I Dressed Like It Was Date Night. Every Day. Here's What Changed.

“Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so bought some sweatpants.” —Karl Lagerfeld

That’s it.

That’s the essay.

Mais non (just kidding).

I have tried writing this essay three times. Each time I had to scratch most of it because it sounded too… bitter. Too angry.

Which, in a way, I am.

The reason Karl Lagerfeld’s quote stings so much is that it is, needlessly to say, very true.

I am mad—furious—at the normalization of looking like you gave up.

It’s as though, on the day you choose the sweatpants, you decide that today isn’t worth showing up for.

And I’ll blame Covid for it.

What makes me even madder is that I didn’t realize I had fallen into the very same trap. Mine just happened to be yoga pants.

I told myself that wearing real clothes wasn’t worth the effort. That I didn’t have a style anyway. That shopping was too complicated. That I was staying home, so what was the point? Little did I know the cost of that surrender. The things I was not writing. The woman I was not being.

But something was gnawing at me for months, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I felt like I had become less myself somehow. Less joyful. Less ambitious. Less alive.

Until the most productive day I’d had in years arrived, seemingly out of nowhere.

I tried to trace it back. What, exactly, were the circumstances?

Sure, I was well-rested and I hadn’t been interrupted by notifications or life. But what had actually changed was this: that morning, I had done my blowout. I had taken time with my makeup. I had put on a nice sundress before going to the coworking space.

All of this instead of my yoga pants, my no-makeup face, and my messy tangled hair, working from the couch, which had proven, time and again, to produce neither my best work nor my best self.

So I tried an experiment.

I challenged myself to get ready as if I were going on a date every single day for six weeks.

A date specifically, because getting ready for a date requires a very different kind of energy than getting ready in five minutes for work.

When you’re preparing for a date, you take a little more time at the vanity. You choose your favorite perfume. You put music on to get in the mood. You want to look and feel your best. Clothes are a touch nicer. You stand a little taller, walk a little slower, sway your hips with each step without thinking about it.

And somewhere between the last swipe of lipstick and walking out the front door, something shifts. You stop feeling like you’re rushing through another Tuesday and start feeling like the woman you want to become. The day itself begins to feel like an occasion.

The first thing that changes is the way you see yourself.

You catch your reflection in a shop window and don't look away. You linger over your coffee instead of drinking it standing at the kitchen counter. You walk into a room and don't immediately make yourself smaller.

And then, quietly, the world rearranges itself around that energy.

Your partner notices you—really notices you—and looks at you in a different way. There is more heat than usual in the room. Perhaps he reaches for you from behind, his hands at your waist, leaning in to press a kiss on your cheek, something he hasn’t done in a while.

And because you want to keep basking in that feeling, you carry it with you. You order the meal you actually want instead of the safe one. You open the good bottle. You say yes to dessert. You come home to yourself, whether you are single, dating, or fifteen years married.

It took me about three weeks before I truly felt it.

The morning the habit crystallized, I walked into the coworking space wearing a silk skirt (a piece that had been sitting in my closet for months, its price tag still attached because I’d been afraid of looking too much) with a cream V-neck sweater, a blowout, and a soft, daytime makeup look. Like it was normal. Like this was simply who I was.

I caught my reflection and thought: yes. This is normal now.

I looked at everything I had done in those three weeks. The writing. The publishing. The business I was actually building. I looked at all of it and thought, I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to lose this feeling I had been chasing for years: actually looking like the version of myself I had always envisioned, and moving forward in my life at a pace that finally felt like mine.

Was this experiment about clothes? Makeup? A silk skirt with the tag still on?

I don’t think so. I wasn’t trying to become more beautiful.

I was trying to borrow the feeling of being in love.

Because women have always known how to care for themselves when they are in love.

I wondered what would happen if I stopped waiting for someone else to create that feeling for me.

Love is fuel. Love is the force behind so many of our decisions, our postures, our appetites.

Think about the last time you received a text from someone you wanted. What happened to your spine? Your energy? Your sudden, inexplicable desire to go to the gym, eat something beautiful, put your best foot forward? We do extraordinary things in the name of that feeling. So why not make it the center of the day every day?

This experiment taught me that I didn’t want to live at half-voltage anymore. I want every day to feel good, sexy, horny, a little bit alive with wanting. Or else, frankly, what is the point? So I will do everything within my capacity to consciously choose that feeling, beginning with the way I dress. Beginning with treating myself like someone who deserves to be loved, and is worthy of it, on an ordinary week day.

Does that mean going full Audrey Hepburn tomorrow morning?

No. Though I certainly did, and I regret nothing.

It can be one thing. Just one.

A scarf tied to your purse. A few dabs of your favorite lipstick. The sundress instead of the yoga pants.

And what version of yourself appears after you’ve gotten ready?

Just wait and see.