I would like a word with the woman who bought a gold wrap top in 1997 to wear to a cousin’s engagement party, wore it exactly once, and then kept it in a drawer for eleven years because throwing it out felt like admitting defeat. She thought gold was a color you committed to. She was wrong, but it took a while to learn that.
Half of us think a gold wrap top is the easiest thing you can own for a certain kind of night out, the other half think it’s a costume you rent from your own closet twice a year and otherwise resent hanging there taking up space. Nobody’s really budging on this one. I’ve sat in both camps at different points, which either makes me open minded or just means I haven’t made up my mind in twenty five years, and I suspect it’s the second one.
Here’s the part that actually surprised me this time around. The one that looked the cheapest, the kind of thing you’d expect to catch on a bracelet and unravel by the second wear, held its shine properly through six weeks of actual use, including one very ill advised trip through a regular wash cycle that should have finished it off and didn’t. Meanwhile a top that looked expensive, heavier, better draped, the kind of thing you’d photograph next to a glass of wine, started going dull and slightly bronze at the shoulder within about three wears, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes me distrust my own eye for quality more than I’d like.
The pants question is the real test though. Does it go with more than the one pair it was bought for, or does it just live as a unit with those specific black trousers forever, the two of them checking in and out of your closet together like a couple who only socialize as a pair.
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Most of mine have been the second kind. I own one, a slightly looser wrap with a tie that sits lower than I’d normally wear, that actually goes with jeans, which shocked me enough that I wore it to a Tuesday dinner and felt slightly ridiculous the whole time in a way I didn’t hate.
That one’s the gamble, honestly. It suits someone who wants to look a little overdressed on purpose. On someone playing it safe, it just looks like she wandered in from a different party. My sister saw a photo of me in it and asked if I was performing somewhere, which from her is not nothing.
Gold doesn’t need reinventing. It needs a top that survives the wash and pants that aren’t already spoken for.
