POV: 5 ahas. 5 steps. Please attend everything this fall in the same dress.

By reader request.

OK, so in many ways I know I’m predictable. But you know, not always! Like the fact that I got married in a $69 dress.

Because I absolutely hate event dressing. Like not “hate” in that I don’t look forward to it. It’s something stronger: I am opposed to it!

That’s why it’s taken me FOREVER to respond to this reader request (I’m usually good about them!) to talk about event dressing.

What’s my issue?

I’ve given it some thought. There’s a particular place in me that is very much against things that go unused and/or things you spend money on that aren’t joyful.

Let me give you some examples:

1. I like taking the Chinatown bus to New York. Who cares how you get there? It’s just better. Cheap, no planning, and I arrive in the part of New York where I want to be.

2. In addition to getting married and the $69 dress, I got married at a clam shack where you ordered what you wanted to eat. The idea of piles of uneaten food is scary to me.

3. I finally relented and got an apartment in Boston, but it is a studio. I can’t stand the idea of an apartment that’s empty most of the time.

4. I order the dressing on the side in case I don’t finish the salad so I can still wrap it up and take it home or give it to an unsheltered person. (This isn’t about kindness, it’s about salad, sitting there.)

5. The way I rent a car on Turo or purchase any appliance is by getting the cheapest one available that has a name I’ve ever heard of.

All of these apply the same calculus that I apply to event dressing. Unless you are a person who loves events or has to attend them frequently for some reason beyond your control, events, realistically are a small part of your life. You won’t remember the actual elements of what you wear to them. You’ll remember how you felt. And that’s what photos will capture too. The rest is a waste of money. Like dressed and left salad.

Consider this:

1. Events are just part of our lives that we make in inordinately big. There’s definitely a relationship here with Allison Bornstein’s “love to buy hate to wear” analysis and all the content around dressing for your real life like Hannah Louise Preston and here from Anna of

   The Wardrobe Edit
   .

2. Because of what the event represents, because of social pressure, or because we don’t go out as much because of age, work, post pandemic lifestyle, etc. there’s this built up pressure.

3. A uniform solves so many problems. A shortcut to feeling like ourselves. Guaranteed. But because events aren’t a regular use case, we rarely have an “event uniform.”

4. Events only last a couple hours. Yet they are ripe for feeling physically, and emotionally uncomfortable and wasting money.

5. We’re vulnerable around events, because of all of them above. We add to the vulnerability by avoidance, waiting until the last minute. Then we rush to buy something that will solve some imaginary problem and we don’t like ourselves, and then we’re left with residual guilt and something we don’t want to wear again.

So whenever someone asks me for event advice, I don’t know where to start. If I could sum up everything in one line that one line would be: use what you already have.

If I could sum up everything in one line? Use what you already have.

But I realize it’s not as simple as that. We’re all finding our way. (Including me!) Finding out who we are, style wise and as we grow up. determining and honing our uniforms.

As I do when I feel confused and overwhelmed, I made us a how-to, in bullet form. (A great time to become a paying subscriber. In addition to the how-tos, I have mood boards and links for each.)