My friend Anna came to visit a couple weeks ago—one of my friends whose wardrobe has inspired me for decades!—and I got to explore my new surroundings with her. I ‘saved’ all of the vintage stores I’d been pinning on Google Maps so we could visit them for the first time together. Maybe someday you’ll be lucky enough to get a ‘getting dressed’ feature from her…

Also, as a bonus… below are some more outfits from the last couple weeks that I liked! Nothing remarkable (work, summer doldrums) about the days I wore them, so I don’t have any accompanying diary entries, but wanted to share a few more pregnancy outfits because a few people told me they found the last pregnancy outfit post useful! Outfit details for these ones at the end of the post.

I try to provide a secondhand option for every piece of clothing in these posts, whether it’s the exact item or an approximation. You can assume anything I link to is secondhand unless otherwise stated!

Had a full day of clients but was done in time to pick up Anna from the airport. We went to Kiddo for dinner—everything excellent except for the zucchini main dish, which is partly my fault for assuming zucchini could hold its own as a main… had a snap pea cordial to drink, which I now want to try to replicate at home. Wearing a Reformation tank top (same one here), Urban Outfitters cargo pants (same ones in different color here), Salomons (same colorway (I think?) here), and thrifted Nike baseball cap (exact one here).

Anna and I both went to our respective workout classes, then I introduced her to my new favorite beverage, a frozen coffee from Rival Brothers. Showered and got dressed in a Jungmaven shirt (hard to find a secondhand alternative because I want to give you one made of natural fibers, but Jungmaven recently launched resale, so you can get it here in yellow!), baseball cap again, J. Crew skirt (exact one here), rubber Birkenstocks (can only find secondhand here for an absurd price, so if you did offer on these, go under $50!!), and a rented Mansur Gavriel bag I’m considering buying if it drops below $150 on Rent the Runway.

We stopped into all of the various vintage stores along this strip of 4th Street. I bought a collarless black and white checked silk jacket at Wayward Collection, and Anna picked up a vintage t-shirt at Ace Outpost (where we also enjoyed an extremely dense dark chocolate tahini brownie from a pop-up with @yesyasminekitchen.) Went back home for a siesta (cuddling with the dog) then returned to the same area for dinner at Cry Baby Pasta (crispy potatoes and the rigatoni were great). We definitely over-ordered, though. (Part of this wasn’t our fault—when we inquired about a dish being delivered to another table, our server ended up bringing us one on the house… corn arancini are not exactly the lightest addition to an already heavy plate!) Skipped dessert (this is how you know we were truly full), walked home with leftovers in hand.

Knew I’d be doing a lot of walking, so I started with sneakers. Wore Le Bon Shoppe cobalt blue t-shirt (very similar here), GAP Factory leopard print barrel pants (same ones here), Salomons again, and thrifted Florida Lottery baseball cap (exact one here). I love the leopard print but I have to say I don’t find these as well-fitting as the regular GAP barrel leg pants I own—there’s a lack of ease, maybe less fabric in the legs. Depending on how they fit postpartum I may end up re-selling them and looking for a pair of leopard print barrel leg pants elsewhere. (Compare the fit to the black pants in the outfits later in the week and you’ll see what I mean.)

Anna found us a pigeon tour in the morning, and with no idea what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised! While on the tour, I was reminded of Duke Riley’s Fly By Night, and felt a pang of longing for that specific subset of the New York art world and that loose coalition of truly creative people, which I was first exposed to by the person who inspired this post last year. (I didn’t include his obituary there, but it’s well worth a read.) What a full life I have led already—we all contain multitudes! I quickly recovered from my nostalgic reverie thanks to a blood orange gelato and a stop into the cookbook-centric bookstore Binding Agents (great name).

For lunch, we ordered and waited far too long for a sandwich from Middle Child (sorry not sorry, I guess I’m just not a huge sandwich person! No food feels worth waiting that long for!), then rushed to our next ticketed activity, a tour of the Wharton Esherick Museum in Malvern, about an hour’s drive outside the city. I’m envious of artists with exploratory, multidisciplinary tendencies who also manage to achieve harmonious results—everything in his house was very obviously from the same brain, but you could tell that it was a brain that loved to learn and experiment. The drive back took a while (I think I accidentally toggled the ‘avoid highways’ switch), and we were both tired, so we got takeout from a Greek restaurant around the corner and watched a pretty terrible Apple TV show.

Wearing one of my favorite shirts—got it in the East Village shopping with like ten years ago! Hard to find a good approximation but here’s a shirt with a similar vibe. Wearing with Needles pants (exact ones here) and Melissa sandals (exact ones here). Added the baseball cap that appears surgically attached to my skull at this point. We went to Calder Gardens and watched the incredible 1961 documentary Le Cirque Calder, about Calder’s circus, which may end up getting its own Rabbit Fur Coat post at some point soon. After that, we popped across the street to the Barnes Foundation. There were certain works of art I would have wanted to know more about, but in general I appreciated the contextless, almost cluttered display—the original ‘gallery wall’. Also was reminded of how endearingly janky almost all of Renoir’s faces are (sorry not sorry), so much so that I went looking for a vintage Renoir exhibition shirt on eBay a little while after. Stopped for a pupusa and some water ice on the way home, then did some crafting (Anna finished an anklet, I just rearranged my bead collection) while eating leftovers and finishing our terrible Apple TV show.

Wore my black GAP barrel leg pants (exact ones here)—I like the fit of these better than the leopard print, vintage California t-shirt (impossible to find a satisfactory secondhand alternative for!) that I got after seeing someone in a similar shirt at the NY Art Book Fair, Salomons and baseball cap again.

Walked to Frieda for an omelet and a very decadent brioche French toast, then to the Independence Seaport Museum. (Was giving more ‘independence’ vibes than ‘seaport’ vibes… the ship tour was worth it, the rest not as much for me personally…and you know I love a good maritime museum!) Anna did some exploring while I met with a client, then we had dinner at Double Knot (sushi rolls, chicken bao, edamame dumplings, cauliflower, and maitake mushroom skewer).

Basically just changed my t-shirt and otherwise wore the same thing as the day before! The fresh t-shirt was a vintage Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing shirt via eBay (very similar one here), worn briefly with my new (to me) vintage silk jacket before acknowledging that it was probably still too hot out to need that layer. I had some appointments in the morning, but when I got home we went to the Fabric Workshop and Museum to see the Jesse Krimes Elegy Quilts and a tapestries exhibit called You Stretched Diagonally Across It. Later that afternoon, Anna headed to the airport, but not before leaving behind a sweet note and a film camera for me!

And now for the bonus round of outfits!

You can sense a theme (basically just a certain pair of pants I seem to have structured every outfit around lol), but also: tight t-shirt on top, baggy pants or elastic waist midi skirt, suuuper baggy t-shirt when I don’t feel like being visibly pregnant in public, and ever-present baseball cap to make it very clear how casual I want to be! (To be honest, on the one day I didn’t have a baseball cap with me, I was annoyed the entire time I spent walking around outside! Just as much for function as for form, if not more so.) Anyway.

DAY ONE: Vintage GAP overalls via Poshmark (to replace same vintage pair in a different size), Le Bon Shoppe t-shirt, thrifted Nike hat, rubber Birkenstocks.

DAY TWO: Red Madewell t-shirt, Urban Outfitters pants, Salomons, Nike baseball cap again.

DAY THREE: Sharon Van Etten ‘Trouble’ baseball cap, Reformation tank top, thrifted GAP button-up shirt around waist, black GAP barrel leg pants, black Salomons.

DAY FOUR: Sea New York rented shirt, Urban Outfitters pants, Nike baseball cap again, Melissa sandals.

DAY FIVE: Nike baseball cap and Birkenstocks again, Mondo Mondo necklace via Poshmark, white Los Angeles Apparel t-shirt, camouflage jacket via eBay.

DAY SIX: Thrifted yellow tank top, secondhand J. Crew bag, Urban Outfitters pants, and Salomons again

DAY SEVEN: Nike baseball cap and different color Birkenstocks again (these ones from Poshmark), Renoir t-shirt via eBay, very old thrifted silk skirt.

DAY EIGHT: Nike baseball cap, thrifted camo jacket, Urban Outfitters pants, and Salomons again along with newly thrifted striped Land’s End t-shirt.

If you missed the previous installments of weekly outfit posts, you can find them here!

Before I share the things I bought with you… here are all the things I wanted to get:

Vintage Sixers t-shirt on eBay: I did a deep dive on eBay for Sixers t-shirts about a week before LeBron announced his move, so I’m sure anything I hearted has sold or gone up in price by now! But there wasn’t anything I wanted badly enough to buy it immediately, so I’m okay missing out for now.

Lots of other vintage things!: I visited a lot of vintage stores in Philly for the first time while my friend was in town last weekend and we were both impressed by the selection at Ace Outpost. I was charmed by a few t-shirts, but wasn’t wild about the way they looked with a bump and uncertain how they’d hang postpartum so I left them behind. (That “I broke bread with Pope John Paul II” shirt is 100% cotton, though… someone should get it.)

This peasant top at Urban Outfitters: I tried it on and loved it, told myself I should wait 24 hours and think about it before buying—went back the next day, having decided to purchase it, and it was already off the floor and no longer sold at that location. 😂 I haven’t been buying much online because we haven’t yet figured out a good system for receiving packages (apparently packages do get stolen from stoops pretty quickly here, unlike our Sesame Street oasis in the middle of Brooklyn), so I decided to just move on rather than order it from the Urban Outfitters website. Ideal scenario would be finding a secondhand approximation!

As for what I did buy in July…

These Urban Outfitters pants (in two colors): These were the other item I told myself I’d think on for 24 hours before buying, and unlike the shirt, they were still in stock when I went back for them. They’re very fun, and make for good pregnancy pants, but they’re quite long! Unless you wear them with platform shoes or have very long legs, you might run into some dragging issues. I also promptly ripped the grey pair within a couple hours of wearing them—snagged on a loose nail sticking out of the brick wall in my hallway.

Vintage black and white checked jacket: I saw this unlined silk jacket at Wayward Collection and knew before I even tried it on that I would love it.

Vintage camo jacket: Have had the camo debate with multiple friends now (and will always think about both this tweet and ’s excellent post on military style when I think about wearing camo) but I did finally succumb after trying on an impeccably structured vintage camo jacket at Ace Outpost. It was a bit overpriced (one of the only items I saw that I thought was overpriced, actually! everything else felt very reasonable), so I took a picture of it for posterity and to think about whether camo was really something I wanted to put on my body and then I found the same vintage jacket on eBay for $20 in one size up.

And on the last day of July, about five hours before the end of the month… I stumbled upon a vintage market happening on my way to the grocery store! I ended up leaving with a very weird (complimentary) shirt and bag from the same seller, Eternity Vintage. The shirt reminds me of the kind of things I used to find while I was thrifting in high school. I definitely didn’t need the bag (which I’m pretty sure is originally from J.Crew, and not *true* vintage) but I got caught up in the in-person moment and I don’t regret it!

What I’m eyeing for next month… some more big t-shirts. Still getting away with not looking pregnant as long as the shirt is big enough and want to take advantage of that while I can. July was for Philly vintage shopping… maybe August will be for Philly/South Jersey thrifting?

Dory Previn’s early life provided her with plenty of dark material (at one point during the documentary, she’s asked about the time her father locked her and her mother and siblings in their dining room for a couple of months and just confirms it matter-of-factly?!). She wrote constantly, long before it became her vocation. There are several vaguely apocryphal origin stories about how she ended up in California, ranging from the fanciful (took a train to Hollywood at seventeen to become a chorus girl) to the merely improbable (in her early thirties, a friend sent some of her lyrics to a studio executive who brought her out to California). Either way, she was hired at MGM and paired up with a musician named Andre Previn—and a creative and romantic partnership was born. At that point, Dory2 looked and dressed like this—and was writing songs with lyrics like this:

Control yourself, contain yourself
Restrict yourself, restrain yourself
And always let tranquility be your goal

Shortly after a hospitalization for a nervous breakdown in 1965, Dory and Andre were asked to compose the soundtrack for the Valley of the Dolls film adaptation. Her account of writing the lyrics for the theme song (as she put it, “ma[king] professional use of my own experience”), is poignant and thoughtful: ”I knew what pills did to the speech pattern, the way one repeats phrases and never gets out the entire sentence. I was fearful someone would catch what I’d done.” Dory and Andre achieved success together, but as Dory decompensated and her mental illness and substance abuse became more severe, Andre’s fame grew independently.

One of the last straws in their partnership was his decision to take a prestigious conducting job in Texas with the Houston Symphony (and spend most of his time off touring in London). Dory, always fearful of flying, felt trapped in Los Angeles, refusing to even travel by train at this point. It was around this time that Andre Previn began an affair with the much-younger Mia Farrow (a member of their larger Hollywood circle who Dory had considered an acquaintance, if not a friend). By 1970, Dory and Andre were officially divorced. And post-divorce Dory went through a dramatic style evolution, in both the music she began to write and the clothes she began to wear.

Some of this fashion evolution is due to shifting trends and norms, of course—she wasn’t the only woman who moved away from skirt suits and towards peasant blouses and flared denim in the 1970s. But even the way she did her hair was a complete pivot from her days as Andre’s musical companion. Her hair was naturally quite curly, but it’s impossible to find a photo of her from her time with Andre where that natural texture is on display. It’s almost always in a bouffant-adjacent updo, heavily teased and straightened. Post-divorce, it doesn’t look like she ever returned to that heavily styled hairstyle. You would also have a difficult time finding many photos of her post-1970 without a pair of aviator-frame glasses. The lenses were often tinted a slight orange-y brown, and she wore them both indoors and out.

Without Andre by her side, Dory moved away from commercial songwriting, and ended up releasing six albums of her own music in that decade alone. These albums weren’t bombastic or immediate chart toppers, but they were quietly revolutionary in their own right. It was unusual material, even for an emerging golden era of folk music. Her songs were at once confessional and quite plain-spoken (‘Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign’). She ventured into fable and surreality (‘Mythical Kings and Iguanas’). There’s even a song about the Hindenburg disaster (which, according to Dory, was the origin of her fear of flying). The song that I would consider the apex of her talent, ‘The Lady with the Braid,’ sublimates the mundane into something heartbreaking, and needs to be listened to in its entirety—but at least read the lyrics if you don’t listen. It’s a one-sided conversation, a monologue from a woman who is so desperate for company that despite herself, her desperation is going to drive that company away.

In the documentary, Dory is compared to both Joni Mitchell and Carole King, two other female singer-songwriters who released seminal albums around that same time. While Dory’s voice doesn’t quite fall into that ‘force of nature’ category, I could absolutely see a world in which she’d ended up with just as much name recognition as either of them. Ultimately, she became more of an if you know, you know musician, ‘your favorite artist’s favorite artist’ vibes, more on the level of Judee Sill or a Karen Dalton.

But while Dory didn’t end up a Joni or a Carole, she also didn’t suffer the same fate as Judee and Karen did. She lived to the age of eighty-six, and died of natural causes on her farm in Massachusetts in the company of her second husband, Joby Baker, to whom she’d been married for almost thirty years. She didn’t die young, or alone and isolated, of an overdose or by suicide—when we listen to Dory Previn, we don’t have to mourn her as someone who was gone too soon.

Instead, Dory was able to talk quite coherently about her struggles with mental illness, confront some of her demons, win an Emmy (and thank some of those demons in her acceptance speech!). She was able to recover from the betrayal and heartbreak of her first marriage, and remarry someone who spoke about her with obvious fondness (he just died earlier this month! RIP Joby!) The darkness in Dory never truly left her, but the documentary shows how her creative freedom, her openness and honesty and humor, helped her to counter it. And I can’t help but feel that her dramatic sartorial shift in self-expression contributed to that sense of freedom, too.

If you, too, would like to emulate a post-divorce Dory Previn in her creative prime, secondhand options abound!

I've long preferred (on the record1, even!) to be perceived and evaluated on the aspects of my appearance I choose—like my clothing—rather than the ones I can't control, like the shape of my body. This is a relatively easy way to move throughout the world as someone in a straight-size body. I reveal what I want to reveal; my choice of clothing usually registers more immediately than anything about the shape of my body. One could imagine, therefore, that I might not be someone who enjoys the experience of being visibly pregnant!

When I first got engaged, I was uncomfortable using the word fiancé, felt the conspicuous presence of my engagement ring without an accompanying wedding band—there’s temporal data there, some information about a recent change in your life that an aspect of your appearance gets to reveal before you do. A visible pregnant belly does the same thing as a gold band with a solitaire diamond on a ring finger, but on a much more obvious, permanent, and unavoidable scale. It says, this is something that is actively happening in my life. I am in a moment of transition. Given my stated preferences above—and being that I am both stubborn and choosy about when and to whom I reveal information—that is my personal nightmare!!! So for as long as I could, I refused to wear anything that revealed my pregnancy.

I made it about six months in before I had no choice. At that point, most of my jeans were no longer buttoning over my bump. This was right around the time I was packing up all of my clothing to move, as well as when the weather made a definitive shift into summer. And then I moved, only had about two suitcases worth of clothes easily accessible, and temporarily misplaced all of my summer shoes except for my brown Salomons and olive green Birkenstocks (hence their prominent featuring in the outfits above). All of a sudden, my options had narrowed! Whether or not my pregnancy is apparent in my day-to-day life is now much less up to me.

I’m new to dressing a pregnant body, and I have it relatively easy work-wise, as I only see clients on Zoom. So my pregnancy style may not be relevant to anyone who goes into an office for work/has to adhere to a strict dress code. It also probably won’t be useful to anyone whose second and third trimesters fall during autumn and winter. But hopefully this is a fun jumping-off point for anyone who needs or wants some pregnancy dressing inspiration, and maybe a catalyst to experiment with changing up silhouettes even if you aren’t pregnant!

Some personal findings so far from this past month…

A silhouette that works: the lower the rise, the tighter the t-shirt (and make use of drawstrings + elastic waistbands!)

The lower the rise, the better the bottoms are suited to pregnancy dressing. For the most part, my lower-waisted pants with elastic and drawstring waists are still holding on (though I’ve purchased a couple duplicate items in the next size up). And I’m finding it easier/more natural to pair these bottoms with tighter t-shirts. Earlier on in pregnancy, my preferred silhouette (oversized/boxy shirts) was working, but at this point a tighter t-shirt usually feels more natural.

Sizing up.

As commented on my previous post (it seemed to resonate, as a lot of people liked the comment!), “Personally I found the fashion narrative “you don’t need maternity clothes just buy the next size up” to be bullshit because a pregnant body is actually a very specific shape that’s not just “bigger.” A pair of shorts/pants that actually fit can be a huge relief!” I agree—pregnancy creates a uniquely different silhouette, and sizing up is absolutely not going to solve all of your problems. However, it’s been liberating to experiment with different sizes. The bigger the bump, the less relevant some of this becomes, but buying one to four sizes up in some silhouettes I already own and know work for me (Agolde Luna jeans, Needles HD BDU cargo pants, GAP barrel leg drawstring waist pants, etc.) has let me continue to feel connected to my wardrobe and sense of style rather than fruitlessly trying out lots of new items. For the most part, I’ve been able to find these items secondhand—the RealReal for Agolde, Grailed for Needles, and Poshmark for GAP.

FYI, I didn’t include any of those sizing-up purchases in my monthly roundups this year because I wasn’t ready to talk pregnancy yet, but if you are curious about what I’ve spent the most on during pregnancy, it is NOT clothes. My medical expenses alone (for what has been a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy) are at $5,400 six months in because Oscar, the New York State marketplace insurance for which I paid $923 a month (yes, in addition to that $5,400 I already mentioned), did not consider ultrasounds ‘preventive’ and therefore did not cover a single one!!!!!!!!!! May we all see another system prevail within our lifetimes.

A cartoonishly oversized t-shirt and midi skirt is the best way to comfortably hide a pregnancy in a heatwave.

This is a combo I only discovered I liked on myself last summer after my successful search for a midi/maxi skirt, and I’m glad I don’t have to give it up quite yet. Big t-shirt and midi skirt is a good ‘not quite ready to read as pregnant’ outfit, and was a savior during the East Coast triple-digit heatwave—as little touching my body as possible, but still covered up. The t-shirt has to hang in a very specific way, though; it’s something I can’t explain, but you will know just by how it feels on you. If you want to experiment with this look, I suggest trying on the t-shirts you sleep in to see if any of them fit the way you want, then using those measurements to search eBay for ones with similar proportions.

This is a great stage of life to take advantage of clothing rental platforms.

I recently rejoined Rent the Runway, and I’m glad to be back! Since a lot of the pants I already wear and love were purchased from Rent the Runway, it’s been useful for continuity’s sake to be able to rent them in bigger sizes (like these Apiece Apart pants on the right, which I own in black in a much smaller size and am renting in this cool olive color). The shirt on the left, a Sea NY X RTR collab, isn’t exactly my style but I thought the silhouette would work well at this stage in my pregnancy (a little floaty, cropped just enough, provides some feminine contrast with a cargo pant), and I was right.

Some things that haven’t worked for me (at least not yet):

Really bump-conscious dresses: I think these are so cute on other people, but it’s already a departure from my normal style, and during the summer I’m even less compelled to wear something really tight and body-hugging. Maybe if I were pregnant in the winter I’d feel more compelled to experiment with this silhouette.

An open button-down shirt anchored by one button to cover the bra: Again, a really cute look on other people, but I think maybe my button-downs are too oversized, or I’m not far enough along for it to look the same way on me. I will be trying this again in a month or two!

Peasanty/Hill House-vibe sundresses: I feel too tradwife-y with a baby bump to wear these even though, again (say it with me), I think these are so cute on other people. If I had more tattoos or bleach blonde hair, something to counteract that sweetness, I’d be more open to trying this silhouette.

Cute strappy tank tops: Still dealing with that pesky chest and back acne from going off of spironolactone pre-pregnancy!!! So I never know if I’ll feel comfortable in something as revealing as this, which is a bummer. Might rent a top that falls into this category just to have an option if my skin is unexpectedly clear one day.

Pregnancy has been relatively easy on my body thus far2 (hoping I haven’t just jinxed the third trimester by saying so), and maybe because of that, I’ve felt somewhat removed from the physical reality of it. I’d wondered whether the practice of getting dressed while pregnant might help me feel more connected to what was happening, more embodied, but it hasn’t, at least not yet.

What it has done, sartorially (in conjunction with the simultaneous wardrobe contraction of moving and the arrival of summer), is provide a useful exercise in settling: finding a slightly newer version of myself rather than a complete reinvention, learning how to feel okay in that version, knowing I’ll probably feel and look different next month, or even next week. Getting dressed in a pregnant body has made me feel slightly more comfortable living in transition—even if I’m still not always comfortable revealing that transition. But for me, that’s progress!

(Pregnancy has also caused me to desire more impractical clothing, an impulse I’ve been able to control for the most part. But I’ll save that for the next pregnancy-related post—as well as some of the other people and characters whose pregnancy style has inspired me… move over, Usha Vance!)

Before I share the things I bought with you… here are all the things I wanted to get:

Summer and Storm long-sleeved mesh racer tee: A find from , who knows me well. Cotton mesh!!! I’m trying to envision the type of weather where I’d want to be wearing a garment both long-sleeved and made of mesh, though, and coming up short other than “breezy beach day on the Cape” (which feels unlikely for this summer, as I have never spent a summer day like that), so I’m passing for now.

Leopard print Adidas Taekwondo Mei: I definitely don’t need these in a third colorway, but I saw someone wearing them on the subway last month and obviously was drawn to them. Keeping as an option in the back of my mind if I ever wear one of my other two pairs into the ground.

These pants that Andrea Bergart wore in an Instagram post: I don’t know her personally, I don’t think she’s a ‘public figure’ per se (sorry for the call-out, Andrea!) but her Instagram is public and she makes these incredible basketball bags that are at the top of my dream item wishlist—I love every outfit she posts! My friend Sky tentatively IDed the pants as Collina Strada, but honestly, I want the whole look. Combined with the Liberty shirt (also in an enviable format—never seen that zip neckline before!), matching basketball bag, and those ballet flats… perfect.

Los Angeles Apparel cotton mesh t-shirt: The natural fibers mesh trend continues to gain traction! Lucky for me! I would want to try this on/feel the fabric before ordering, but if I do end up placing an order from LA Apparel anytime soon I’ll probably add in a couple sizes and see how I feel about it.

Noble x Jungmaven hemp mesh jersey: Another find, another natural fibers + mesh combo. I actually have this shirt in black with a white neckline (wearing it as I type now), and would have bought another when I originally got it but wasn’t wild about the rest of the available color options at the time. I love this brown and blue combo, but without a discount code I think it’s a little more than I want to spend right now. Still keeping an eye on whether or not the size medium stays in stock, though...

As for what I did buy in June…

This looks like a lot… and it is. It also looks like a lot of new stuff… which is also true! But in my defense, I was moving, and I am a little over six months pregnant at the time I’m writing this! All of these purchases were influenced by one of those two factors.

I somehow misplaced the bag I carefully packed of ‘shoes I will want for the next two months’ 🙃🙃🙃 which includes all the rest of my everyday sandals and my black Salomons, so right now I’m left with only my olive green Birkenstocks and brown Salomons and my fall/winter shoe collection. Yes, I like a constraint from time to time, but having only one pair of sandals was really killing the vibe during an already chaotic time for my wardrobe, so I decided I could go ahead and treat myself to a new color (it’s called ‘zinfandel,’ if you were curious) in a shoe I already know I like. Also tempted to re-purchase the blue Birkenstocks on Poshmark if the bag is still missing in a week or so.

The rest were all pregnancy-motivated purchases. The first two things I bought this month are on the righthand side of the image—a Le Bon Shoppe t-shirt and a dress from M.PATMOS. was doing a styling event at M.PATMOS one evening before I moved, I went to say goodbye, and next thing I knew I was taking multiple items into the dressing room. The dress was more than I should have spent (though worth it, quality-wise) and not totally my style but it feels like the perfect dress to get me through the rest of this pregnancy. It’s light and airy (cotton/silk blend!), loose enough that at this point I can still get away with not looking pregnant if I don’t want to, and it covers my chest/back/shoulders (remember when I said I had to stop taking spironolactone for acne… that is one of the worst things about pregnancy so far lol) but isn’t a shapeless sack. It may not be something I hold onto for years post-pregnancy, but I’ve already worn it several times.

The Le Bon Shoppe t-shirt… no notes. Perfect color, perfect fit—in fact, a better fit and better color options than the Los Angeles Apparel t-shirt I was about to re-purchase in a couple other colors. At this point in pregnancy, baggy t-shirts (my preferred t-shirt silhouette) just look kind of weird over the bump, but I don’t actually have many tight t-shirts, so I felt justified in this purchase. After that… the floodgates opened. I ordered another one of those Le Bon Shoppe t-shirts in a gorgeous yolky yellow (also a perfect color!), and then finally succumbed to the Gap Factory hype and ordered a couple pairs of pants on sale to accommodate the bump. Am finding the leopard print surprisingly versatile. (Who am I kidding… that’s not surprising to me!) And the green striped Uniqlo t-shirt was just another fitted t-shirt option for this stage of pregnancy.

What I’m eyeing for next month… nothing in particular yet, but whatever I buy will likely also be pregnancy- and/or moving-related!

So on a beautiful Wednesday evening, I took the subway to Columbus Circle and ate my first soft-serve of the season (vanilla with rainbow sprinkles, obviously; in a cup for practicality's sake, unfortunately) before meeting up with Lily in front of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. We climbed all the way up to the balcony level (still a great view!) and settled into our red velvet seats, looking down at the stage three (four?!) stories below. If I had been attending the ballet to understand the story of Swan Lake, I would have found it sorely lacking, but of course, that wasn’t the point (and to be clear, I didn’t find it lacking at all). The point of the ballet is the emotion—conveyed through a massive amount of effort.

The mildly embarrassing refrain of “The only thing to do is make art” (from this previous post on effort) was on repeat in the back of my mind as I admired how much labor had gone into every single aspect of this performance: the synchronized movements of the dancers, the live orchestra in the pit below, the stagehands moving scenery in darkness… the sheer amount of work that had to happen for me to sit in a darkened theater and enjoy a couple hours of exertion and beauty in equal amounts.3

According to various fashion and culture media outlets (Vogue, Who What Wear, InStyle, among others), balletcore has been ‘trending’ for at least the last five years. It’s also been in the cultural zeitgeist for decades longer (remember Center Stage? Step Up? Black Swan?). At a certain point, I think we can acknowledge that balletcore has earned its place in the canon of wardrobe basics.

Once you start looking for balletcore in contemporary fashion, it's actually difficult to stop seeing it. At Los Angeles Apparel (which, in its earlier iteration as American Apparel in the late 2010s, was no stranger to balletcore-inspired imagery and clothing… refer to the ad below featuring that infamous leotard and leg warmers combo), you’ll find a ballet-inspired wrap top—and near identical iterations from Negative Underwear, Aritzia, and other brands. Sandy Liang’s Mary Jane Pointe flats (first released in her spring 2023 collection) with their dulled satin finish and boxy toe were an explicit nod to the art form. (Liang has spoken frequently about her love of ballet as a child, and about taking inspiration from Isabella Boylston, a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre.) The New York City Ballet itself has even collaborated with multiple brands, including J. Crew, Zara, and Reformation, over the last few years.

Even when the garments themselves aren't overtly ballet-inspired, fashion brands frequently borrow from ballet's visual language: a muted palette of greys, beiges, and pinks, minimal silhouettes, photographed in a stripped down practice space. (Baserange is the first brand I thought of, but Gil Rodriguez or even Maryam Nassir Zadeh come to mind as well.)

What strikes me about balletcore is that fashion didn't borrow the beauty and artifice of a final performance as much as it did those elements of exertion and effort. The clothing we think of as balletcore is4 the garments associated with repetition, correction, and practice: ballet flats, cover-ups, footless tights, cutoff sweatshirts, leggings, leotards. It’s the warm-up wear!

Watching Swan Lake reminded me, yet again, that effort has its own satisfaction. What fashion has borrowed from ballet isn’t the sheen of the final product, but rather what it its practitioners wear as they work to perfect it. As a large swath of culture moves excitedly towards frictionlessness and optimization, balletcore’s enduring popularity makes me hopeful that our collective drive to show our work will persist. (Putting a nickel in the AI jar now even though I didn’t mention it by name...)

Like any good student of culture, I had hoped to buy some merch after the show, but the store on the first floor of the theatre was closed for the evening by the time it let out. But that’s probably a good thing, despite the perfect imaginary t-shirt I’ve now envisioned (Comfort Colors brand, of course, in some muted shade of blue with a haunting line drawing of a swan). What I actually want to remember from the performance is the effort that made it all possible.

As I prepare to leave my neighborhood and my city, I can’t even think about how much I’m going to miss Jon and all of the neighbors I’ve become friends with over the years. But I’m also excited to see what my new neighborhood and city bring—and how I'll inevitably communicate my identity and find common ground with the new people who populate my daily life. Getting dressed is most fun in community. That's part of why I've felt so lucky to build one here!

So who will be my new Jon? Will the elderly woman across the street from my new place be scandalized by my summer midriff? Will everyone else be wearing the same rubber Birkenstocks? Will my new neighbors be surprised to see me all dressed up, as I am wont to do occasionally? Will there be a garment they come to associate with me, the way that my faux fur coats have become my neighborhood calling card in winter?

I want to wear my graphic t-shirts, the weirder and more specific the better, to see who else might share an affinity for the Florida Lottery or a certain indie band. I want to wear my Big Baggy Pants (these Needles cargos, if you were curious) that elicit compliments almost always accompanied by begrudging surprise: “I don’t know why I like those pants.” I want to wear the perfect floaty sundress on a 90 degree day and commiserate about the weather with someone else who’s just as sweaty as I am. I want to be able to show off my various thrifted leather coats when the weather turns. If there’s a way to capture some of my essence in my wardrobe, I think that about sums it up.

Here are some recent warm weather outfits (and a couple from last summer) that I think I’ll draw inspiration from upon my move:

For those of you who didn’t experience NYC Craigslist in the early 2010s, I’m sorry. It was a magical place, a perpetually refreshing tabula rasa where one could source a cheap bookshelf and end up with a job teaching a preschool art class (true story!), all offered up in the same bland Arial and Times New Roman. But the missed connections were perhaps the purest demonstration of Craigslist’s full scope and potential.1

I don’t have many of my missed connections preserved via screenshot, unfortunately, but rest assured, receiving one back then was not an uncommon experience. I’m sure my roommates and I were not the only group of women in their early twenties who held ritualistic communal readings of every new missed connection in the evenings after we all got home (“This one says Starr Street… weren’t you at that bike shop in Bushwick today?”) Most of them never led anywhere, but the thrill of reading about yourself through a stranger’s eyes, what they noticed and what they assumed, was a feeling I’ve never quite encountered elsewhere.

I soon learned that there was a way to almost guarantee a missed connection, which was by wearing a certain dress I’d gotten in my senior year of high school, a red sundress from Anthropologie. It was relatively modest as sundresses go—it came to the knee, had a square neckline and a smocked bust with an empire waist and fluttery short-sleeves. But it wasn’t just me that this dress imbued with the magical powers of Craigslist connection, it was the wearer. Whether it was my friend, or my roommate, or my roommate’s friend, without fail, at least four of us received missed connections while wearing this dress. (And no, it wasn’t this red dress that Lily mentioned from our days as roommates, it was a different red dress!)

I’ve tried to analyze it, to get to the root of the phenomenon. Was it just that we were all young, and Craigslist missed connections was the proto-dating app of our time, and it felt like everyone in Brooklyn under the age of forty was always posting on there? Not fully, though, because it was (small sample size, but still statistically) more likely to happen when you were wearing the dress versus when you were not. Trust me… we were monitoring those posts carefully. Even when it wasn’t technically a missed connection, the dress reliably garnered attention like nothing else I had ever worn. I still remember boarding the F at Jay Street and hearing a man who had just exited the train car yell back towards the closing doors, “The red dress is perfect!” Is it really as simple—are men really as simple—as red + sundress = must say something? Perhaps.

Though Facebook Marketplace can’t hold a candle to the electric sense of possibility that Craigslist used to offer, reactivating it did give me this one gift: a old profile picture (a Macbook Photobooth selfie, of course) featuring me in the dress.

Though I don’t know where the dress ended up (another likely victim of the Bedbug Wars of the Early 2010s), this photo jogged my memory enough to think about what to Google to find the dress itself—I had a feeling I’d be able to locate one secondhand (and I did). Seeing it in this Poshmark listing, wrinkled and flaccid on a headless mannequin and washed out by the camera flash, felt like comparing a golden hour selfie to the way I look in the background of a candid group photo.

Guess what, guys… it wasn’t really about the dress. The dress just happened to become the mascot of a brief, highly specific cultural moment for a group of twenty-somethings, alert to possibility and hopeful that every outing or errand, no matter how banal, contained the potential for a story. Craigslist’s missed connections managed to capture the magic of a city that was (and still is!) at once anonymous and incredibly intimate. The dress was merely the vessel we assigned that magic to.

Before I share the things I bought with you… here are all the things I wanted to get:

First, an elegant sampling on the RealReal, some of which I didn’t get because it had already sold.

Etro evening jacket: Still available, still tempted, but I wouldn’t wear it until the weather changed again, and ivory isn’t the best color on me.

Deiji Studios pants: Why do I like apron pants/skants now?! These sold before I had the chance to think about experimenting!

Agnes B cardigan: Have had an ambient desire for one of these cardigans for years… this is a stand-in for the one I’d really want, though—it’s not my size and I think I’d want a fully solid color.

Maryam Nassir Zadeh blue leather boots: Okay, I really do want these, I just know they’re not that practical. They’re also still available…

Maryam Nassir Zadeh plaid blazer: 100% wool? A Bemberg lining? Unfortunately, it sold before it was discounted enough to merit purchasing. I now know I do want it (the post-RealReal sale clarity), so it’s on my waitlist if it comes back.

Some other things I wanted…

A printed cotton vintage dress: I met up with the lovely for coffee earlier this week and saw this dress in action IRL (it also garnered a compliment from our server). While I don’t usually love a minidress on myself, it was so compelling that I’ve felt a desire to search for a similar vintage silhouette.

Brown or black flip-flops: I really do like the ease of a flip-flop for summer, I just cannot bring myself to spend more than $25 bucks on a pair and haven’t seen any that I’ve been particularly drawn to. It would be nice to have a different silhouette from my default summer slip-on, the rubber Birkenstock Arizonas.

As for what I did buy in May… I actually ended up using one of those foreign shipping companies to get another pair of navy culottes from Boii Studios, the store in Copenhagen where I bought a warm weather outfit for the second part of my honeymoon. Since the weather has warmed up, I’ve been wearing them constantly. I sized up from the black pair for some ease and some more length. I also got another one of the button down shirt/handkerchief combos—feels like a combination I will turn to a lot over the summer. Photos to come when they arrive!

What I’m eyeing for next month… hopefully not much? I’m moving in a couple weeks (more on that later), which has been good motivation to subtract, rather than add, to my total amount of stuff.

I try to provide a secondhand option for every piece of clothing in these posts, whether it’s the exact item or an approximation. You can assume anything I link to is secondhand unless otherwise stated!

What I wore on my flight to Florida earlier this spring—this feels a little like cheating because I did also wear socks underneath these sandals on the plane, but these were the chunkiest shoes I brought and I didn’t want to put them in the suitcase. Wearing cotton Armani trench via Depop (similar in different shade of beige here), Agolde white jeans via the RealReal (exact ones here), Melissa sandals (exact ones here), Akris Punto cotton mesh polo shirt via the RealReal (similar here), and thrifted Nike baseball cap (exact one here).

Florida family time. Wearing Birkenstocks via Depop (exact ones here), J. Crew skirt (exact one here), Jungmaven hemp mesh jersey (struggling to find a good secondhand dupe for this!) Swatch via eBay (exact one here), and baseball cap again.

I got this entire outfit (minus the sandals) in Copenhagen when we changed our honeymoon itinerary at the last minute to spend a few days in a warmer locale, and I’m very glad I did! It’s a perfect hot weather outfit—no need for sunscreen because my entire body is covered, but also almost none of my body is actually being touched by fabric… perfect. Everything is from this brand Boii Studios: culottes (similar here), button-up (similar here), and matching kerchief.

Last day in Florida, spent it thrifting. Wearing Hollywood t-shirt via eBay (cannot find similar shirt… no other ones with this logo seem to exist on God’s green internet, apparently!), GAP pants (here in khaki), and repeats from earlier.

This is what I wore to therapy the morning I left for France: leather trench from Unearth Vintage (very similar here), button-up from Sibling Studios via the RealReal (similar here), thrifted lace t-shirt (same one in tan here), thrifted Burberry wool vest (similar here), Madewell beanie (exact one here, but definitely offer lower than asking price!), GAP drawstring pants (exact ones here), and Adidas weird ballerina sneakers (exact ones here).

Back from France and right back into work and errands! Wearing my new Comptoir des Cotonniers button-up (similar here), Dunst leather jacket via Rent the Runway (similar vibe here), Agolde jeans via Nuuly (exact ones here), Bass loafers via eBay (exact ones here), APC scarf via the RealReal (similar scarf here).

Wearing more of my new clothes from my France trip—vintage Levi’s jacket (exact one here) and Monoprix wool vest (similar one in grey here), also wearing Proenza Schouler button-up via the RealReal (similar here), Maryam Nassir Zadeh wool pants via the RealReal (similar here), and repeats from earlier.

Went to dinner at Fradei with a couple friends—hard recommend! Wearing old Proenza Schouler silk shirt via the RealReal (similar here), green silk blazer via eBay (similar here), Maryam Nassir Zadeh heels via the RealReal (similar here), and repeats from earlier.

was in town and planned a meet-up in the Lower East Side with a few other writers—it was lovely! Wearing Monoprix t-shirt (similar here), beaded necklace I found in my childhood bedroom (similar here), red leather Tod’s bag via eBay (same bag in different color here), and repeats from earlier.

Another therapy outfit! Wearing all repeats from earlier—very Ava from Hacks vibes again…

If you missed the previous installments of weekly outfit posts, you can find them here!

Now that I’ve devoted a full dispatch to analyzing what the French were wearing, it’s time for the inevitable companion piece: what I wore in France!

WHAT I WORE

WHAT I BOUGHT

I did my usual pre-trip Uniqlo panic buy after rechecking the forecast and seeing that the wedding location was going to be hotter than I’d expected, leading me to purchase a boxy dark denim short-sleeved shirt (that I ended up not wearing). I’d also just started watching the new season of Hacks and I think was subconsciously influenced by Ava’s cropped button-ups with t-shirts underneath, which made me get one of the cropped JW Anderson ones. And the burgundy nylon bag… no regrets there! Perfect travel purse. I also bought a few things for the wedding weekend specifically: this floral/paisley Tory Burch dress from the RealReal and the two pieces from Depop that I wrote about here.

And what I bought on the trip…

Explanations to come!

MONDAY & TUESDAY

My husband and I were supposed to spend a few days in Paris together before the wedding, but the job he had before the trip kept getting pushed, so I ended up going solo. For the flight, I dressed in pants that felt like a compromise between sweatpants and hard pants (cotton drawstring barrel leg pants from GAP), my trusty Miami Heat sweatshirt, the brown Salomons I bought in Copenhagen, a Dunst leather jacket I bought from Rent the Runway, and all the jewelry I wanted to bring with me.

I tried to ‘game the system’ and get a row to myself by compulsively switching seats on the Delta app until the last possible minute… and I MADE IT HAPPEN, so I was able to lie down even though I couldn’t sleep (just can’t do it on a plane!). My body also reacts violently to naps, so my approach to beating jet lag is to act like a shark—just keep swimming (walking). I took the RER to the metro to the apartment I was staying in (an incredibly generous offer from my husband’s friend whose childless aunt left him an apartment in Paris when she passed away…), showered and changed, and headed back out before I could succumb to the temptation of sitting down. I kept the jacket but changed into Agolde jeans (via the RealReal), Nike Blazers, a Los Angeles Apparel t-shirt, and the Uniqlo button-up I bought just before the trip.

I took the metro to the Marais and grabbed a coffee (while I am normally an iced coffee with skim milk gal, I transformed into a whole milk latte girlie while in France—still with four sugar packets, bien sur!) then popped in and out of vintage shops in the neighborhood. I also walked through Dover Street Market (fun layout but so expensive omg) and Comptoir des Cotonniers, where I discovered that the linen t-shirts I got from a Uniqlo x Comptoir collab a couple years ago are still for sale at the actual Comptoir des Cotonniers store.

I bought two things from the same vintage store, a pop-up called Ella Vintage that doesn’t formally exist according to Google Maps (but is located at 67 rue de Turenne, according to their Instagram). One was an Orange Tab Levi’s denim jacket, sort of a longline silhouette and a bit tailored at the waist—a completely new denim silhouette for me! The other was a suede/ponyhair bag. I think both were around 70 euros. I started to flag around 7pm and grabbed some yogurt and nuts at a nearby Monoprix, then headed back to the apartment. Just for the novelty of it, I stopped at another Monoprix closer to the apartment that was open late and offered the full experience (clothing section and all), and returned with some more groceries and two perfect cotton t-shirts. Is Target the US equivalent of Monoprix?

WEDNESDAY

Unisom and a full night of sleep! It was a bit chilly in the morning, so I was able to wear the thrifted brown Burberry wool vest I’d thrown in my suitcase at the last minute, along with my new Uniqlo bag, the leather jacket, a Deiji Studios button-up, another pair of Agolde jeans (via the RealReal again, of course), and my Adidas ballet sneaker hybrids. I grabbed a croissant and latte near the Louvre and read a magazine until the English language bookshops on Rue de Rivoli opened. From Smith & Son, I bought Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin, and from Librairie Galignani I bought Transcription by Ben Lerner (in paperback, no less!). I like to read books set in the city I’m visiting, so Scaffolding was a good choice.

I read in the Tuileries for a while, then descended into the mall next to the Louvre—I didn’t have the energy to wait in line for the museum, and it was such a lovely day outside, but I did have one mission while in Paris: buy my neighbor a tote bag with the Louvre on it.1 After some more vintage store pop-ins, I went back to the apartment to charge my phone and changed into my new Levi’s jacket, as well as an old silk Proenza Schouler top via the RealReal, wool Armani trousers, also via the RealReal, and Bass loafers from eBay. After my phone was sufficiently charged, I ventured back out and spent some time exploring the Left Bank (and popped back into a Comptoir des Cotonniers to buy a button-up I’d tried on the other day), then sat by the Seine and read some more.

THURSDAY

I wore my new jacket again, along with the Burberry vest, the third color of the same style of Agolde jeans I brought with me (from Nuuly, not the RealReal this time!), an Etro button-up from the RealReal, and my loafers. Got coffee and a croissant and met up with my in-laws for a tour of Notre Dame. This isn’t usually something I would be super interested in (sorry… I’m cultured in other ways!) but I actually really enjoyed it! We split up afterwards and I went to the Palais Galliera, a fashion museum, which was enjoyable but less extensive than I thought and also so hot inside.

Went back to the apartment for my phone charge/outfit change and put on something more suited for the warmer afternoon weather: same denim jacket, this time with my white cotton Los Angeles Apparel t-shirt (by then I’d done some laundry!), the black cotton poplin culottes I bought in Copenhagen, and my Salomons. I rejoined my in-laws and sister-in-law for a late lunch of crepes, then took a leisurely Baton Mouche ride down the Seine like a real tourist. Once it started to get dark, we headed back to where they were staying and had dinner at a nearby sidewalk cafe (sadly, my frites did not live up to my expectations, but my father-in-law’s boeuf bourguignon was excellent).

FRIDAY

Rejoined my sister-in-law and in-laws at the train station (where I had my first croissant of the day), then took the train to Bordeaux. I wore my GAP travel pants, my new grey Monoprix t-shirt, the leather jacket, and the Salomons. In Bordeaux, we rented a car to get us to the wedding venue, about an hour and a half away, and I had a second croissant from a coffee shop by the car rental place. On our drive, we stopped for lunch, where—you guessed it!—I had a ham and cheese croissant, then made it to the venue by early afternoon.

I walked around the grounds and hung out with many people I hadn’t seen since summer 2016—it’s funny to convey a decade’s worth of updates, en français, no less! Then I got dressed for the welcome dinner (oops, no photo, there was no mirror in our room or full length mirror in the house!) in an orange seventies-inspired Tory Burch dress made of silk with linen cuffs (from the RealReal, of course) that I’d panic-bought before the trip. I liked it, didn’t love it, but it covered the parts of my body that I wanted it to and was under $60. Might resell as soon as I’ve declared myself free of moderately dressy events for the time being. The welcome dinner included a crepe station, which meant by the end of the evening I was now half croissant/half crepe.

SATURDAY

There was a lovely little breakfast laid out when we awoke, but I simply could not eat another croissant so my sister-in-law and I went to Carrefour and stocked up on some yogurt, oatmeal, and fruit for the house.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon, I was receiving detailed updates from my husband on his travel progress (a hero’s journey from LAX —> Paris —> Bordeaux, then an Uber to the venue). My in-laws were making bets on whether or not he’d miss the ceremony—I had faith! He arrived about an hour before the ceremony, which was a sweet bilingual affair that took place behind the chateau. Hors d’oeuvres (including an insane baked scallop served in a seashell that I will be thinking about for months) were passed before the actual sit-down meal, which ended with a croquembouche.

At our table, we talked to my husband’s relatives about the words we find hardest to say in each other’s language—they have trouble saying the word ‘squirrel’ in English (which thankfully doesn’t come up much in casual conversation). Mine is the word for ‘surgery’ in French (chirurgie), also not something you usually need to know for casual conversation, but a real tongue twister for me. The combination of DJ and live saxophonist was amazing—I went to bed around 1:30, but the party was reportedly going strong for at least a couple hours after!

SUNDAY

The next morning, I got dressed in another Ava from Hacks-inspired outfit—my new Comptoir des Cotonniers shirt, the LA Apparel t-shirt, Agolde jeans, and Nike Blazers (Ava would be wearing cooler shoes than these). Had a leisurely brunch outside with the family and got to see my baby quilt in action (see photo above of child sleeping idyllically under tree). I made this quilt for the little one underneath it when she was a true baby, but was never able to send it to France—thankfully, she’ll be joined shortly by a little sister who will also be able to use it! After packing up, we drove back to Bordeaux for our train to Paris that evening. (My husband stayed behind to spend more time with family, but I had to get back for work/to relieve my parents of dogsitting duties!) My sister-in-law and I had a late dinner at a place near the train station when we got back to Paris (an incongruous combination of fresh juice and fish and chips for me).

MONDAY

Last day in France! Our flights home were in the afternoon, and knowing that most shops wouldn’t be open until late morning, we made a plan to maximize those final hours. I got dressed in my travel outfit (grey Monoprix t-shirt, leather jacket, Agolde jeans, Salomons, and Uniqlo x Lemaire puffer via Poshmark tied around my waist). We ate an early breakfast (croissant, latte, and a chia seed pudding for me) at Mamie Lucienne’s (perfect little coffee shop), then hit up Monoprix, where I couldn’t help myself and picked up an open-sided wool vest in the perfect shade of green and a brown poplin shirt. We visited a couple other gift shop shops, then headed to the airport. It was an uneventful flight and reentry (as opposed to the last time I re-entered the States), and I was overjoyed to be reunited with my dog. À bientôt, France!

My own taste in formalwear remains largely the same as it did the last time I wrote about wedding guest dressing, but this time I was working with a few additional constraints. One was that I stopped taking an acne medication (spironolactone, a miracle drug) late last year. The result has been (surprise!) the return of chest and back acne with a vengeance, which in turn has led me to favor clothing that covers my chest, back, and shoulders whenever possible. (There is probably an essay in me about how much my early to mid-twenties style was shaped by this same factor.) So for this wedding, I effectively ruled out anything sleeveless, backless, or low-cut—which left me with even fewer options than I’d usually consider.

I scoured the RealReal for possibilities, and felt deeply meh about everything I was seeing that was both in my price range and my preferred silhouette specifications. At a certain point, I thought, “Why don’t I just do an evening jacket and a skirt?” And with that, a whole new world of formalwear opened up. (FYI, if you’re looking for matching set inspo, recently wrote about matching silk sets as wedding outfits here, and wore an envy-inducing one from a British indie designer!)

Then the idea evolved further… instead of a matching set, what if I mixed and matched? Two separate pieces, both in bold colors. (Color inspiration immediately came to mind—Jessie Buckley’s Oscars look and this Rosie Assoulin dress that I’ve lusted after on the RealReal for years.)

I wanted a glamorous statement jacket—perhaps blazer-adjacent, if not a blazer. Structured silk, rather than slinky (I’d save the slinkiness for the skirt). I started with red, and quickly found a vintage silk evening jacket on Depop from the German label Trixi Schober, complete with a dramatic flounced collar.

Once I had the top, I started thinking about what color might work with it. Was I into the bubblegum pink that Jessie Buckley had paired with a similar shade of red? Ultimately, that felt too saccharine for my taste. Purple with red skewed too royal, orange was too intense, green—immediately disqualified on Christmas grounds, white—out for obvious reasons… eventually, I landed on powder blue.

For the skirt’s silhouette, I wanted something tighter, stretchier, and slinkier to contrast with the oversized flounciness of the collar. I only filtered for “blue,” because I knew the exact shade I wanted could be described a dozen different ways. After some searching, I found a beautiful pale blue silk skirt from Gérard Darel on Depop, topped with a sheer beaded overlay. Lined in silk, too!

But when the skirt arrived, it was way more nude than blue (see below). Pretty, but not what I was looking for. So I decided to dye it.

I stood in front of the clothing dye selection at Michael’s, browsing the Rit website, but was too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of color formulas to make a choice in that moment. I ended up buying four colors of dye and returning the two I didn’t use. (I kept royal blue and hyacinth.) Once I’d decided on the color, I used the Rit website and some YouTube guidance to calculate my dye to water ratio (I used a tiny bit less dye than recommended, figuring I could always make it darker if needed.) I also added a cup of vinegar—recommended for silk—and a teaspoon of dish detergent, which is supposed to help with even dyeing. Then I used cooking tongs to swirl it around for ten minutes. Look how much lighter the water is at the end after removing the skirt!

I was happy with the result in the end (see below for the before and after). Once the skirt dried, it ended up being a tiny bit lighter than it looks in the after photo.

I considered taking in the jacket at the sides; however, at this point I had no time to take it to the tailor, and didn’t want to mess it up by attempting it on my own. So I just kept it oversized, and figured I would be in motion or seated the majority of the time I was wearing it.

Here is the final fit! (The photo is a recreation because there was no mirror in the place we were staying.)

The best part is…now I can rewear both of these items separately! I’ll probably pair the jacket with the same red shoes and a pair of jeans for a less fancy night out, or with my new brown wool pants for something slightly fancier and more fall/winter-appropriate. I think the skirt would look chic with a crisp white button-up, in a Sharon Stone at the 1992 Oscars kind of way.

If you are interested in an outfit of silk separates for your next fancy occasion, I have many suggestions for you below. (All secondhand, of course.)

And if you’re looking to branch out (slightly!) with some pattern, I also love these pieces. (I’ve included this off-white jacket because it’s beautiful, but out of everything here, that may be the one piece that isn’t typical wedding-appropriate.)

Below are a few different ways I’d style some of the pieces. I used Maryam Nassir Zadeh shoes for all three outfits because that’s been the only brand of heels I’ve worn in the last few years and have deemed sufficiently comfortable.

Happy wedding guesting! May you remain free from the Reformation industrial complex!

But before I share the things I bought with you… here are all the things I wanted to get:

Baserange cotton poplin pants: I saw these in the Strategist or … love a track pant made out of poplin rather than sweaty nylon or polyester! If these show up on the RealReal, I’ll try them out.

MEALS Clothing chef pants: When I realized that I would not feel drawn to these at all if the drawstring weren’t a fun contrasting color, I moved them further down my list. Still cute.

Madewell linen track pants: It seems as though there is a natural fiber track pant renaissance! (Or just a naissance, because we haven’t had one before?) Finally. But they’re sold out of most colors/sizes right now, and I’d want to try these on before buying.

Vintage Ambiance black lace shirt: I have this in off-white (thrifted in Florida), and I’ve just figured out that I can style it for colder weather as an underlayer. They’re all over Poshmark, so they’re not in short supply.

As for what I did buy in April…some of it you’ve already seen (the Isabel Marant coat), and some you will see (what I bought pre-France trip and in France will be in an upcoming post!). So here are the three other things I bought last month:

It all started with a green blazer from Maryam Nassir Zadeh that I ultimately didn’t buy (it’s still available on the RealReal right now!) This isn’t a color I wear often, but something about it was calling my name. I ended up poking around the rest of the Maryam Nassir Zadeh offerings on the RealReal and finding two other items I liked, and once I put them all together in my head, I couldn’t let it go. The shoes I knew would fit—I have two similar pairs from MNZ, and both of them are comfortable enough to wear for an entire evening. The pants had no similar guarantee, but the last pair of wool trousers I bought final sale on the RealReal fit me perfectly (totally different brand, no correlation), and I had a feeling these would, too. The blazer was more than I wanted to spend, however, and I wasn’t certain it would give me the oversized look I was hoping for. I bought the brown pants and pink shoes, but now I needed an oversized green silk blazer (if you give a mouse a cookie vibes), which I eventually found in the form of a Saks brand one on eBay for forty dollars.

And look at everything together! Exactly what I was picturing. So rarely does that happen.

What I’m eyeing for next month… not much! No weddings, no events, and I’ve got a big move coming up (more on that later…) so I’m trying to shed, rather than accumulate. We’ll see if that holds.

Before this trip, I’d been to Paris only two other times: once at age nine (this was in 1999, and I tallied in my journal every single pair of black capri pants I saw on the trip) and once, for a couple days, at age twenty-six, at the tail end of a twenty-one day trip that included a road trip through Morocco, Spain, and the south of France with my now-husband. Both times were at the height of summer (hell) in a country that has historically been too chic for air conditioning. So to be able to spend a few days in Paris, as an adult, in gorgeous sunny spring weather… what a dream. I’m not going to be as bold as to say that this is a representative sample of Parisian street style (for that, and for many other reasons, you should absolutely subscribe to ’s newsletter), but it’s what stood out to me! Here’s what I took note of:

Funnelneck wool jackets: Most were shorter silhouettes—cropped jackets rather than coats—and several were in subtle prints, like tweed or houndstooth.

Adidas Sambas everywhere (and in pairs): I saw so many pairs of the ponyhair leopard print Adidas. I also noticed groups of people wearing Adidas together: a couple paused at a stoplight, both in black Sambas with different color stripes; two friends sitting at a sidewalk cafe, legs crossed in the same direction, wearing Adidas Sambas in different shades of brown.

Suits with sneakers: A chic update on the 1980s trope of the commuter businesswoman taking the subway in a skirt suit and Reeboks. Unlike that dated stereotype, I would bet that the women I saw were not slipping into heels once they got to the office. (Does this count as feminist progress?) There were navy suits, black suits, and grey suits, paired with sneakers as varied as classic New Balances to a sleek all-black Nike pair.

Leopard print: Including the aforementioned ponyhair Adidas, I noticed a lot of leopard print out and about, most notably on a sheer midi skirt and a fleece jacket.

Long black fringed suede duster: A woman walking by the Pont au Double, just across the river from the Notre Dame Cathedral, had on a stunning long black suede coat with fringe trim on the back. I barely noticed the rest of her outfit because I was so struck by how gorgeous the jacket was!

White peasant blouse: This woman, on her way to Café Kitsuné, was optimistic about the weather warming up (which it did). Amidst a sea of leather and wool, she wore only a simple white peasant top with puff sleeves and slightly baggy jeans.

Weird Adidas track pants jeans: A girl in the crowds outside the Notre Dame Cathedral was wearing these pants that I at first thought were a one of a kind DIY project. I have since been able to deduce that they are another limited edition Adidas item and only seem to be available on eBay right now. Unfortunately, I love them and think they are so cool.

This woman was walking up Rue Bonaparte in the sixth arrondissement wearing an outfit that felt part Tibi, part Tyrese Haliburton—structured navy leather purse, classic blue oxford button-up, shiny burgundy pleather miniskirt, burgundy loafers, and a burgundy sweater draped over her shoulders.

I ran into this woman not once, but twice in a day—the first time as she was walking down Rue de Rivoli by Smith & Sons. I noticed her brown paneled leather bomber jacket first—the perfect foil to a pair of pinstriped slim-cut flare trousers (and black heeled ankle boots and a Sezane floral canvas tote bag to round it out.)

This woman was seated on the M1 near the Palais Royal Musee de Louvre stop wearing perhaps the perfect spring outfit: a blue Courreges baseball cap, navy culottes, a classic khaki trench coat, and black leather Martiniano tie-front flats.

After spending a morning at Brooklyn Bridge Park with my sister-in-law and nieces, my husband sent us a link to Bananarama’s ‘Cruel Summer’ music video. He was fascinated by the shots of the pre-gentrification Brooklyn waterfront.1 There are many reasons why this video might appeal to me. It’s a whole song about how terrible summer actually is (my favorite opinion), especially summer in the city. There are vague ACAB undertones. The women have an inexplicable supply of bananas. (The fact that there are three band members also plays into my ideas about trio dressing.) But what made me watch it all the way through was the style.

These clothes are not your typical summer wardrobe. The women of Bananarama are as opposed to shorts as Tobias Funke is to being nude. They’re wearing sneakers (Weird Adidas, even!), brogues, loafers with socks. Overalls, trousers, long sleeves. An insouciant baseball cap, a bandana, messy bangs, and brick-red lipstick. All things I don’t typically associate with summer (except for the baseball cap), but it all works.

According to Sara Dallin of Bananarama, it really was as insouciant of an effort as it comes across. They had no stylists or make-up artists for the video shoot, and they bought the overalls (she calls them ‘dungarees’) themselves from an army surplus store.2

“It was August, over one hundred degrees. Our HQ was a tavern under the Brooklyn Bridge, which had a ladies’ room with a chipped mirror where we had to do our makeup.” - Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama in I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution

So if you want to take a cue from the ladies of Bananarama this summer… I have some suggestions:

Before Clic (which closed a couple years ago), before the Fort Greene outpost of Bird, there was a store called Stuart & Wright. You might have known it as the French Garment Cleaners, thanks to the vintage signage that still hangs above the now-vacant storefront at 85 Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene. I live in that neighborhood now, but I also spent a lot of time there in my early twenties, when I worked at Greenlight Bookstore from (before!) its opening in 2009 until mid-2013.

Observing the clientele at Greenlight shaped my style just as much as my fellow college students did, and I was always pleased to get a compliment on an outfit from people who had much more disposable income than I did. The stylish mother of an elementary schooler (who is now almost certainly in college) was the one who first told me about Saltwater Sandals as I helped her find the new Percy Jackson book in the children’s section. She sent me to Feliz, a short-lived boutique on Dekalb in Clinton Hill, where I bought a navy pair. Another customer regularly wore this Anthropologie x Pendleton collaboration poncho that I lusted after for years (and thankfully never bought, as I’d probably feel a little weird wearing it today).

I didn’t stop into Stuart & Wright often. Why would I have? I had no shortage of other places to shop. This was the heyday of American Apparel. There were more true thrift stores then: the Salvation Army on Bedford and North 7th, where I regularly found gems like floral leotards; another on Quincy Street, upstairs, where I once found a mint-condition Woolrich vest. And then there was the matter of money. I made $12 an hour at the bookstore, plus whatever else I pulled in from babysitting and odd jobs. (Ask me about the time I got a job teaching preschool from Craigslist in 2010…) Whenever I stepped into a boutique like Stuart & Wright, I felt as though there were a neon sign above my head displaying the meager balance of my bank account. The extent to which I felt like I didn’t belong was that I never even let myself take anything into the dressing room. I was too embarrassed by the thought of creating extra work for the salesperson when I inevitably handed everything back.

But I know I went to Stuart & Wright at least once, because it was there that I first saw the jacket. Isabel Marant Étoile: quilted cotton, shades of army green, substantial yet light. (To pinpoint exactly what era this was, the jacket was belted, with a shawl collar.) And trying on a jacket felt different. There was no need for the ceremony and fuss of a dressing room. I could just stand in front of the mirror and slip it on over my clothes.

I knew the price was out of reach. In my memory it was around seven hundred dollars, though an old La Garçonne listing puts it at $1,000—perhaps it had been marked down. Either way, it was so clearly out of the question that I didn’t even consider buying it. (To be clear, still wouldn’t be able to buy a $700 jacket! Some things never change…) Still, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I went back at least once to try it on again. Eventually, like most desires, it faded enough for me to go about my life.

Until—probably on Refinery29 during my regular website rotation1 at my publishing job—I saw Rihanna wearing it. And she didn’t just wear it once; she wore it again and again, taunting me! I found it online at La Garçonne, but the price was still out of reach, and it wasn’t something I thought about tracking down secondhand at the time.

A few years ago I started looking for it in earnest, but it never seemed to pop up on any secondhand sites. I’d even deleted my Isabel Marant coats and jackets alert on the RealReal until I saw a photo of Rihanna last week and started thinking about it again. (Yes, even just the sight of Rihanna makes me think of this jacket.) This time, my search turned up a couple of options: one on Poshmark and another on The RealReal. The RealReal one was too small (and missing the belt), but it’s still available (charmingly mislabeled as ‘faux fur’). The Poshmark one, though, I snapped up.

It hasn’t arrived yet, so I can’t give a final report. But I imagine there will be something both comforting and triumphant about finally owning it. Like a few other pieces from that era that still sit in my closet—my first pair of Nike Blazers, a heather gray short-sleeve hoodie from COS—it’s something I still genuinely like each time I look at it. I hope that in another thirteen years, I’ll still be happily wearing it.

I try to provide a secondhand option for every piece of clothing in these posts, whether it’s the exact item or an approximation. You can assume anything I link to is secondhand unless otherwise stated!

Regular workday! Wearing my Tibi jacket via Rent the Runway (exact one here), Piazza Sempione red sweater vest via the RealReal (similar here), white Uniqlo men’s t-shirt, GAP pants (very similar here), black Salomon sneakers (exact ones here), locket from my childhood on Catbird chain, and red Madewell beanie (similar here).

Wore this to meet up with my friend Haley at Kellogg’s Diner and then to see Cat Power at Brooklyn Steel. Wearing cardigan from sweater swap (similar here), American Apparel white t-shirt, J. Crew skirt via Unearth Vintage (exact one here in an 8), Bass loafers via eBay (exact ones here), Lemaire x Uniqlo quilted liner via Poshmark (similar here), and leopard print vintage coat via Poshmark (almost exact one here).

Wandered across the street to my neighbor’s kid’s birthday party and enjoyed one of those watered down apple juice boxes (truly, I love them!) and some pizza in between weekend errands. Wearing a Garnet Hill sweater vest via eBay (exact one here in blue), wool bomber jacket via eBay (vaguely similar vibe here), Agolde jeans (same ones here), and the beanie and locket again.

Wore this to therapy. I love this brown leather with the blue of the baseball cap—need to remember to wear this coat more in the brief in-between days before it gets too warm! Wearing thrifted Aldo coat (same one in different color here), thrifted Nike baseball cap (exact one here), Loeffler Randall cowboy boots (exact ones in brown here or ankle height ones in black here), and repeats.

Wore this to dinner with a former roommate who now lives in LA (one of my very best Craigslist finds 😊). Wearing a red Madewell t-shirt (very similar one here), Adidas Taekwondo Mei shoes (exact ones here), Agolde jeans via the RealReal (same ones here), baseball cap again.

I wanted to include this outfit, even though it’s essentially the same as day three (save for the scarf) because it’s good to repeat outfits! The only addition from day three was this APC scarf (via the RealReal, similar here), which I briefly lost in my apartment and found only after having roped in Bar Method and Solidcore staff to check their respective studios and sweet to check her apartment. This was the epitome of a perfect weekend day. I went to my morning workout class, then for a walk in the park with my friend Rumaan (who has his own newsletter!). On my way home, another neighbor invited me over for their St. Patrick’s Day party (hence the beers under my arm in this photo), so I stopped by for a bit, then went home to take out the dog before walking to Park Slope to see my friend Kara’s work in a quilt show put on by one of our fellow guild members. (It’s up through April 26th!) Ended the night at my favorite frozen yogurt place, conveniently located right across the street. (Culture, and I got peanut butter cup flavor with chocolate syrup.) FYI if you need a comfortable shoe rec, I hit 8 miles by the end of the day in these trusty Bass loafers. (There is a break-in period, but you can circumvent that if you buy them used…)

Was initially wearing this with a leather jacket but as soon as I got home from my quilt guild meeting I realized it was warm enough to change into my new (to me) trench coat for a walk with husband and dog! Wore my vintage Armani trench via Depop (similar in different shade of beige here), Agolde jeans via the RealReal (exact ones here), Nike Blazers (exact ones here), thrifted red wool Jones New York jacket (almost the exact same here), and repeats.

Wore this to therapy, then later—sans coat, scarf, and hat—to host my neighborhood book club! (We read Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt, one of the three options I submitted for voting. I read it a couple years ago and was happy to re-read and chat about it.) Wearing black Madewell t-shirt (similar, but not same t-shirt here), Armani unlined wool trousers via the RealReal (similar here), leather trench from Unearth Vintage (very similar here), red Rag & Bone scarf via the RealReal (similar here), and repeats.

Wore this outfit with jeans during the day, then changed into the skirt and tights to meet up with Lily at Alligator Lounge for drinks and pizza.1 Tried to figure out how they can still afford to offer free pizza at this point… perhaps the best deal in the city for dinner right now! Wearing Dunst jacket via Rent the Runway (exact one here), navy Madewell beanie (exact one here), and thrifted Perry Ellis sweater (same one in navy here).

If you missed the previous installments of weekly outfit posts, you can find them here!

Before I share the things I bought with you… here are all the things I wanted to get:

Adidas lace skirt: Saw this on a really cool girl at ’s impeccably decorated apartment when she and hosted a sweater swap! (You’ll see the item I walked away with in my next ‘what I wore’ post.)

Sloppy Seconds James shirt (button-up with tie sewn on it): and linked to this brand in a recent and I would have bought it immediately if it hadn’t been a couple hundred dollars. (It’s now sold out/doesn’t seem to be on their website anymore.) Had the sometimes worthwhile/sometimes toxic “I could do this myself” thought… stay tuned.

Crinkly COS bag: Stopped into COS before a doctor’s appointment around the corner. Very satisfying texture, love a faux-brown paper bag look, but I don’t know if I would actually use this in place of a canvas tote.

Bloomers from My Mum Made It: Still stuck on the idea of bloomers, even though I know I’d never wear them.

Uniqlo cotton barrel pants: Yes, like everyone else, I read about these on the Strategist. Though I (still) don’t need any more pants in this silhouette, I loved the idea of a brown cotton canvas pant, and I caved and went to Uniqlo to try them on. They just didn’t look great on me! (Thank goodness.)

Adidas: Have to say… Adidas is really killing it in the Weird Shoes department ( knows what I’m talking about!). I was able to talk myself out of these by remembering how dirty white shoes get and I think the fastening is Velcro, which I cannot abide by. (Velcro is unfortunately equivalent to nails on a chalkboard to me.)

As for what I did buy…

Vintage Armani trench coat via Depop: I’ve been talking about wanting a trench coat for years but I am so picky (my requirements: belted, single-breasted, cotton and unlined, and a very specific shade of khaki, not beige) and after literal years of browsing I figured this would need to be an in-person acquisition. However, once wrote about finding her own Armani trench, I used that brand as a jumping-off point, and soon Depop delivered this trench to me in my ‘Suggested for you’ section.

Pocari Sweat baseball cap via Depop: This was a gift for my husband—I love finding him strange baseball caps (other hits include one from The Villages, whose logo font is unexpectedly so good, and a Raytheon-branded one from eBay).

Madewell t-shirt (partially with gift card): Madewell sent out a $25 birthday month code, and the minimum spend was $26, so I decided it was worth using. I waited for a sale, and combined with the free shipping from the, paid maybe ten bucks total for a shirt I knew would fit and I would wear. Not bad!

Jessi Lee tan suede jacket: Took a last-minute long weekend trip back to Florida and thrifted this while I was there.

Ralph Lauren silk tie via eBay: Remember that shirt I wanted (yep, the one from about three scrolls up)? I decided to try making a version on my own. (Still haven’t tried yet… please encourage me to actually give this a shot!)

Anne Fontaine shirt via eBay (with a gift card): I tried on this exact same shirt in Berlin at the vintage store where I got two other shirts, and wanted this one too but the shoulders felt juuuust a tiny bit too constricting. I told myself if I found it in the next size up I’d get it. Lo and behold, my Anne Fontaine saved search turned it up, in the size up, about five months later, for about half of what I would have paid in Berlin! Unfortunately, something still feels off about the fit now… I fear that it’s what would consider something that fits too well (in the boring space). I’ll start with layering it under sweaters and see how I feel.

What I’m eyeing for next month… not much! Just took a big pile to Beacon’s closet and the free store in my neighborhood. Feels good to make some room.

There had been snow on the ground for weeks, and it would remain there for weeks to come, but the higher temperature that day was a brief respite1 from what felt like a permanent deep freeze. Most people had defaulted to their puffer jackets out of habit, but not this woman. She was coatless, but appeared perfectly warm in an oversized navy sweater with two pale yellow stripes on the upper arm. Layered underneath that was a longer shirt in true fuchsia. The bottom half of her outfit was more tame—plain slacks in a deep burgundy brown (merlot, perhaps) and black leather boots with an almond-shaped toe. Up top, though, she’d doubled down on color, with a dusky turquoise leather backpack and a chunky teal beanie.

It sounds baffling. Chaotic, in a bad way. Crazy, even. But I’ve been thinking about her for over a month now! Forget the Tibi color wheel—this woman was color mixing in the fourth dimension. The sorcery she used to pull off this improbably successful combination would have classified her as a witch in another place and time. But it worked. And it’s been inspiring me to branch out from my usual primary color combos. (Maybe I’ll get back into teal and fuchsia? Or return to jewel tones?! Life is long and full of surprises!)

Knowing your colors (not your ‘season’, just the colors you love) makes getting dressed easier, and it certainly helps with packing. But sometimes it’s fun to break out of your self-imposed mold and see how far you can take it.

Some secondhand options for each element below:

For my own re-creation, I started with pants in a similar color as hers and a sweater with a similar vibe as the one she was wearing. I didn’t have any turquoise garments, but I did have turquoise socks, so I put those on (which I love with the burgundy loafers!) then tried on two beanies in different shades of green/greenish yellow. I added a blue scarf next, to see if I could get away with it, decided yes, then concluded that I preferred the yellowy green beanie to the darker one. The turquoise sock felt a bit harsh, so I swapped it for a periwinkle. Not perfect, but it captured the essence, and all of that experimenting took less than ten minutes! I would never have paired this sweater and those pants together, but I’m definitely going to in the future.

If you missed the previous installments of copy+paste, you can find them here!

The brand was Save the Queen!—a label I’d heard of before but couldn’t have told you much about, beyond my (incorrect) assumption that it was British.1 In fact, Save the Queen! was founded in Italy in 1985 by husband-and-wife duo Marco and Elena Fantini and is still going strong today. The brand has remained independent, and operates a little outside the traditional fashion system—neither fast fashion nor luxury—with small production runs and a commitment to keeping everything made in Italy. There’s a maximalist, slightly chaotic sensibility to the clothes (layered prints, trompe l’oeil details, baroque color combinations) that feels very late-90s/early-00s, but not stuck there.

At its best, Save the Queen! reminds me of brands like Cop Copine, Vivienne Tam, and Jean Paul Gaultier Soleil without the insane price tag. There’s even a hint of Custo Barcelona in there (RIP to the Custo Barcelona minidress I purchased at the NYC flagship in 2006 and unceremoniously consigned at a Plato’s Closet somewhere in Florida several years later…)

While I appreciate the East Asian motifs2 and designs incorporated into some of Vivienne Tam’s clothing, I feel like it edges into appropriation territory for me to wear them (Bridget Jones doing karaoke in a qipao vibes…not everything has to be for me!). Save the Queen!—and, to some extent, Custo Barcelona—scratch a similar itch: exuberant, print-heavy, a little theatrical without veering into costume.

Here are some Save the Queen! items I could absolutely see working in someone’s wardrobe today.

Here’s how I would style a few of these pieces (everything linked is also secondhand):

This first outfit is an ode to 1990s babysitters everywhere. May they continue to be the creative generous badasses they have always been!3 I ended up putting two different pairs of shoes in here because I couldn’t decide between them. Either way, I could see this outfit on Dawn Schafer of Babysitters Club fame (she’d go for flip flops, obviously) or fellow BSC alum Claudia Kishi (she’d wear the cowboy boots).

Below is an outfit I would wear as soon as the temperature hits 75. A Carnival Cruises baseball cap to remind me that there are worse places one could be, baggy cargos to maximize sun coverage without adding extra heat, and sneakers to conceal feet desperately in need of a pedicure.

And a more glamorous outfit to round things out! The coat makes the outfit here, so I’d wear to a gallery opening-adjacent type of event where I could leave it on the whole time, rather than something like a house party.