I want to dress like it's Valentine's Day every day

All those colorful heart prints make my real human heart so damn happy.

One of the best things about Valentine’s Day is its color palette. There, I said it.

When I was younger and studied fashion magazines on the regular, I had certain ideas about what colors could and could not be paired together. Most notably, I avoided wearing blue with green, brown with black – and pink with red. These just seemed like incontrovertible fashion rules to me. As a personal style nerd attending an arts high school, honestly I could’ve worn way wackier stuff than I did and gotten away with it just fine, but I was still nervous to violate certain norms for whatever reason.

I allowed myself to break the pink-and-red rule just one day a year: Valentine’s Day. In 2008 I wore a red shirt with pink striped tights. In 2011 I rocked a pink striped dress with red cowboy boots. In 2013 I wore a red heart-print dress with pink leather handcuffs. Putting together these outfits always felt exciting, courageous, and transgressive to me in some way – but I don’t think the color pairing was the reason for that. I think I felt ever-so-slightly embarrassed to be wearing an ensemble that so earnestly accepted Valentine’s Day – and therefore love itself – as being worthy of celebration.

I mean, I was a teen. A lot of the kids who floated past me in the halls at school were decked out in tight jeans, goth black dresses, chunky and self-serious Doc Martens… and then I’d twirl into view in my pinks and reds, with a flower in my hair. It felt vulnerable and scary and yet I knew it was a true expression of my heart, and of who I wanted to be.

With V-Day coming up this week, I’m thinking about romantic style again, and even put together a Pinterest board of “lovecore” looks. I am genuinely wondering, after a year of so many baggy grey T-shirts and sad black sweatpants, if maybe I should rework my wardrobe so I can start dressing like one of Cupid’s disciples when the world reopens again.

There’s a lot of discourse about how women “should” dress, at every age but especially as they get older. I’m nearing 30; it would be a bold choice for me to start dressing every day like a kindergarten teacher passing out paper valentines, a big-hearted manic pixie dream girl, or a runway model for a romance-themed Kate Spade collection. But I’m a freelance writer. Hardly anyone even sees what I’m wearing when there’s not a global pandemic. Why not utilize the freedom my career affords me as much as I can? Why not attire myself like a quirky old woman who sells vintage valentines on Etsy and has a delightful crush on the man who runs the post office where she ships her wares? Why not wear what Marilyn Monroe would wear if she’d been invited to perform at a Valentine’s ball? Why not dress like a professional matchmaker splashed in eau de l’amour?

I read this New York Magazine article when I was 15; it’s about people who only wear one color, and it has stuck with me for many years. Even then, I admired the courage, the tenacity, the dedication it would take to live one’s life that way. Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the sense that for every person who’d harass or harangue you for dressing in head-to-toe blue all the time, there’d be at least 3 or 4 other people whose entire day would be made by seeing you in your cute little monochromatic outfit.

I feel similarly about the idea of turning my wardrobe into an ode to love. I’m sure a lot of people would hate it and find it weird. But those are not the people I dress for. Life is too damn short; I want to adorn myself in hearts and walk down the street shining like the sparkly bow on a Valentine’s Day present.