One of the best things about Valentine’s Day is its color palette. There, I said it.
When I was younger and studied fashion magazines on the regular, I had certain ideas about what colors could and could not be paired together. Most notably, I avoided wearing blue with green, brown with black – and pink with red. These just seemed like incontrovertible fashion rules to me. As a personal style nerd attending an arts high school, honestly I could’ve worn way wackier stuff than I did and gotten away with it just fine, but I was still nervous to violate certain norms for whatever reason.
I allowed myself to break the pink-and-red rule just one day a year: Valentine’s Day. In 2008 I wore a red shirt with pink striped tights. In 2011 I rocked a pink striped dress with red cowboy boots. In 2013 I wore a red heart-print dress with pink leather handcuffs. Putting together these outfits always felt exciting, courageous, and transgressive to me in some way – but I don’t think the color pairing was the reason for that. I think I felt ever-so-slightly embarrassed to be wearing an ensemble that so earnestly accepted Valentine’s Day – and therefore love itself – as being worthy of celebration.
I mean, I was a teen. A lot of the kids who floated past me in the halls at school were decked out in tight jeans, goth black dresses, chunky and self-serious Doc Martens… and then I’d twirl into view in my pinks and reds, with a flower in my hair. It felt vulnerable and scary and yet I knew it was a true expression of my heart, and of who I wanted to be.
With V-Day coming up this week, I’m thinking about romantic style again, and even put together a Pinterest board of “lovecore” looks. I am genuinely wondering, after a year of so many baggy grey T-shirts and sad black sweatpants, if maybe I should rework my wardrobe so I can start dressing like one of Cupid’s disciples when the world reopens again.
There’s a lot of discourse about how women “should” dress, at every age but especially as they get older. I’m nearing 30; it would be a bold choice for me to start dressing every day like a kindergarten teacher passing out paper valentines, a big-hearted manic pixie dream girl, or a runway model for a romance-themed Kate Spade collection. But I’m a freelance writer. Hardly anyone even sees what I’m wearing when there’s not a global pandemic. Why not utilize the freedom my career affords me as much as I can? Why not attire myself like a quirky old woman who sells vintage valentines on Etsy and has a delightful crush on the man who runs the post office where she ships her wares? Why not wear what Marilyn Monroe would wear if she’d been invited to perform at a Valentine’s ball? Why not dress like a professional matchmaker splashed in eau de l’amour?
I read this New York Magazine article when I was 15; it’s about people who only wear one color, and it has stuck with me for many years. Even then, I admired the courage, the tenacity, the dedication it would take to live one’s life that way. Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the sense that for every person who’d harass or harangue you for dressing in head-to-toe blue all the time, there’d be at least 3 or 4 other people whose entire day would be made by seeing you in your cute little monochromatic outfit.
I feel similarly about the idea of turning my wardrobe into an ode to love. I’m sure a lot of people would hate it and find it weird. But those are not the people I dress for. Life is too damn short; I want to adorn myself in hearts and walk down the street shining like the sparkly bow on a Valentine’s Day present.