why am I buying cocktail dresses in the middle of a pandemic and I don't even drink cocktails?

Around two and a half years ago, I stopped self-medicating and numbing myself with food.

This brought about a balance and clarity I had never before experienced.

I noticed however, that when I stopped using food as a substitute for pleasure and love, I started doing something else.

Every now and then, I went on a shopping spree.

Pre-pandemic, this meant stopping into a favorite thrift store, or craft supply store, or housewares store, and filling up a basket with random things.

Post-pandemic, it happened online with a new coffee to try or a sweatshirt or a pack of reading glasses.

A few times, packages arrived at my house and I honestly couldn’t remember what I’d ordered.

One time, I opened a little box and it was ball point pens.

I observed this in myself and knew that I was doing a thing.

I was giving myself a little shot of dopamine.

The thing about abusing food, either through excessive restriction or excessive indulgence, is - it’s harmful.

Before, I lived with pain in my body and a sort of disconnect; changing my relationship to food was a change I needed in order to be well. (Or well-ish. Let’s just call me well-ish.)

Did I also need to stop pleasure shopping?

Was popping a little something into my Amazon cart actually harmful?

I wasn’t sure and I’m still not sure.

So, I dialed it back.

When I felt myself getting super excited about a purchase, believing that I needed something like a new coffee mug in order to make my life complete, I consciously pulled myself away.

I told myself to take a breath, hold off, and most of the time, the feeling would pass and I would ground back down into the clarity that I didn’t really need that thing.

Another graphic t-shirt wasn’t going to save my life anymore than a piece of double chocolate cake.

Around the same time that I shifted my relationship with food, I became concerned about fast fashion.

As someone who was always looking for the best deal - or the most stuff for the least amount of money - I frequently shopped for clothes at discount stores.

But as I became aware of where these clothes come from, who produces them, and the impact fast fashion has on the environment, I felt increasingly uneasy about acquiring things this way.

I started shopping thrift online, because at least I was buying things that were already produced (I wasn’t helping to create a demand for them) and saving them from a landfill.

I almost exclusively buy thrift now. The only new stuff I buy at this point is basically underwear because thrifted underwear is a bridge too far - except thrifted lingerie isn’t, I guess - but that’s a story for another time.

I don’t know exactly why or how it happened, but right around the new year, I was overcome with the desire to shift back to a way of dressing I had long since given up - vintage.

It was a natural progression, I suppose, from thrift shopping.

The first thing I bought was a 1940’s party dress.

I found 40’s heels to go with it, too.

Dead stock. Barely worn.

The thrill of it.

I was so delighted by this purchase and I love this dress so much, that looking for vintage deals online quickly became a part of my daily routine.

I am aware that most of the women who dress vintage are decades younger than I am.

My official position on that is - I don’t care.

When I slide into a 1960s curve hugging red knit dress, I feel a long lost part of myself come alive, and I like the way that feels.

(Maybe it’s not even a long lost part of myself. Maybe it’s a part of myself who is never before seen the light of day.)

But I’m also all too aware of Covid.

While I’m heartened to see people I know getting the vaccine, my access to it still feels distant, and with the new variants…well, I don’t feel super hopeful about ever going out to eat or on vacation or doing anything without a mask…ever again.

I know that sounds bleak.

I’m just saying that’s how things are. I’m just saying, that’s how things feel right now.

I leave my house to go for walks (this, honestly, is rare,) go to the grocery store parking lot where groceries are put into my trunk, occasionally pick my niece up from school where I also don’t get out of the car…you get the point.

I have work-related Zoom calls and a class on Zoom every week, but it would be pretty weird if I dressed up for those.

I mean, I might start doing it, but it would be weird.

I long ago realized, I am going to always be overdressed for everything.

I like to dress.

I like clothes.

I like earrings and red lipstick and leopard print and a big rhinestone brooch.

But right now, there isn’t anything to be overdressed for.

I have no immediate need beyond stretchy pants and pajamas.

So why am I buying dresses?

Ya’ll…I bought a pair of 1950’s silver metallic heels.

Yes, they are sexy shoes, but I don’t wear heels.

What am I doing?

What am I preparing for?

Have I imagined myself wearing my 1960’s Forbidden Fruit dress for dinner at the Madonna Inn?

Why, yes. Yes I have.

Is dinner at the Madonna Inn just a fever dream fantasy?

Probably.

“Maybe,” Tracy said to me the other day, “You need to start working on building a time machine.”

Maybe.

If you started reading this post thinking that I was going to over you some sage wisdom or advice, I’m sorry to inform you that I have none.

I’ve come to no conclusions here.

I’m just talking out loud.

But have you ever noticed that in SciFi movies about the future, future people always wear some sort of uniform?

Granted, these uniforms are usually pretty cool since most of these movies were made in the 50s-70s, but still.

If you wanted to create a hell especially for me, you would make it so everyone wears the same thing.

Why, future people? Why the uniform?

Because clothing is utilitarian? Because style doesn’t matter?

Ugh.

Maybe I went a little crazy because yoga pants and sweatshirts were starting to feel like a uniform.

Or maybe it’s just…that dopamine.

But recently, something else started to happen with the vintage.

I saw a dress and thought - that’s exactly something one of my paintings would wear.

So I bought it, along with a headpiece, and a turban (because the women I paint often wear turbans or some sort of head veil.

I took some pictures and I plan to paint from them - and I’m thinking about environments and video - performance art.

The dress opened up a pathway of my creativity.

The narrator in my head says, one year into the pandemic, things got weird, but you know what? It’s not so weird.

It’s me.

There’s something here with these clothes and this photos and the work to come that is healing a deep fissure within me, that is calling back long lost parts of me, that is lighting me up.

This is a completely unexpected development.

It seems there was a reason I was attracted to buying vintage clothing after all.

I’m making art.

And beginning to explore art-making in this way is fun. It’s pleasurable.

Of course, it’s also true that shopping for vintage is deeply pleasurable.

The whole process - from finding the seller with the curatorial eye that catches mine, reading the measurements of the piece to see if they match my measurements, to receiving the package and unwrapping the tissue paper, often to find a handwritten to or gifted pair of earrings, to putting it on and doing my hair and feeling myself utterly transformed, to imagining the story of the women who wore this piece before me…

It’s pleasurable.

I enjoy it.

Vintage makes me feel beautiful and sexual and feminine and alive.

Is it a distraction from the harsh and difficult reality of this moment?

Yes.

Is that a bad thing?

I don’t think so.

Let’s imagine that we are going to be able to emerge from our homes some day.

This time away from one another is the perfect time for re-invention.

When you see me and I look completely different, maybe you won’t quite remember what I looked like before.

Kathleen McGowan posted this recently:

OK, for people my generation who remember playing records on turntables: Remember how you could speed up your records my moving the lever to 45 or 78 and it would spin really fast? That’s how life feels right now. Everything feels like it is speeding up. I feel like we are hurtling into the new world. Yes, there are things we have to clean up, of course, but on the other side of Covid is something really golden and beautiful, and I cannot wait to be there.

Oh, I thought, yes - everything does feel sped up.

What if there is something golden and beautiful on the other side of Covid?

I want to be there, too, and when I arrive, I’m going to be dressed for it.