May 2011 Masthead - fugly shoes and more

This month’s banner is brought to you by: I’m going to be dead someday so I should start wearing all those clothes and shoes I’m ‘saving’ for special occasions. Like those pricey, Donald Pliner shoes I’d been saving. The ones I've been keeping on a high shelf in my closet away from the general population of my other shoes. The ones I now think are fugly. Tastes can change over a half a decade. Just ask any woman who had sun tattoo inked around her belly button back in the mid-nineties.

I bought this dress for Lexi almost six years ago.

She wore it to my brother’s wedding and a couple of other special occasions. It’s the kind of dress that compels you to spin. Lexi always begged to wear it around the house. But are you kidding me, kid? This is a raw-silk dress with crinoline lining! How about we just sit on the bed and watch it hang in the closet? See? Fun, right?

So the dress hung in the closet until the next special occasion. Except by the time the next spinning dress occasion came around, Lexi had outgrown it.

More years went by and the dress patiently waited to be worn again by one of Lexi’s younger sisters. And then, one day, while I was shuffling clothes around in my closet, I noticed a strawberry colored stain on the spinning dress. Somehow the red skirt, which had been hanging next to the spinning dress, had bled pink all over the spinning dress’s skirt. They had been hanging together in the back of my closet, and I’m just guessing that at some point humidity had caused the red dress to bleed onto the spinning dress like a red sock in a load of white towels.

The spinning dress was ruined; attacked by cotton while it hung waiting to be called to duty. So now the spinning dress is free to spin on regular days.

I’d planned on photographing the girls looking up and twirling around in the dress. That plan didn’t work because children and sloppy drunks...same difference...can’t spin with their heads tilted back. See:

Here is my plan not working.

And more not working.

So I opted to use these photos.

Alright, enough of this. I’m off to my closet. I have a pair of parachute pants and leg warmers I’m dying to wear!