When I was young, I was completely fascinated with Russian nesting dolls, which I’ve recently learned are called Matryoshka (matrëška) dolls. Say that five times fast. There was something so ordered and logical about that perfect series of hand-painted wooden dolls of decreasing size, placed one inside the other, like a tight knit family where everyone knows their place. I would carefully place each in the correct order, only to take them all out and start again.
I’ve come to realize that I probably wouldn’t fashionably survive in a place like New York City. Not that I am not fashionable, because I definitely rock my style to her fullest potential, but because I am fundamentally opposed to wearing all black clothing. And the New Yorkers are alllll about the all black ensemble. I’ve tried before…and I literally can’t do it. My fingers start twitching and I have to add a pop color somewhere to avoid my own madness.
I was skipping across campus the other day, my head in the clouds, when a lovely woman stopped me to admire this 1950’s border print dress. She told me how much she loved the 1950’s style and would kill to wear a dress like that. When I asked if she knew of or would like advice on some great vintage shops in the city, she immediately said, “Oh no,” shaking her head with a self-depricating shrug, “I can’t pull that off.”