Happy Birthday Extravaganza

Happy Birthday to someone dear and special whom I love! Happy Birthday to me this month! Inspired (hypnotized?) after spending precious, irretrievable hours pouring over Anna Dello Russo's crazy ridiculous bedazzling blog, lured by her extravagant style and fashion philosophy, watching more ADR dance videos and ADR mugging for the camera than anyone can rightly justify, I find myself compelled to share this very apropos birthday cake gif. Sugared roses! Flickering candles! So ridiculous and retro but mesmerizing. It is that absurd fascination that kept me scrolling down and down and down....until I discovered this gem of a testament among all the bewildering ADRisms.... This is number 6 from her "10 Top Rules for Your Closet":

6. In front of a dress to KILL or to KEEP,
ask yourself:
future generations ‘ll want to see it?
Your cabinet must follow
the GEOLOGY’s criteria:
the older stones are to be on the bottom,
the younger eras must be layered on top.
In your closet’s SECTION you can
read the HISTORY of fashion.

I love the idea of putting a dress through the stylistic test of time. Would I still cherish this twenty years from now? Would I pass this down to my daughter? More importantly, would she want to inherit it? And I especially adore the concept of organizing one's closet by era. Excavating, re-evaluating, purging, reshuffling.... For someone who fantasizes about one day becoming an old granny with purple hair and a filled-to-the-brim consignment shop, this is a revelation. Why wait to own a vintage boutique when you can start the chronological timeline in your own closet?

Admittedly, regretfully, there aren't a lot of colors or bedazzled jewels or extravagant statement pieces in my closet. Anna would no doubt die of boredom, preferring to torch the site than to examine it piece by piece like a more patient archaeologist might. But history? Absolutely. Some of that history might be dead weight just waiting to be obliterated. But others are buried and neglected treasures waiting to see the light of day again. And then there's the emotional history that will resurface with an excavation of the closet: the old blue-and-white turtleneck sweater from a long winter in New York (sentiments forgotten but clinging on by the thread); the paisley dress worn once for a sister's gorgeous wedding in the hills (bittersweet memories of the now-distant past); the never-worn but perfect-fitting LBD that will be lovely to slip into on a warm L.A. evening (history on the verge of being made...). And still, always, somehow...there is room for more. Another birthday, another year, another dress to kill or keep, another stone inching its way down the pile and a new one triumphantly taking its place. I definitely have my share of old stones to unearth and reexamine.

But first, let us eat birthday cake! Maybe in a few more birthdays from now someone will find a way to make scratch-and-sniff, puffy-sticker versions of cake gifs. Now that would be very retro.