Twenty-Seven

It was eight o'clock at night and the light was changing rapidly. It had just rained, and the world outside was blue and grey. These factors add up to a variety of photo issues like light induced blur, grainy noise, and color cast hues, but we are gonna roll with it, okay? mmkay, great.

I wrote this little mini essay/prose thing earlier last week to include in a video, but I then never filmed it. So I'll include it here:


I decided to make a new white dress this summer. I really have enjoyed the eyelet dress I made last year and wanted to add another crisp white dress to add to my wardrobe. What began as a vague idea for a project evolved and took on an extra meaning while I worked on the dress over the course of a few weeks.

Because most twenty-seven year old women have found, or will soon find, themselves buying a particular sort of white dress. Yet I have not, nor ever likely will, find myself shopping for a wedding dress.

Which is so incredibly fine with me, good even, preferable, but also still somehow a bit unexpected. Because that's what people do in their twenties right, they get married. I don't want to get married-- indeed as I said recently, I've never even been in a relationship-- so the concept is entirely foreign to me. Society taught me a wedding was what I was supposed to desire. Even growing up in the nineties and early naughts, the idea that girls dream of their wedding day, and playing the part of the princess for a day was still hanging in the ether, and I breathed it in like everybody else. The world seems to insist on dress shopping as an ordeal, cake tasting days out, and tacky bachelorette parties. While I have never felt particularly drawn to these things, it does still feel a bit strange to be skipping them entirely.

I watched the recent royal wedding and found it dreamy and romantic, like watching a live action fairy tale. And I thought to myself--

"Huh, I'm never going to do anything even remotely like this."

Not in a sad way, just in a "huh, yeah, nope," sort of way.

This happened to me in high school too when people had "perfect" dates to prom. With the flowers and the cheesy photos. Milestones of normalcy. Society tells us about the train tracks laid down for us each to follow. I live off on my winding footpath with the tracks over there a ways, off in the distance. It's nice over here on my footpath, there are butterflies, and wildflowers, and you can stop anywhere you like for as long as you like. It's only occasionally, when someone mentions a particular station they're passing through, or regrettably delayed from, that I remember those tracks over there are what I was "supposed" to have been following.

I'm on my own over here instead, and it's pretty great, I haven't gotten lost yet.

So I decided to keep making my fine new white dress, with a high boat neckline now-- because it suddenly seemed very chic.

And I'll wear it for my twenty-seventh birthday. With black accessories and a new straw hat I think.
And I can buy my own cake if I want to.

Not better, not worse, just mine.

Dress: Made by me
Belt, Gloves, Clutch, & Jewelry: Vintage
Shoes: Remix
Fishnets: Amazon
Hat: Fashionable Frolic