Finding my style in Rome

Some days during my European life, there is little to disabuse me of the notion that I’ve slid sideways into a rom-com. On one particular sun-drenched spring morning, I was drifting flotsam-like through the streets of Rome near the Pantheon. I washed up at La Casa del Caffè Tazza d’Oro and savored a shaved-ice-turned-creamy-espresso that is a granita coffee. I tilted my face towards the sun, only moving to shift my chair whenever the cafe’s shadow threatened to interrupt my pagan worship of our star. The shadow finally won and blocked out the entire urban canyon I was sitting in, so I got up to wander around the Pantheon herself a few times, admiring those historic curves from every angle. On my third driveby of my favorite Roman building, my eye caught a bold and bright color palette that stared at me through a clothing boutique window. I’ve never been much of a fashionista, and typically I avoid boutiques altogether, but the draw of magenta and lime was irresistible and I let it suck me in. I entered a two-room shop the same size as my German bedroom and was greeted by one-off designer pieces in a tantalizing range of clean colors and fabrics and cuts. I ran a hand over each of their arms, the different fabrics dancing under my fingers in a silky and fuzzy and soft parade.

I was both mesmerized by possibility and daunted by reality. My body has many perks, but that list does not include a slim or typically-proportioned figure: my wide shoulders had been a boon during my high-school varsity swimming days and a bane in the narrow-shouldered world of feminine fashion, and my strong, “thicc” bottom half had rejected nearly every pair of pants it had ever touched. So it was with great trepidation that I finally picked out a shirt that looked about the right size. I strip-searched the entire thing and found no information attached to it besides its surprisingly reasonable price. There was no size listed anywhere on it. Weird. I checked its two neighbors and again came up empty. A one-size-fits-all store didn’t bode well in a world I already struggled to fit into. 

I took a leap of faith, and tugged the shirt on over my tanktop. My Michael-Phelps shoulders slithered all the way into the fabric and my head popped out. I looked in the mirror and locked eyes with my own shocked expression. It fit! I didn’t like the cut, but it fit! Emboldened, I pulled it off and searched for another. The second one was also sizeless, also the only one like it in the entire store, and…it fit too. Had I found a door into Narnia?

The shop’s tiny size meant my bewildered and delighted expression was not missed by the petite shopkeeper, who was busy cooing over a shy teenager who’d come out of the dressing room wearing a flattering chartreuse sweater and – more surprisingly – a faint smile, tinged with hope. The girl’s parents and the shopkeeper piled compliments atop the girl, causing her bashful smile to grow. After gently pushing another sweater into her hands and shooing her back into the changing room, the shopkeeper beelined over to me and introduced herself as Alice during a rapid-fire presentation of one piece after the other. With my age has (finally) come some wisdom, and now I know with a glance when something absolutely is my style, when it absolutely is not, and most critically, when it wasn’t until the moment I laid eyes on it. Within a minute Alice had grabbed and shown me ten pieces and I accepted or deflected them just as quickly. I dove headfirst into the first winner, a flowing sapphire A-line shirt sporting a cheekily stiff collar and an unconventional fit that I adored. As I swiveled in front of the mirror like some kind of Disney princess who had found her fairy godmother, I spied the second piece I’d be taking with me, a short-sleeved amethyst sweater dress with a cozy turtleneck. When I put it on, it hugged me like an old friend. Somebody cue the string quartet! I’m ready for my ballroom entrance!

Alice quickly abandoned the graphic tees she’d brandished at me (not knowing they had comprised about 94% of my wardrobe until that day) and finally pointed at the most unexpected piece: a wispy navy-and-amber number with puffy sleeves AND shoulders, something I would never have dared to even look at twice before that fateful Tuesday in Rome. I held out both hands in the international “gimme” gesture. I fell into its wispy embrace and was enamored with it before I’d even tugged down the second sleeve. It had only been fifteen minutes since I’d stepped foot in the shop, but something indescribable had shifted. The experience – and I say this in earnest – was the final nail in the coffin of my youthful graphic-tee era.

Of course, there were a few differences between reality and an actual Roman rom-com. I stayed with my three pieces rather than going on a wardrobe-replacement shopping spree, acknowledging that bank accounts and magic have their limits. The Roman barista who taught me over the course of four consecutive mornings how to correctly pronounce my coffee order was a septuagenarian woman. The old Roman man who chatted me up in the shadow of the Colosseum during the infamous Sunday promenade frankly seemed more interested in himself than in me. But. The young Roman man with the ice-blue eyes who asked me in rapid succession to take his photo, then to take a selfie with him, then kissed me on the side of the mouth during said selfie, then asked me for a date that evening and gave me his phone number? Yeah, okay, that last part tracks.

Or it would have if I didn’t already have a date for that night with myself and Rome and an e-bike.

C’est la vie.