Every season or so, designers Moriah Carlson and Alice Wu will come up with an article of clothing that we quickly dismiss, or even--to our subsequent humiliation--openly scoff at.
One season, it was the baggy pant, which we later craved. Last season, it was the voluminous skirt. We thought it dowdy, a strange whim, and passed over it to leap upon our immediate cravings.
However, after we'd made our order and the months progressed, we found ourselves standing in front of our closet every morning, staring at our tops and thinking 'that would look great with the Sea Loch Skirt', 'Oh, if only we had the Sea Loch Skirt, this outfit would be perfect' or 'Enough with mid-thigh! The height of chic requires the Sea Loch Skirt! We repent!'.
We let this go on for a month or more in case it was a passing whim. No, our conviction stayed. Every morning was the same. The Sea Loch Skirt was actually the most necessary, most missing item in our wardrobe.
We made an emergency call and ordered it.
Joy upon joy, it arrived, as perfect as its promise.
Joy upon joy, we wore it to much sartorial happiness and many compliments.
Horror upon horror, while wearing it that first day, on lunch break, we refilled our gas tank while chatting with a friend, checked the progress screen in the blinding sunlight, thought it said 'Thank you for your purchase', withdrew the nozzle, and momentously entered the realm of horrific dream-sequence reality.
The nozzle continued to spew out gasoline, with the force of a fire engine's water hose, even after we'd withdrawn it. It shot onto the gas station lot, onto our selves, onto our Sea Loch Skirt, onto our shoes, almost into the car of the older woman whose jaw dropped for a full five minutes following the event. We screamed. The nozzle began to writhe and nearly dropped to the tarmac, a full-scale disaster in the making.
We gathered our wits and, thanks perhaps to our years of dance training or bartending or vacuuming, shoved the nozzle precisely back into the gas tank.
Silence ensued. No one spoke. The jaw stayed dropped.
Slowly, slowly, we assessed the damage. We laughed nervously to our friend and a cute fellow gas pumper whose eyes were wide with masculine 'whoa', the flirtatious subtext of which was 'wow, you are dumb and lucky yet charming enough that I'm smiling'.
We traipsed into the gas station shop, dripping petroleum, and spoke to the manager. He gave us a $5 bill 'for dry cleaning' and a free car wash, 'the best', he commanded his attendant. Unnerved, he said it was not supposed to happen. There was supposed to be a safety. He got someone out to fix it within the hour, we later learned. The auto-stop had worn away. The seal had broken. Or something.
We returned to work, stinking like a Texas oil field. The skirt color was beginning to show slightly paled where the gas had sprayed. A gracious co-worker, to whom the same thing had once happened on her way to the airport, with far more damage to a suitcase of new resort-wear and olfactory disrespect to her seatmate, gave us an alternate outfit to wear (Disclosure: we work in the apparel business, so we had thousands to choose from).
We raced to change, dumped the Sea Loch Skirt in a filthy basin we found in the trash room, and filled it with water. The Sea Loch Skirt was back in the water from which it had been born. It swam in its cruddy tank for the rest of the day while we finished work.
At the end of the day, we squeezed the skirt out, plopped it into the plastic bag our boss proffered and drove home.
The Sea Loch Skirt soaked for three days.
Meanwhile, we prepared to Rit-dye it or cough up for a new one.
It emerged flawless. We wore it yesterday, to a new slew of compliments, and even filled up our gas tank wearing it again.
Photos to come.
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