Weakness

I was worried that working on Dressopotamia would encourage me in my most expensive vice (if you have to ask what that would be, may I gently but firmly direct you to the titre, the photographies and the raison d'être of the blog you are currently resting your eyeballs upon).

That hasn't really happened. Though I am a voracious consumer of vintage duds, I am also a particular one. The two tendencies are linked.

Your regular enthusiastic shopper, your fast-fashion plate, has an endless supply of possibilities, stretching to the horizon and back. Clothing loses its importance, because the minute you're dissatisfied with something, you can throw it away (when my copy of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion comes in the mail, I'll have the exact figures for you, but I think it is 68 pounds of clothing per American per year).

So that's why I'm picky. Spending money on something that's almost right, or that I know won't last, kind of depresses me, because I don't like wasting money, I don't like having useless stuff and I don't like contributing to the depressing state of our planet. I mean, I do all of those things, but I don't like doing them.

And yet, I am voracious when it comes to vintage. Unless it's ridiculously expensive, like the pink and green polyester collared dress (that I am stalking) in the window of the antique shop across the street, I will usually just go for it. Like fossil fuels, and unlike H&M trash, Sixties and Seventies dresses are a non-renewable resource. There are a finite number of dresses from that 20-year period in the world, and not all of them fit me.

One big difference between old dresses and fossil fuels is that if I buy a dress, its chances of being preserved for future generations probably go up.

And you don't get a second chance! I mean, sometimes you do. When I was at college, the laundry room had a "free" bow, and I found this dark blue vinyl faux-leather jacket with yarn embroidery. Cute enough to take home and then realize it didn't really fit my style, cute enough to donate to the Salvation Army. (This was before I knew the Salvation Army was horrible.) A few weeks later I saw it on the racks at a local vintage shop called... Museum 69? for $54. So I had a second chance at that jacket, but I didn't really want one, especially not for infinity times what I had paid the first time around.

Speaking realistically, you don't get a second chance. Which is why I have a death grip on most of my dresses, and why I hardly ever pass up that first chance.

This all applies to Weakness specifically, as it is the only dress I've bought since starting Dressopotamia. I didn't even go for it originally, I was just browsing at Another Man's Treasure, and the owner, Meika, was like, "This is so you," and of course it fit perfectly and I had to buy it because I'll never get a second chance! And it was on sale. So naturally.

It may be the first dress in history that I am going to try to make longer instead of shorter.

I'm getting old.

I think Weakness was homemade, as there is no label and some of the construction seems a little homespun, like the thread loop for the adorable fabric-covered button at back (fabric-covered button: evidence for store-boughtness).

After some research, I've found the technical term for the exaggerated collar.

It's a Barrymore collar, named for the acting patriarch. Don't say you never learned anything from me!

The fabric itself is cotton, or at least not polyester, but the print...

This print is like a thought experiment: what if all the candy in Willy Wonka's factory came in river form? (The pink current tastes like real snozzberries!)

I used to live by the Gowanus Canal. It kind of looked like this.

(It's funny because I didn't like the neighborhood — it's no Jersey City — and I can't believe the massive sums of money people pay to live there. The joke's on you, suckers!)

How would you sum up your vintage shopping strategy?

Mine is: Buy 'em all and let Dog sort 'em out.


All photos by Claire Loeb!