forward and it was somehow 2021—a year where I had 5 weddings. I began to peruse my normal sources for events in DC and Aspen and San Antonio. In Covid, my shopping habits expanded beyond brick and mortar and instead of finding myself elbow deep in dresses at Stella Dallas, I was on page 25 of the SSENSE sale section with tabs that felt like an elastic band around my wallet.
Then, like it had been placed there for me, on the homepage of The Real Real was the same corally, macaroni dress I had abandoned 2 years before. I clicked in, my size, fate. It was also on hold. All would be fine, I’d wait the 20 minutes you are allotted to hold things and come back. Except when I did, it had been sold.
I’d then spend weeks scouring every resale site, adjusting my keywords in ebay and etsy until I gave up again. I had forgotten about the little ties on the shoulders and in the chest. I had to have it, setting google alerts and searching until I began to tire.
This was karma for breaking my own rules. Gone again. I’d throw up my hands.
This dress became like a man that I went on one date with and never heard from again, a false promise of the future, a what if, an ending not a beginning.
Six months later however, I was in the West Village and decided to pop into the Beacon's Closet—you know, the one that is almost too warm to be in for long periods of time but arguably the best in the city. Greenpoint was too picked over, Parkslope was just bad, and Bushwick always was hit or miss. You’d never dare taking your own things to this one, the humiliation wasn’t worth it. But more often than not, you’d leave with something that should’ve been far more expensive than it was.
That’s where I found her, nearly three years after initially trying her on in the Lower East Side. But now she was fifty dollars. I didn’t even try her on, I left everything else I had picked up on the returns rack and immediately checked out. Fearing that if I didn’t act quickly, she’d be gone again.
A tailor took out the pockets, my hips sometimes caused straight dresses to weirdly hug my frame. Then she hung proudly in my closet, but every time I went to reach for her, something felt wrong. Was this dress flattering after all? Had it been about the hunt not the dress? Was this a bigger metaphor?
I wore it once—a bachelorette party required a citrus shade, and then maybe once again but I didn’t really remember. No photo evidence of our long lovestory. I then lent her to a friend, she was attending a party to celebrate a new vintage of an orange wine. The hosts sent a moodboard.
And then the dress disappeared again, the friend swearing she gave it back, me unable to find it in my closet.
A quick google showed her on a few resale sites, finally exiting the closets of the women who had paid full price some five years ago. She was on ebay for $165 and in two people’s carts. Was this the pace of things? Where had she gone this time? And most importantly, why had I let her go so easily? Was it really the dress for me?
All I can tell you is that my date (which by the way was a date after all) was wrong, I didn’t look that good in orange.
Written for and Shop Rat’s anni party.
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Get this dress yourself on ebay, poshmark, and even in green.
And for the audio version of this story, head over to Shop Rat.
‘til next time.
xL