The Accidental Dress

[Dress: Stop Staring ‘Boardwalk’ dress // Shoes: Paris Hilton (yes, really) via TK Maxx]

This dress is Stop Staring’s “Boardwalk” dress. And I wore it to… Walt Disney’s Boardwalk. Yes, I went there, with the matchy-matchy. Yes I did.

My tendency to be over-enthusiastic about matching my outfits to my surroundings, however, is not the subject of today’s post. (Although, let’s all hope I never go to see the circus, say, because God knows what I’d deem “appropriate” for that…)

No, the subject of today’s post is how I managed to buy this dress completely by accident. Yes, you heard me: it is an accidental dress.

OK, I’m sensing some reluctance to believe me here. You’re thinking this is going to be some kind of transparent way to justify my dress habit: it’s OK, I understand. I would think that too. But seriously, you guys: I REALLY DID BUY THIS DRESS BY ACCIDENT. No, I did. And I will tell you how I did it…

(You know, just in case you want to buy a dress by “accident” too, one day.)

(OK, the inverted commas were a joke. It really WAS an accident. Pinky swear.)

So! I first met the dress last summer, at the Unique Vintage store in L.A. I loved it, but they didn’t have it in my size, so I came home without it and resigned myself to spending the rest of my life searching for either a UK Stop Staring stockist who wasn’t charging a small fortune for a dress, or a US stockist who wasn’t charging a small fortune for shipping. Obviously I was more likely to find Nigel, the International Man of Mystery hiding in my attic than I was to find either of these things, so I had actually pretty much given up my search. UNTIL ONE FATEFUL DAY.

That day started out just like any other, with nothing whatsoever to indicate that I would soon be buying a new dress totally by accident. There I was, sitting at my desk, diligently searching for items to feature on my various blogs when suddenly there it was, right in front of me:

THE BOARDWALK DRESS. OMG!

Now, I’d come across the dress before, of course, but it had always been too expensive to justify buying, on account of the whole shipping/customs thing. This time, however, it had popped up on a European website (Before I go any further here, let me just confess that I don’t remember the name of this site, and didn’t bookmark it or anything. Because I was on it totally BY ACCIDENT.), which piqued my interest, because perhaps the shipping from Europe would be slightly less extortionate than shipping from the US?

Therein, however, lay the problem.

The website didn’t seem to have International shipping prices listed. So, in order to find out how much it would cost, I had to do that whole “adding the dress to my basket and pretending to go through checkout, only stopping at the last moment” thing.

You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? Which is great, because I certainly didn’t.

Well, I went through the process of adding the dress and typing in my details. It seemed to take an extraordinarily long time to get to the bit with the shipping details, though. In fact, I might have had to input my payment details to get to that piece of information. It was OK, though, because as soon as the shipping costs came up, and I talked myself out of buying YET ANOTHER dress, I hit the back button and exited the site. No harm, no foul, definitely no dress. So I closed down the browser and I went about my business.

A week later, the dress turned up.

WHOOPS.

I’d like to say I have no idea how it happened, but well, I’m not THAT stupid. Obviously I didn’t exit the website in quite as timely a fashion as I thought I did, and given that I HAD typed in my payment details (Only to get past that bit so I could get to the shipping costs, though!), I guess it wasn’t SO surprising that here was the dress on my doorstep. By accident.

(Or! Or! Maybe I slept-walked to my computer in the middle of the night and went online and ordered it? Or… Rubin did it?)

I really should’ve sent it back, of course. But .. meh. These things happen for a reason. That’s what my granny always told me, anyway. And who am I to argue with the mysterious forces of fashion?

Let this be a warning to you, though, people: accidental dress purchases can happen to anyone, at any time.

(But let’s face it: they’re probably most likely to happen to me…)

P.S. Bonus out-take:

“Showplace of the Hore”. Well, isn’t that interesting…