I would like a word with the woman who stood in a dressing room in 1994 and declared, out loud, to nobody, that green was “a color for tablecloths, not people.” That woman held onto that opinion for a genuinely embarrassing number of years, long enough that when I finally bought a green dress I felt like I was betraying some earlier, dumber version of a principle.
I did not think a green maxi dress belonged in my closet, and I said so, more than once, to whoever was unlucky enough to be shopping with me at the time. Too much fabric, too much color, the combination felt like a costume for a role I hadn’t auditioned for. I was outvoted. The rest of the conversation, such as it was, thought a deep bottle green with some drape to it was exactly the kind of thing a person regrets not buying, and I thought it was the kind of thing a person regrets buying and then wears once to a wedding and hides forever. We did not agree.
We still don’t, entirely, though I’ve moved considerably further than I expected to.
Here’s what changed my mind, and it wasn’t the color at all, it was the walking. I wore mine to an outdoor dinner in June, on a night with actual wind, the kind that turns a maxi hem into a conversation partner whether you like it or not, and instead of fighting me the whole night it just moved, sort of swung along, and I stopped thinking about it after the first ten minutes, which for me is the entire test.
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The hem did catch on a stair once, badly, the kind of catch that makes your stomach drop for a second before you realize you haven’t torn anything, just startled yourself. Worth mentioning because nobody warns you about the stairs part until you’re the one gathering fabric in one fist like you’re being chased.
Has it seen a second wearing. Yes, twice more, actually, once to a much more boring dinner where it did all the work the occasion didn’t deserve, which is precisely the return on investment I want from something this size.
I’ll admit the color itself is still not a universal yes from this house. One of us thinks a green this saturated is a genuinely bold, correct choice for exactly one specific kind of confident person, and looks like a Christmas ornament on everyone else, myself included on a bad day. I’m not fully convinced that person isn’t me. We’ve landed somewhere in the middle, which is to say I own it, I wear it, and I still occasionally catch my reflection and think, well, that’s certainly a decision.
