Why I’m Not Allowed to Daydream in the Dressing Room
This is the post that inspired me to write a book. I found it tonight in the archives and I couldn’t help re-posting.
I’m at Anthropolgie and I’ve already broken two of my cardinal shopping rules:
- Do not go into Anthropologie.
- Do not touch the merchandise.
Fingering the hem of a jewel-toned shift in raw silk, I break a third.
3. Do not daydream about wearing the clothes.
Here I go…
When I wear this dress people will see me differently. I’ll step out of the background like an actress stepping into a lone spotlight. I will be respectable and mature but still fun and unconventional. I’ll look like I’ve just come back from a trip around the world, like I, only minutes ago, left a so-cool-you-don’t-know-it’s-name gallery, like I have class or, at the very least, style.
I may as well take it to the dressing room. There, looking at myself in the mirror wearing someone else’s clothes, I can step outside my stay-at-home-mom, covered-in-snot reality. I can be someone new.
I forget, conveniently, that the dress is dry clean only, that I’ll wear it once (to a pizza buffet, not an uptown soiree) and then throw it in a pile of clothes awaiting the day when I have enough extra cash to take it to the cleaners.
This dress will not change my life. It won’t fit my life either. It will make me painfully aware of the life I wish I were living. It will mock me from the dirty clothes pile. It will make me wish I had better shoes to wear with it, a more flattering hair color, daintier earrings.
Whatever it is I expect from this dress, I can be assured it will not provide.
But here in the store, holding it close to my chest, smelling that perfectly new smell, all I can imagine is a new me, a better me. In this dress.
