Off the Wagon

Well, folks, I’ve well and truly fallen off the “I’m only buying practical clothes from now on” wagon. Big time.

I mean, this dress isn’t even remotely practical, is it? No matter how I try to justify it by telling you that I promise to wear it aaaalll the time, it’s still going to be a white prom dress – the kind you just KNOW you’re going to spill something on as soon as you wear it, isn’t it? (Oh, and just in case there was any doubt about that, I totally spilled something on it within a few hours of putting it on. AND I was wearing a “bib” at the time: GAH. Luckily the dress survived, and I managed to remove the spillage without it staining. It’s going to happen again, though, I just know it…)

Despite all of this, though, I just can’t bring myself to regret buying it. I mean, look at it! Who could possibly regret that dress?! Not me, but just for the sake of argument, here are my two justifications:

01.

The fabric is super-lightweight, and doesn’t really crease easily, which means this will be the perfect dress to roll up and stick in my suitcase for that summer holiday I’m not actually taking. Yes.

02.

You know how I said I was only going to buy practical clothes, until I reached a point where I felt like I finally had a decent “core” wardrobe of basics? Well, I never thought I’d say this, but I kinda feel like that point has probably been reached now. In addition to this dress, I also bought a couple of pairs of jeans last week (more on those later…), and, with the addition of those crew-neck sweaters I bought last month, plus the other things I’ve been gradually adding to my closet this year, I’m actually pretty happy with the state of the ol’ wardrobe right now. In other words: I’m good for practical clothes now – bring on the floofy (yes, spellcheck, it IS a word…) (And so is “spellcheck”, by the way, even although you’ve given it a wavy red line, you crazy kid…) white prom dresses! And ALL THE THINGS, basically.

OK, OK, I’m not planning to go crazy. Well, not TOTALLY crazy. The whole point of building a capsule wardrobe of basics, though, was to get to the stage where I never have to utter the words, “I have nothing to wear!” and now that I’ve reached that point, I feel much less guilty about the occasional indulgent dress. I know, cool story, huh? Here’s another one for ya: when I was getting ready to leave the house on the day these photos were taken, I spent a lot of time curling my hair, and even Instagrammed the finished result. Then I stepped out the door, and instantly – INSTANTLY – the wind ripped those curls to bits, and made my head look almost exactly like a haystack. GAH.

There was a lot of swearing, and a lot of stamping of feet, but it proved totally impossible to get even a single photo in which my haystack hair didn’t look like it was trying to escape from my head, so this topknot was thrown together in about 30 seconds, with the help of two spin pins I found lurking in the bottom of my handbag (alas, there was no brush there to accompany them!), and the car’s rearview mirror. After all of that, I was amazed to get any useable photos at all – thanks, Terry!