The great day has arrived. I've only just gotten dressed, and I'm heading out in about an hour, but by the end of today, I will have worn my Camellia for a hundred days straight.
I'm pretty proud of myself. Perseverance isn't always my strong suit. I'm always climbing onto wagons and falling off again. Granted, there's not that much perseverance involved in just getting up every day and putting on a dress. It's not like I wasn't going to get dressed anyway, and getting dressed without having to think too much about what I was wearing made that whole operation easier, on the whole, not harder.
Still, some things were a little hard. Only a very little, but worth mentioning anyway.
*The change of seasons. On the one hand, North Carolina autumns are largely warm. Even when the mornings and evenings are chilly, the daylight highs can be in the 70s and 80s Farenheit. On the other hand, you want to wear fallish layers and feel all pumpkin-spice –– but it never quite works that way. And while on the one hand the weight and style of my dress are actually perfect for these warm days, on the other hand it feels like a summer dress, and it was hard sometimes to style it in a way that achieved what I wanted to feel like, without being too hot.
*While in general I gravitate toward clothes with some soft movement and flow –– no crisp poplins for me; no sharp tailoring, thank you –– sometimes my dress felt almost too soft and flowy, especially between washes, as it started to stretch and sag just a little. Mind you, it's held its shape well, especially given how hard I've worn it. But there have been times when, given more of a choice, I might have reached for something with just a tiny bit more structure. Some days, this dress felt just a little too shapeless. But it was more my mood than the fault of the dress, and fortunately, being at home most of the time, I had some time and leeway to experiment with styling it, to see if I could address whatever was bothering me (of course, being at home meant I had more time to think about it, instead of just putting on my clothes, going out, and being absorbed in work, or whatever).
Other thoughts:
*This is the most expensive dress I have bought for myself in I can't remember when. Maybe ever. To put things in perspective: my daughter's wedding dress cost what this dress cost. Granted, it was a cheap wedding dress: handed down from my mother (no cost) and altered by a local seamstress ($130). Still, I have not typically, if ever, spent this amount of money on a single item of clothing. That in itself feels noteworthy.
*I wanted to try this challenge at least in part because I was interested in the idea of a few "investment pieces" to anchor my wardrobe, rather than the revolving door of thrift items which has been my mojo previously. At least in the case of thrift items you are slowing them down on their way to their ultimate destination, which is something, as my husband points out. But although I intend to continue leaning heavily on secondhand sources for clothing, I wanted to consider how best to have clothes I like, and then wear them.
*I have noticed some signs of wear in my dress over the last few weeks. This is not surprising, given how hard and continually it's been worn. I have washed it carefully by hand and generally gone to some effort not to abuse it –– but I haven't treated it any more gently than, really, I should be treating any of my clothes if I want them to last. In many ways this challenge has been a primer in how not to ruin clothing I like. Wear the apron. Use the Grandma's Secret Stain Remover (which does really seem like a miracle product). Wash by hand. If at all possible, don't wash after a single wearing. And so on. So the challenge has presented me with an opportunity to rewire some of my basic habits, or lack of habits, regarding my clothes –– habits that never seemed that crucial, because nothing I owned had cost me more than ten dollars, at the very most.
What signs of wear have I seen?
*Pilling: not a huge, noticeable amount, but some pilling over my right pocket (seatbelt? But I don't drive or ride in the car on a daily basis), and across my backside. I do sit down a lot, mind you, and not on velvet cushions. Sometimes I sit down on the back steps, which are cement. Oddly, the most obvious pilling is on the inside.
(NB: This is still my blue Camellia dress. I was taking a fairly close shot, and the flash has washed out the color a lot. The dress's true color is apparent in longer shots where I'm wearing it –– but this is still the same dress. I'm also not really complaining, just noting these signs of wear in the spirit of full disclosure).
I mean, I'm not wearing sandpaper underpants. I'm not sure what could have caused this level of friction. I've been sitting down in clothes pretty much my entire life, so this seems odd. And the fit definitely isn't too tight. I'm wearing a medium, and it's plenty generous, even given that I am not thin, and am least thin in the area where the pilling occurs. Anyway, it's strange, but it also doesn't show, and I'm not going to stress out about it.
Otherwise . . .
The pockets seem a bit stretched out to me after a hundred days of wear. I don't usually carry anything in them –– my phone on a couple of hikes, but otherwise just my hands. I do put my hands in my pockets a lot. Given that, I guess it's not that surprising that they should be stretched a little out of shape, but they are. There's also a seam that's come unsewn on the inside ––
–– though upon closer inspection, it looks as though it's just where an edge has been oversewn. It's not, so to speak, a load-bearing wall, and I'm not in danger of springing a hole where the pocket is set into the dress. Again, I put my hands in my pockets a LOT, so it's not that surprising that the dress should show some signs of stress there.
*I might remark that I would expect an expensive dress to hold up better than this, but given how many days in a row I've worn it, is it really that expensive a dress? The initial investment, yes, was a lot. But costed out over actual wearing, what I have paid to wear this dress comes to $1.28 per day. That figure goes down every subsequent time I wear the dress. Even if I didn't want to wear this dress ever again, it's still been a good buy, given the service it has provided me. As it happens, I do plan to continue wearing it, though perhaps I won't be reaching for it as a "best dress" –– again, when I consider what I mean when I use a term like "investment clothing," I think this is probably it. I do recoup my initial investment in terms of good service.
Overall, yes, I still like this dress. I like its versatility. I like the lovely feel of the fabric. I like the color. I like that it does all the things wool does: keeps me cool in the summer, warm when the temperatures drop; stays fresh and odor-free over many wearings; holds its shape and looks good over a wide range of activities and occasions.
Will I put it on tomorrow? Honestly, probably not. I think Camellia needs a rest. I think we need a break from each other. I have some other clothes I've been increasingly eager to wear. Absence does make the heart grow fonder, after all –– but that will apply to Camellia as well. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to ordering my reward dress and enjoying it as much as I have enjoyed wearing Camellia.
Off to the mountains here in a few minutes to spend the day with my lovely friend Marly, who I wish lived nearer all the time. With my children gone, I have had a very quiet autumn thus far. We have effectively left our longtime parish, which means that I don't see people I used to see routinely. Although I'm very introverted, and mostly completely content to spend days by myself in my quiet house, even I can start to reach the end of that particular rope. I'm grateful for and lean heavily on my various online friendships, which I think truly do function as epistolary relationships of old. If those relationships were real, then certainly so are these. At the same time, I am really looking forward to a day of in-person friendship, in the autumn mountains around Hendersonville.
And the outfit rundown: Camellia, of course, with a pair of soft-grape leggings I impulse bought while at Ross with my daughter several years ago. They're the bad kind of microfiber, but so soft I can't help liking them anyway. The purple is maybe kind of dodgy with the blue dress, but they're both kind of grayed shades. I scrolled through my Brilliant Colour Combinations (not an affiliate link) until I found a plausible blue paired with this purple and told myself: There. See? It works. From a distance, the purple doesn't read as too overtly purple, so I hope it's not weird. They are soft and comfortable, and I can take them off later if I get hot. Thrifted gray cashmere-blend beaded cardigan. Thrifted Birk Madeiras, though I am throwing my hiking boots and some socks into the back seat, just in case.
It couldn't be a more beautiful day if it tried.
Here's a daylight shot of my new patio, too:
It's all very mixed-media, this area, but at least it's no longer characterized by mud and weeds. I do need to weed the old portion and consider what I'm going to do with the space. Definitely some more containers, since we now get a good bit of sun on that area, but I might also keep my eye out for a picnic table. The leveling my husband did yesterday left us with a big mound of quite good soil, shown on that tarp in the driveway –– I've already filled one planter from that pile, and will continue to use it to fill some large containers I've ordered, mostly to use in the larger garden around the stump.
Off to water some things, then hit the road. Happy Sunday!