This first look is Valentino, and it was shown without the lining in the bodice on the runway, and may I just say: Can you imagine? If Michelle Dockery had been like, “you know what? I’m bored. LET’S DO THE NIPS.”
That would have been surprising.
As it is, though, that dress is great — I wish it were the wallpaper in my powder room, and it rather reminds me of a store that used to exist in Claremont, a small college town in Southern California just south of Los Angeles country, that was called Rousseau’s Garden (after Henri Rousseau’s many paintings that are set in, you guessed it, a garden). (I don’t THINK it’s there any more.) The inside of the store was painted very dark and they had a huge mural of this painting on the wall. They sold, like, gift-y stuff and very fancy paperweights (like these) and silk plants and real plants and all kinds of interesting ’80s crystal jewelry made by cool witches (you know what I mean; something you’d see on Catherine O’Hara in Beetlejuice and perhaps also Catherine O’Hara in Schitt’s Creek), and, like, tiny expensive clocks, and ribbons, and fancy fabulous hostess gifts. The reason I liked going there — this was circa 1983 — was because they also had a corner that was all stickers. FANTASTIC STICKERS, like the BEST stickers a small child in the 80s might dream of. And every time we went in there, my mother would generally let me get a few stickers for my sticker collection. (She would NOT buy me a $200 paperweight which was always very annoying to me but also I suppose it’s accurate that an eight year old girl doesn’t need a paperweight.) So this dress gives me DELIGHTED STICKER FEELINGS and also it might sell me a paperweight, is what I’m saying.
This is also cute:
She looks like your coolest econ professor, the one you once caught smoking cloves in the parking lot.
