Dreams Are Free

Am I starting to sound like a broken record to you? Each season I swoon over some dream jacket or dream bag or I go on and on about some fabric concoction that I can’t live without.

But today I’m going to tell you a little story about how dream dresses can happen to a simple girl like me. Remember a few posts ago I mentioned falling for this dream dress from the Chanel 12P collection (runway photos courtesy of style.com)?

It was seen everywhere, in every boutique window, on every celebrity deemed photo worthy… I even bought shoes to match it because chasing after dreams in high heels is the only way to do it.

I was all set for the day I’d (a) find this dress on sale, (b) step into it, and (c) wake up. But wouldn’t you know it, something else popped up in an email before any of the above happened.

Chanel. Black tweed. Black pearls. Could this not just take an already dream dress to an even higher level of fashion Utopia? Oh yeah.

Well, it took some scouring to finally locate the black version in my size and had it fitted and refitted. But here I am, wide awake in my dream dress.

A long time ago when I was a grad student with very little in the bank and even less conviction about what I wanted to do with my life, my escape was always in the pages of Vogue magazine. Dreams materialized month after month between these pages, but they were just that. Chanel was no bigger a dream than the thought of paying off my mounting student loans. Chanel was not quite entrenched in the fashion vernacular back then, but even then, the creative ways with which the Vogue editors would play up a Chanel jacket would tickle my imagination to no end. One day, I would tell my very young and lost self while flipping through the pages, one day you’ll wear a Chanel jacket and know exactly where you’re going.

It’s somewhat ironic to me that now, all these years later, when I have finally harnessed all my restless energy to go not in a million directions (that my impulses still want to do) but rather down a constructive, successful path, my favorite way to de-stress is to drop my bags in a city I’ve never been, among people who speak a language I do not, and simply have no idea where I’m going. But this time, I get to wear Chanel.

So what’s the moral of my story today? Dreams are free. Student loans do get paid off. And dream dresses are real.

September 12, 2012