Girls In White Dresses
(This piece was originally published in the newsletter Schmancy. You can sign up here.)
This summer, I’ve dreamed of sunburn and sex cults. I’ve craved the crispness of cotton against my burnished skin. I’ve yearned for clear skies and open spaces, shady courtyards, cool tiles, the scent and sizzle of lavender water hitting something freshly starched, ayahuasca (or perhaps just some really good weed). Ultimately, like the most basic of bitches, I’ve watched that Suicide soundtracked Marc Jacobs Daisy ad 427 times and thought “I WANT THIS TO BE MY LIFE!” Dream baby dream, indeed.
So I bought this and this and I am desperately trying to justify this and I long for this like a teenage boy longs to lose his virginity in an ‘hilarious’ cinematic summer sex caper. White dresses are wrong on a thousand levels, and I am wrong in my wanting and wishing to be transformed into a grown up Lolita, a spoiled heiress, an hormonal havoc wreaker fresh from a convent. I’m a 32 year old woman with a thickening waist and an ever decreasing number of braless days to look forward to. I spend the majority of the time writing on a sofa, or watching TV on a sofa. I spill. I should be spending all this money on something that is slightly more relevant to my lifestyle, like a collection of cigar holders, or a jewel encrusted Flymo for my gardenless flat.
Convention suggests that women wear white on their wedding day. (I did — in fact, such is my addiction to white dresses that I wore this floor length Alice + Olivia dress for the ceremony and this Carin Wester dress for dancing afterwards There are obvious comments and complaints to be made about this practice, mostly to do with our collective creepy outdated fetishisation of virginity. However, I’ve wondered whether our wedding days are also supposed to be our last White Dress Days — our Last Guileless, Bloomingly Fuckable Days. I think of the intolerable Peter Jenkin in Invitation To The Waltz, who has decided that women really only ought to wear black. I think of Nicole waiting for Tommy in Tender Is The Night, and how I picture her in soft, expensive greys, when the impetuous teenage Rosemary is, at least in my imagination, all pink and white. I think of Cheryl and Ashley Cole in that National Lottery ad. If you’re old enough to endorse something for money, of your own volition, are you too old for white?
Of course, “Too old” is bullshit that no-one should be at home to. Most conventions act as barriers, to stymie creativity. We make women dress up as virgins on their wedding days because there is a widely held and deep seated subliminal sense that if we had our full, unjudged sexual druthers, armageddon would be unleashed. For similar reasons, we’re the sex that is encouraged and expected to cover our nipples on the beach. We have newspapers dedicated to pointing out what these conventions are, and how high profile women fail to fulfil them. But — and oh, how the but pains me — I’m afraid to look foolish, and I know the reason I wish for white dresses is something my therapist might like to discuss with me.
As a young teen, I loved Hole, Bikini Kill, and Babes In Toyland. Many of the women in these bands dressed in a look that became known as Kinderwhore — knee socks, slips, baby doll dresses, bows, ribbons and rips — all styled to look alarmingly young, and scarily sexual. It was supposed to be shocking and subversive, feminist and feminine. Musician Mish Way writes “The whole mess of tits, lace and lipstick was purposeful symbolic.” I loved the curious contradictions of the look, which allowed me to be sexual, while also allowing me to be furious with anyone who wanted to sexualise me. It was made for angry, confused teenage girls.
I wonder whether the spirit of kinderwhore is what draws me to white dresses. It’s a bit of a leap to go from laddered knee socks to pristine broderie anglaise, but the white dress is rich girl drag, and allows me to play at being a “perfect” teenager. In my white dresses I can be sexy and scary, but in a Blair Waldorf way rather than a Courtney Love one. When I was a real and dramatic teenage girl, I fantasised that my life was being art directed by Gus Van Sant, but on a good white dress day I feel like I’ve successfully auditioned for Sofia Coppola. White dresses are as pure as my motivations are seedy, but so what if I want to look as though I’m trying to get Ryan Atwood to touch me up in the Hamptons? In my white dress, I’m a blank space. I’m the one who gets to dream in it, until I’m awoken by my own screams when encountering red wine or ketchup.
