That’s the dress — straight from the company’s website.
A picture may be worth 1,000 (times 1 million?) shares, but the words that follow are heckofa confusing.
The Internet is going bonkers over this dang dress — a gold and white (although the company does call it royal blue) number originally posted by a 21-year-old singer named Caitlin McNeill.
The performer shot the image on over to her talent manager Sarah Weichel, asking “Is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the fuck out.” (Ouch.)
When I first saw it posted to Facebook last night, I didn’t realize this was a “thing” and thought the woman — a social media connection — doing the asking wanted to know for herself.
Then I scrolled down, and saw every third person in my 5,000-plus connection feed was talking about the dress.
Why, though, have so few noted:
- Just how ugly this thing is? Sure, beauty is subjective, but this looks like the curtains that hung in my nana’s apartment long before I was even a twinkle in my parents’ eye (probably before my parents even met).
- Even the model — a woman being paid to sport this frock — doesn’t look to happy to be wearing the thing.
- People love debate — especially online. Also, we’re all so damn tired of being stuck inside this winter, arguing about a dress is now our chosen form of entertainment.
- Unless you’re 20-something, and built like Anna Kendrick, that thing ain’t gonna work.
- It’s got to be itchy…
- And flammable. Viscose and polyamide aren’t exactly pure and natural.
- The dress is cheap — and I’m not talking about cost (about $77 dollars) — and will make most women look it (AKA hooker-style).
- It’s called a “Bodycon” dress which I read as “Herve Leger Bandage Dress knock-off.” If you can’t afford the real thing (and few can — those Leger options go for more than $1,000), look elsewhere. An original with no premium inspiration looks better 98.6 percent of the time, especially when lace is involved.
- While completely silly, this argument is a refreshing change from the death threats and foul language that surrounded the Giuliana Rancic snafu that erupted earlier this week, or people calling for the beheading of political leaders.
- All this nonsense comes down to one bad photo. Thanks to smartphones, we all have cameras, but few of us (myself included) know how to use them well.
“If you can’t afford the real thing, look elsewhere.” Ouch.
To quote one of my favorite fictional female characters: “Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select… I don’t know… that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent… wasn’t it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.”
The trickle down theory applies to everything in fashion. Nearly every item in my closet is a piece “inspired by” a major design house. So, where exactly is this “elsewhere” that I should be looking?
The dress is not blue. It’s actually cerulean.
Kristi responds:
Bert-Bert, you make an excellent point. Re: inspiration. I love fashion. Clothes are our a huge part of the first impression we deliver. I believe, though, the look comes off better when a woman opts for something that’s “inspired” rather than “copied.”
Kristi, I love that you are true to yourself–even though now you sometimes carry a plastic grocery bag instead of your “Louie.”
Kristi responds:
Roz, not just any plastic bag — a Tractor Supply Co. plastic sack 🙂