you don't have to wear sequins on new year's eve
five festive outfit ideas & my only "in" for 2025.
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MY FRIDGE IS FULL of soggy Christmas leftovers—five spice chicken drumsticks and hoisin pork ribs squished together atop a bed of coagulated sauces. Flecks of ginger are lodged in the goopy morass. I know it’s not ideal to throw everything in one container but I don’t care. Call it tupperware-maxxing.
There are only three days left in 2024.
I can’t bring myself to cook, so I’ve been picking away at this glass sarcophagus of meat for the past few days. I am sick of it, but leftovers must be eaten. I press “6-0” on the microwave, then grab my hot bowl and scuttle back to the TV to binge the new season of Squid Game.
People say the days between Christmas and New Year’s are a surreal blur. Time passes differently. Routines are disrupted, and this can be disorienting. But it is also a rare window of time (in America, at least) when the social construct of ‘capitalist time’ is laid bare—do we actually need to be working from 9-5? So everyone worked less than 40 hours this week and the company didn’t fall apart lol. Sunday scaries become the Monday scaries become the Tuesday scaries. We wonder “what day is it even???” but what if that’s not a bad thing—to stop tracking time?
When I think about it like this, the weird “end of year” blur is an opportunity to imagine what our lives could look like if we didn’t have to structure our lives around the capitalist clock. It is a privilege to live this way, but it shouldn’t be.
This is my only “in” for 2025: owning our own time.
On that note, I’d like to talk about another social construct today:
The idea that a proper New Year’s Eve outfit has to include sequins, glitter, or something “dazzling.”
See my point below.
While I do enjoy an smart sequined skirt (Rachel Comey and Jil Sander have made some gorgeous ones), I find the marketing of the *NYE sequin dress* stale and uninspiring. It’s not about the individual choice to wear sequins.
It’s the inescapable cookie-cutter slideshows of gold and silver sequin dresses sold as the solution to an “appropriately festive” NYE outfit. This also encourages the mass production of plastic-based sequins for fast fashion garments, rather than using sequins with an intentional design POV.
So if you want to express festivity on your own terms (or have no interest in wearing a Dorsey reviere necklace), here are five NYE outfit ideas to get the ideas flowing.
*affiliate links denoted with asterisk
1) animal print coat + colored tights
I’d wear this to: dinner and a show (you’ll be the coolest gal at coat check!), NYE party hosted by your equally fashion-obsessed friends.
This Bambi print coat is an easy conversation starter, especially at parties. Btw, did you see the Orion Carloto Bambi socks* that just came out? What makes this outfit fun is the extra short hem of the coat that shows off the baby blue tights. Wear a miniskirt underneath for coverage and comfort.
This coat was a Japanese eBay buy—I’ve sourced more of this exact piece for past drops on my secondhand sonar google doc (paid reader perk), and will continue to add any more I find! Will do a sweep for cute deer stuff this week ;)
2) space buns + silk separates
I’d wear this to: Babygirl movie date on NYE, or post-work drinks (if you work at that kind of office).
This is perhaps the only outfit I’ve worn that actually passes the “day to night” test: