Ruffles, Romance, and the Case of the Vanishing Blouse
A couple of years ago, when I was strolling the streets of Paris and the Russian people with their credit cards had already become persona non grata, I came upon a Claudie Pierlot store. It was the type of place that, in any other circumstance, I wouldn’t have even noticed.
An essentially Parisian boutique, with an essentially French name, Claudie Pierlot reflected a style that had no place in my blooming life as a New Yorker: a life of low-waisted jeans, cute mini dresses, and layers of coats. (For a girl from Moscow, which people sometimes thought was located on the Arctic Circle, the weather on the East Coast felt rough.) And although that era has only lasted for nine months so far, it still felt incompatible with what Madame Pierlot had to offer. Buttoned shirts and straight-fit trousers, colorful cardigans and flowy modest dresses: That was the chic everyday look of a pretty marketing intern; one who had femininity I did not think I possessed, who didn’t need to show her belly-button piercing to feel cool.
My mother, whose love for French tradition has always been a little stronger than her disapproval of French men, was already inside, having none of the same identity crisis.
It was a lovely store: a tiny boutique, which smelled of roses and cleanliness, located just by the solemn Jardin du Luxembourg. There is little I can remember about the place itself, except for the purchase. I must have been possessed by the spirit of an epicurean grand dame that used to inhabit those walls.
When I saw that white blouse with a slight sheen and ruffles around its collar and sleeves, all kinds of associations popped up in my head. Renaissance, Victorian, the golden age of piracy, the kings and queens from the dusty portraits, the colonizers, the Spanish, Dracula himself. I didn’t know why, but I needed it badly. This 100 percent polyester shirt would have become a one-of-a-kind blouse in my closet — a ruffled sheep with no black pants to keep her company. The blouse looked like it descended into my arms from the pages of the gothic romances, where a dead wife would run around the haunted castle wearing a pale ruffled nightgown. It even felt like my beloved “Wuthering Heights,” even though I could hardly imagine Heathcliff in a pearl blouse with curly ruffles. Jacob Elordi would, though.
A week passed by: I was in Nice, exchanging Paris for the crumbly dunes of Arcachon with its local oyster farms. I shared a tiny room with a friend from high school. We’d been sleeping on a mattress that we carried on our backs from Ikea. We lived there for a few days, and didn’t even think of unpacking our luggage. The clothes would just have to be laid on the floor in a carpet-like manner— at least the suitcases gave it structure.
The wriggling suspicion started building up in me with each new morning, when I rummaged through my stuff for a new outfit. When I decided to search the suitcase at last, I realized that my beautiful ruffled gothic Victorian vampire blouse was missing.
I doubted that the lady who sat in the lobby, guarding the property for a couple of hours each week — and never past 4 p.m. — would know anything about that mysterious disappearance. I doubted even more that she would let me close the residence and announce an emergency situation: “no one leaves the building, until the thief is caught!” So, I went to the same store and bought another shirt — so great my despair had been. The next day, I found out the original shirt was in my mom’s suitcase all along, soaking in the sea breath on the opposite side of France.
I wear this blouse pretty often now. My closet has been filling with more and more shirts and pants, lacquer shoes and heels, and I don’t even feel like an imposter wearing formal wear to an artsy school. (Although there are still plenty of low-waisted jeans in my drawer.)
One time, me and my friend wore ruffled shirts (both mine) to a Halloween party, trying to give vampiric aristocracy. Everyone guessed we were dressed as the Founding Fathers.