It takes me under 12 minutes to lose an ornament on the Bode Christmas tree dress. I cannot, for the life of me, tell you how I lost it so quickly. All I know is that between leaving my West Village apartment at 7:02pm and walking into Chez Margaux at 7:14pm, a wooden bell fell off the green tulle hem and onto, most likely, the cement wasteland of 13th Street. By 7:22pm, I was on my hands and knees looking for the festive figurine under a table as my friend’s iPhone cast a light across the bar that was so bright several people began to stare.
“Did you lose an earring?” a waiter asked as he held a tray of martinis.
“No, uh, sorry – an ornament.”
“A what?”
“An ornament,” I said from the floor. “Do you know if anyone has found a small wooden bell?”
He paused. “I… I don’t think so.”
A week earlier I was on Bode’s website browsing for Christmas gifts when I stumbled upon an item beautiful in its bizarreness: a green tulle and sequined dress shaped like a Christmas tree decorated with dozens of vintage ornaments. The first thing that came to mind was, Can you even wear this? That was quickly answered by a blurb below: Founder Emily Bode wore it to her brand’s Christmas party in 2022. The next thing that came to mind: Who would wear this?
I knew, deep down, the answer was me.
Usually, my style is, well, pretty boring. My favourite colour is navy, I have three drawers dedicated to various sweaters, and this year I asked for penny loafers for Christmas. (I already own a pair, but you can never have too many.) Yet I’ve always been innately curious about clothing that, in the words of Susan Sontag, “dethrones the serious”: Katy Perry wearing a chandelier to the Met Gala, Lenny Kravitz draped in a scarf bigger than himself, Rihanna going to dinner in a red fur heart-shaped Saint Laurent jacket. What if, for one night, that could be me?
So after pitching the story to my editors here at Vogue, I emailed Bode to see if I could test-drive the Christmas tree dress. They agreed.
On a Thursday afternoon, it arrived at the Vogue office. My co-workers gathered around as I unzipped the garment bag with the same fascination as an archaeologist opening an Egyptian tomb. With a quick tug, tufts of green tulle sprang free from the bag. Someone beside me went to touch it. “Careful now,” I say, like some kind of fashion Indiana Jones. “It’s extremely fragile.”
If you think the Bode Christmas tree dress looks like a costume, that’s because it basically is. Bode was inspired by the Eastern Onion Singing Telegram Service, whose entertainers wear festive and homemade costumes to perform their singing telegram skits at homes, schools, and offices. “I loved the medley of nostalgic ornaments and the overall volume of the costume when worn,” she tells Vogue. For months, Bode sourced vintage and antique ornaments, including bulbs, plastic candies, and wooden miniatures such as instruments, birds, and a sleigh.
Retailing at roughly £3,000, it’s not a dress intended for a mass audience. The wearer of the Bode Christmas tree dress is someone who puts no price on novelty, who believes high camp is high fashion. It’s like the clothing version of the Maurizio Cattelan banana: cheeky, a little ridiculous, and guaranteed to get people talking.
Especially, I discovered, when they are drunk. While my friends at Chez Margaux were all on their first martinis – and their social graces relatively intact – when I arrived at my next stop, the Nolita Italian restaurant Emilio’s, most people in the room had drunk several. And they had lots of questions.
“Did you lose a bet?” a man asked, his voice slurred, as he bumped into my table. I smiled and assured him that I did not. He looked me up and down, unconvinced, while squinting at a wooden bird. “So if you didn’t lose a bet… why are you wearing this?”
At this point, his friend had come over. He was less concerned about why I was wearing it. Instead, he wanted to know how. “Can you sit down in that thing?” he asked.
I mumbled some vague response. The truth, however? I hadn’t figured that last part out yet. My butt was covered in ornaments, including large baubles and pointy wooden edges. If I sat straight down, they went places that large baubles and pointy wooden edges should never go. The other option was to fluff out the skirt over the chair. But the delicate tulle got crammed in the back, risking damage to the dress. Mostly, I just stood around while regretting my choice to wear high heels.
So lost in thought was I about the whole sitting thing that I didn’t notice one of the drunk men was now pushing past me. “’Scuse me, sorry,” he said as the whole dress jingled and jostled. Then I heard it: the now distinctive whomp of an ornament hitting the floor.
“Fuck!” I shout, but then the men grow bored of our conversation and head back to their table to talk about golf. My friend Larry puts his hand on my shoulder. “I have a hot-glue gun in my apartment,” he says. I consider taking him up on it.
An hour later, I’m squeezing through the door of a Toyota Corolla with the dexterity of a cat burglar avoiding red beam lasers during a jewel heist. Except if this was an Ocean’s Eleven-style robbery, the alarm would have been set off long ago. After several minutes of flailing, I’ve found myself in a bizarre yet ornament-friendly position of sitting on my shins while holding onto the headrest for balance. “Sorry, it just takes me a few minutes to get in,” I tell my UberX driver. He doesn’t bother to turn around.
My friend Savannah climbs in next to me. I’ve asked her to take pictures of me tonight; my editor said we needed “real images” to accompany the story. She pulls out her phone, takes a shot, and then stares at it for several seconds. “Are you, uh, sure you want a picture of this?” Savannah asks, flashing me the screen. After a brief look, I realise I definitely don’t. The temperature is in the twenties, so I put a Toteme velvet evening coat over the dress while we were in transit. Instead of toning down the boldness of the look, it further accentuates its triangular shape, making me look like Violet Beauregarde midway through morphing into a blueberry.
Our destination is LoveShackFancy founder Rebecca Hessel Cohen’s house for her holiday party. I’m not really feeling up for it; frankly, at this point, I’m a little sick of being gawked at. But when I open the door, I realise Cohen has turned her home into a de facto winter wonderland, covered with frosted cakes, candles, and several Christmas trees. If there were any place where my outfit would be appreciated, it would be here. Could I finally – dare I say it – sleigh?
Indeed, within minutes, I’m the most popular girl at the party. “You look like Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2!” Natalie, a photographer I know, shouts over the DJ. Another partygoer interjects: “It’s giving Martha May Whovier!” One even recognises it as Bode, essentially re-creating a popular Devil Wears Prada meme in the process: “Are you wearing the….” “Bode Christmas tree dress? Yes, yes I am.” Every time I walk in front of a Christmas tree, someone asks me to take a picture in front of it. (Another Sontag quote comes to mind: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theatre.”)
But it’s getting late, and this dress is made for a good time, not a long time. So just before midnight, like a Christmas Cinderella, I crawl back into an Uber and sit on my shins for the final time. Every ornament is exactly in place. Then I hear a small bang as something hits the ground. And for the final time that night, I swear to the holiday heavens.
