I bought my first burgundy maxi dress for a wedding I almost didn’t go to, and I remember standing in the fitting room doing the math on whether I’d wear it again before I’d even zipped it up. Nineteen dollars, secondhand, and I told myself twice would make it worth it. I’ve worn that dress eleven times now, which puts it somewhere around a dollar seventy a wear, and I still get a little thrill doing that math because it never stops feeling like I got away with something.
Half of us at this point think burgundy is basically a neutral, the color equivalent of navy, goes with everything, hides everything, apologizes for nothing. The other half think it’s a once a year event dress that’s tricking people into believing it earns its closet space, and honestly I’ve been on both sides of that fight with myself depending on the week.
The first wear is always a whole production.
There’s a zip that runs the entire spine of the thing and I have texted a friend at 6:40pm more than once asking if she can come over and yank it the last three inches, which she has done, in her socks, complaining the whole time. The fiftieth wear is nothing like that. By then you’ve either bought the seamless underwear that doesn’t ruin the line, or you’ve given up and you’re wearing your regular underwear and pretending you can’t see the seam in the mirror. I did the first one. It cost fourteen dollars and honestly changed my whole relationship with the dress.
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Nobody warns you about the length until you’re standing at the bottom of an escalator holding the hem up like you’re carrying a toddler across a stream. Puddles are worse. I ruined the bottom two inches of mine in a parking lot in March and just decided the slight stain reads as “fabric detail” now, which is a lie I’ve fully committed to.
Here’s my honest gamble pick, the one I’d tell you to think twice about: the deep wine colored one with the wrap front, gorgeous on the hanger, made for someone taller than five foot four, and I am not that. On me it puddles at the ankle in a way that reads more nightgown than dress unless I’m in heels the whole night, which, no. I bought it anyway. The math was too good, eleven dollars at the store I check every Tuesday, and I’ve worn it exactly twice and both times spent the evening hiking it up.
Cost per wear on the good one keeps dropping every month I own it, which is the entire argument for buying one at all. The bad one’s still sitting at five fifty a wear and dropping slow. Both are technically in the good column of my ledger this year. I stand by that, mostly.
