Red! By Jenny.

In high school, my best friend had a line in her AIM profile (boy, I’m really dating myself here, eh?) that simply said “RED! By Jenny.” It always used to make me laugh, because it was just so unusual and I wasn’t sure what statement she was trying to make. I asked her about it last month, and apparently it was just because red is her favorite color and Jenny is her name.

I think of that whenever I put on a red garment: I hear the phrase “Red! By Jenny” in her voice, figuratively speaking. This particular red dress is another excellent new-to-me acquisition. I’d heard that the Lana dress from PUG was shorter than most of their other dresses, and thought it would make a cute knee-length dress for me, so I started looking around and found one that Bristol was selling. It came in a jiffy, during an oddly warm spell here in Chicago, and I really like it! I’m a little sad that this dress style was discontinued, but I guess tracking down other colors of this dress will give me a goal to work toward.

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

"I think so, Brain, but if they called them Sad Meals, kids wouldn't buy them!"

Selfies: the struggle is real!

Dress: Pinup Girl Clothing Lana (discontinued), from Bristol

Shoes: Gap

Brooch: The Sparkle Bakery on Etsy

Another reason that I began this point with a seemingly-unconnected anecdote is because that’s how my friendship with Jenny began! We are pretty sure that our bestfriendiversary is March 15, which was the day that we took a field trip to Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island to do a DNA something-or-other lab with our AP Biology class. We sat together on the bus and told each other long rambling stories, a la Grandpa Simpson in the classic union episode.

Whenever I start rambling with no clear purpose, Jeff goes “and I wore an onion on my belt…”

This was back when everyone still had dialup and an AOL email address (cue Grandpa Simpson: “back then, nickles were called ‘bees…’ ‘Gimme five bees for a quarter, we’d say’”). Jenny and I got in the habit of emailing each other “Jenny stories” (the 2001 equivalent of ‘onion stories’), which were basically an incredibly detailed rendering of the mundane.

A classic: this photo is from our Winter 2004 at-home photoshoot, and I have no idea what we're both looking at, but I had SERIOUS envy of Jenny's shirt!

Over the years, we’ve gotten a little better about making sure our rambling stories have some payoff to the listener. In the case of this blog post, the payoff is these photos, as well as the small glimpse into my free-associative thought process!

What’s your favorite color and silhouette to wear?

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