Verdant

I still remember this shirt my sister bought my dad for Xmas one year. It was the late eighties take on color blocking: I think the left half of the shirt was purple, the right half was green and the pocket was red, or something like that. He liked it so much that he saved it for special occasions, like Thanksgiving. In the photos of about five consecutive Thanksgivings, you can see him wearing this shirt, as it goes from fresh and spiffy to somewhat shabby.

Verdant is my color-blocked shirt. Except I think it still looks pretty spiffy.

I bought it at Slow, the same day I bought Adventure Garden, for about $12, back in... 1999? And when I look back at my photo albums from college and just after, it's like I made a special plan to wear Verdant any time I had the slightest chance of being photographed.

Going out to nightclubs (Verdant looks surprisingly cool under black light, P.S.), dinner in with friends, touring Roman ruins in Provence, getting drunk in the dorms, dressing up as a space alien for Halloween... who would have thought that a green leaf-printed polyester dress could be so astoundingly versatile?

Lately I've realized that I have two basic fantasies about the kind of person I want to be.

In the first fantasy, everything about me is stylish and polished. The furniture in my house all matches, every room has a chandelier, the towels are perfectly fluffy (and they all match), my clothes are tailored, my face is expertly yet tastefully made up, everything is new and gleaming and gorgeous. I am always freshly mani'ed and pedi'ed. I have all the gadgets except for an e-reader, for which I've placed a special order with Apple — when they decide to start making them, they'll give me a call.

In the second fantasy, I am more virtuous. In fact, I am supremely virtuous. Everything I own, I bought secondhand and lovingly refurbished into something straight out of ReadyMade, using paint made from beets. I enjoy using towels until they are scratchy and shredded, at which point I make them into beds for homeless cats. My home decor consists entirely of objets that I have salvaged from the garbahzh. My toenails have cast off the polished shackles of oppression. My carbon footprint is a negative number.

Both of these fantasies are actually kind of exhausting. I like buying some things! (Like these earrings, aren't they cute?

I got them at the Bust Craftacular last winter. They really go with anything.)

But the idea of buying everything brand new all the time is equally exhausting. How will you know when you find the perfect chandelier? What if you install it and then you find a better one? At what point do your towels cease to be perfectly fluffy and thus totally unacceptable?

Buying vintage clothing (and secondhand books) is one way I navigate between those two fantasies in a way that makes sense to me. I can look polished (okay, relatively polished) and feel well-read without constantly fretting about what my purchases are doing to the planet. I still fret.

But a little less.

Not that much less.

All photos by Claire Loeb!