A couple of months ago, walking down Charles Street, I stopped at the window of a pricey women's clothing store. This particular window often attracts my notice because the clothing on display is often a bit off - at least to my eye. It often looks oddly-shaped, homemade, dowdy. Things that only a tall, slender and drop-dead good looking twenty-something could put on and carry off. Anyone else would look like they'd just escaped from a 19th century insane asylum or an orphanage that went out of its way to make their charges look like weirdos.
And, in fact, the shop has a curated collection from Euro designers and a local designer who makes one-off pieces of clothing. Perhaps even by hand.
I'm clearly not the demographic.
Anyway, what caused me to pause in November was the incredibly dowdy schmatta on display.
I was struck by the Lanz nightgown vibe. When I texted it off to my sisters - which, of course, I did immediately - the reaction was similar. Trish thought they were going for a prisoner of Christmas look. Kath thought more sister-wife style. At the moment of or text exchange, we didn't know what the cost of the dress was. Turns out, it's $998. I'd rather go with a Lanz nightgown, but maybe that's just me.
While we were making fun, of course, it turns out that sister-wife style was creeping into the mainstream. Or at least the mainstream as defined by Target.
It didn't take the Internet long to hop on this trend.
The chance that these floral farm dresses that objectively look like the last thing you’d wanna wear are sold out at Targets all over is a high one. And it’s not because people have damaged their fashion sense for good after spending prolonged periods of time in quarantine (although that would be a fair reason), but rather because the #TargetDressChallenge is going viral.
It all started when someone pointed out that a bunch of long dresses at Target look like “people just lost the farm after locusts ate their crops” but in the pandemic world. And this is where it got fun.
People went in for a full pandemic farm, aka Little House On the Prairie, look by posting their pics in the dress while carrying livestock, working the land, and doing other typical farm chores. It soon blew up into a viral trend with entire families getting on board for a much-needed laugh. (Source: Bored Panda - via someone on Twitter.)
The Bored Panda has done a pandemic-weary world a service by showing us how some farm folks responded to the Target Dress Challenge. The pictures are hilarious. Menfolk, womenfolk, childrenfolk going about their humble farm chores - chicken feeding, wood chopping, donkey nuzzling...
In a nod to the ASPCA, this couple tagged their photo "No Chickens Were Harmed During This Photo Shoot."
I actually had a dress kind of like this when I was 21, and I actually wore it to a friend's wedding. It was white with sprigs of lavender flowers on it. I was not exactly a hippie, but, as a lefty, I was hippie-adjacent. My hair was worn long and perfectly straight - a condition I did not have to force on my long perfectly straight hair. No hair-ironing for me! And I didn't wear makeup. Most of my wardrobe consisted of jeans and tee-shirts, with the dresses I'd gotten for my father's recent wake and funeral, and a few other things for when I had to actually show up some place and look decent. (A few of my friends got married shortly after college graduation, so that spring I had showers, followed by summer weddings.)
Anyway, my hippie chick (hippie chic?) dress would have worked for another friend's wedding. Just not for this couple, who were a bit more corporate. I believe the bridegroom began working for IBM the day after their honeymoon. The bride taught for a while before getting lured in to IBM as well, where I believe she sold copiers.
Fifty years after the fact, I'm still embarrassed by my outfit, and I hope that no photos survived. (Obsessive photo-taking was not as big a thing back then...)
Despite my dress misstep, the bride and I remained fast friends until her way-too-early and devastating death, coming up on seven years this April. (Marie died two months after my husband - whose anniversary is tomorrow. Quite an awful year, that 2014.)
The groom remarried, and I gladly attended that wedding, where, I assure you, I was much better dressed. I will say that my color scheme hadn't changed all that much: periwinkle and silvery-gray vs. white and lavender. And I have to say I have successfully channeled my hippie impulses of yore into an artsy look.
The pandemic has dragged on for far too long, and I'm grateful to those who bring us things to smile at. So, while I'm a bit sorry for the Target buyer, who I'm sure is being colossally dragged, I'm just as happy they brought this dress to market. And I'm delighted that some farm folks jumped right in and made it a thing! Bravo, rural America!
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