The Joy of the Find

I’ve always wanted to be a crazy hat lady which is different from a cat lady in that she maintains several large, theatrical hats as opposed to, you know, live domestic animals. This hankering of mine has only been fine-tuned by my inability to invest hard dollars in a good hat. I’ll try it on, fall in love with it and then decide, really? I’m going to spend [insert dollar amount here] on a hat?

So, inevitably, I’ll put it down and when I do that, I’ll have to wonder what would have been. Weeks later, I’ll have changed my mind and frantically, I will rush back to the hat store in pursuit of the very topper I knew would actualize me in spite of my having acted against instinct. Then I will learn that it sold out because only a woman as foolish as I would give up such a hat and forever henceforth, it will remain a romanticized figment of my imagination, deposited in the crestfallen pocket of Hats That Could Have Been.

Or will it? In considering the prospect of ones that got away, I did not omit the other things that fall into my mind’s varying categories of Things That Could Have Been. The purse, the skirt, the shoes with fur balls, that bracelet, those socks! Socks? Yes, socks.

I may not have been ready to assume them as my own when they first began exhibiting themselves as the very leaders that could festoon my exterior but months, sometimes years later — and this happens at the turn of every season — an unsolicited itch will take over my finger tips and so will begin the overwrought search for what I clearly should have purchased while it was still, as Kix put it, hot.

So, what’s a lady, heart stuck in the past, wishing for the tangible objects to resurrect themselves for future purpose to do? Turn her attention to The RealReal. Duh. Where consignment shopping actually, finally, feels like an edited nod to snails like me who experience symptoms of a disorder I’ll call Need It While It’s Lukewarm.

They say the difference between a competent person and a stupid person is that the latter never learns from her mistakes, and because I never want to function as a statistic to further prove that definition, The RealReal has given me the opportunity to never miss out again. Sure, the competitive pricing helps, but now I know that when life hands you headgear, you take that and become the craziest hat lady you can be — Carven sunglasses, multiple Céline clutches, single Chanel glove, double Balenciaga bracelets, Manolo Blahnik sandals and Proenza Schouler skirt, of course, notwithstanding.

In fact, this idea of a proverbial hat lady has me wondering if it was a kooky millinery fanatic who penned the original “Twelve Days of Christmas” song. Her true love gave her gifts for each day of the holiday’s advent, and I can only imagine what our accessorized heroine would look like had Instagram been around. Would she pose, as I did, with all of her amassed gifts practically spilling from her arms, like a child unable to contain her own excitement at the prospect of bow-tied packages? Consider The RealReal’s 12 Days of Gifting, with twelve gift-minded shops curated for each of those twelve days — what on this snow covered earth would we look like if our true loves picked an apple from each those sartorial orchards? A crazy hat lady, that’s what. Auspiciously drinking one big mug of hot cider.

Part 1 of 1 in a collaboration with The RealReal; 12 Days of Gifting runs from Dec. 3 through Dec. 14 with new shops launching daily, featuring luxury consignment up to 90–yes, 90% off.