The text had arrived precisely at 11:17 AM on a Sunday morning: EMERGENCY. GET TO CAFE LEON NOW. From my friend Mia.
Who almost never texts in all caps, and only when someone is literally on fire. I threw myself out of bed (halfway up the comforter, I paused to scroll through some Paris Fashion Week runway photos on my phone while lying facedown on the bed and convincing myself that maybe, just maybe, I would shower today) and got dressed in the first clean-ish thing I could grab. Half an hour and one extremely rushed subway ride later, I was hustling into Cafe Leon, eyes peeled for whatever emergency could have caused my friend to treat me to an entire breakfast spread.
And there she was. Sitting at a corner table, nursing a latte with oat milk and looking damn near radiant in a black silk slip dress, bulky loafers, and; wait for it; a fully sequined blazer.
At brunch.
At 11:30 a.m.
On a Sunday. “What’s your emergency?” I panted, collapsing into the chair across from her. I was already mourning my decision to wear raggedy black leggings and an oversized NYU sweatshirt that I’m pretty sure was mine but now belongs to my ex-boyfriend.
If he ever tried to steal it back, I would fight him. Mia looked at me over her latte with an expression of utter peace. “I needed your expert opinion on if this blazer could pass for daywear. I also got you a cortado.” Welcome to my life as someone who has close friends who work in fashion.
Your idea of “emergency” will be forever skewed. But still; she; how that jacket was catching the morning sunlight filtering through the cafe windows, how she’d offset the glitz of the blazer with barely-there makeup and simple footwear; okay, maybe she was onto something. She had hacked the system.
She had discovered how to make the stuff you only wear to nighttime events work for daytime, without looking like you were either catching an uber home after too many drinks or going to audition for the next season of RHONY. “Well?” Mia said, taking another sip of her latte. “It’s…” I trailed off, running a hand through my hair. “It actually works?” she asked, gesturing to herself. “You look like you could own a trendy art gallery cafe or just landed the deal of the century and are meeting me to tell me about it.” She smiled, satisfied. “Yeah! Night clothes but for day! I’m calling it ‘Dawn Luxe.’” “Dawn Luxe” sounds like a low-budget horror film starring Danny DeVito, but fair enough.
Allow me to give you a quick refresher on night luxe, for those who aren’t fortunate (or cursed) enough to live with like three friends in downtown Manhattan who work in fashion. Night luxe is basically the aesthetic that has taken over Instagram for the past year; think velvet robes, cocktail rings, sparkling dissociated shoulders, munching on “aperitivo” you don’t know how to pronounce in scenes clearly FilmedAtNight, generally presenting as what you’d wear if you were a millionaire and also eating dinner at 9PM. It’s less “let’s get fucked up” and more “let’s wear our ugliest mascara and go to a dinner party where jazz will be poorly performed live.” It’s Gwyneth’s wedding dressollection meets Wallpaper Magazine’s Night&Day issue.
Basically, couture colliding with cocktails. Except, now? According to Mia; brunch.
I should preface the rest of this story by saying; Mia was not the first person I’d seen rock this whole “night clothes for day” trend. Two days before Mia texted me in all caps from Cafe Leon, I’d been sitting in a conference room listening to a pitch from a potential advertiser when their head of creative strutted into the room wearing black satin trousers, a simple white tee, and an old-looking crystal-encrusted cardigan. At 9:30 a.m.
On a Tuesday. She looked like a dream; like she belonged at an underground ballroom dance party or maybe at brunch with all of us. Like she knew something about getting dressed that we had all overlooked.
Later that same afternoon, I walked past a woman waiting for the F train wearing a silver lamé skirt, an oversized grey jumper, and well-worn Converse trainers. The whole outfit shouldn’t have worked. White tennis shoes and glittering lam shine?
All the everything You Know macros yelling at me from their respective blogs. And yet…it did. She looked effortlessly cool; like she put some thought into her outfit, unlike the rest of us schlubs in jeans and weekday-entry-level-professional-wear.
I thought of my grandmother, who had staunchly divided her closet into “day clothes” and “night clothes” with absolutely no overlap. She would never have dreamed of wearing something from her night clothes closet before 6 PM, much less in daylight. “Harper, there are rules,” she said to me once when I tried on her floor-length champagne dress at noon.
“You do not wear sequins in the daytime.” If Grandma Grant were still alive, I would break that rule for her. Because fast forward to 2023, y’all: it is 100% acceptable to wear your fanciest, sparkliest clothes to brunch. Okay, maybe not encouraged; but like I can, and there will be people who compliment me on it without thinking twice.
Which brings me to my final point: I am 33 years old, and it’s taken me over three decades to realise that I completely understand the appeal of a sparkling silk cami or a beaded Lady Gaga-worthy jacket that you basically never wear because life just doesn’t… require that. I don’t go to fancy dinners or cocktail parties. Outside of once-a-year weddings, the last time I wore a dress was TWO DAYS AGO, friends.
My life just doesn’t lend itself to wearing stuff from my night clothes closet… and yet I still buy that stuff anyway. I have a whole cocktail dress hung up in my closet that I haven’t worn since in Paris because it’s just a TINY bit too fancy to wear while sightseeing, even though it would be thrilling to wear right this second. Because at some point along the way; I bought into the idea that certain pieces of clothing were just For Special Occasions.
Occasions that, let’s be honest, will probably never come. Instead, I dry-cleaned that barely-worn dress in the basement of my flat building and shoved it back in the closet. But today, friends, today, I challenged the system.
And said dress? It spent all damn day rocking out under a denim jacket as I ran errands and went grocery shopping. I felt… fabulous, frankly.
Important. Like someone who wore killer heels to Target. Inspired by Mia’s coffee dispatch, I spent the next morning pulling out every sacre bleu (what’s my favourite colour again?) evening staple I owned, and wearing them as day clothes.
The vintage crystal-embellished cardigan from Tuesday’s meeting? Jeans and a white tee. Sparkly jacket?
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Ditto. My first mistake was wearing heels, which dialed up the cocktail hour vibe a bit too much. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that, with a few easy tweaks, night luxe could totally work for daytime. {INSERT: VERY WORN jeans, basic white tee, sparkly vintage jacket, old ballet flats} Here’s what I learned.
Rule #1: It’s all about contrast. Slip on a sequined blazer? Pair it with worn-in jeans and a basic tee.
Channel Grandma with a satin slip dress? Throw a cozy cardi over it, or a big ole’ pair of jeans, trainers or chunky boots. BAM.
You’re not going to art gallery opening you’re venting to your friends about at brunch. You’re chill gallery-goer, catching up with your pals. Rule #2: Colour story is key.
Silver glitter with crisp white and denim = intentional daytime attire. Silver glitter with black and red = party time. I’ve found that pairing your sparkly silver with warm neutrals (think camel coat, hot chocolate, butter) is particularly effective day wear.
Bonus points if you own multiple jumpers made out of cashmere. Rule #3: Keep your makeup and hair on fleek for daytime; wink wink. This is perhaps the biggest (no pun intended) rule of wearing night clothes in the day.
If you wanna wear that Stella McCartney scallop-backed top to lunch with your girlfriends, please; for the love of all that is holy; keep your eye makeup casual and your hair down. A tinted moisturizer and lip gloss, bedhead, and maybe a relaxed braided updo are all perfectly acceptable here. Messy hair = daytime.
Perfect hair = you sound way too much like someone getting ready for A BLACK TIE EVENT. Rule #4: Consider your silhouette. Some evening staples lend themselves better to a daytime reinvention than others.
Statement jackets, like blazers or embellished swing jackets, are perfect for topping off jeans or easy separates. Silk camisoles and slip dresses layer well under oversized knits or blazers. Feathers are tough, but could work if you keep the rest of your outfit super-simple (white tee, boyfriend jeans, feather trimmed slides, etc.) The weirdest part of this whole dawn luxe experiment?
People treat you differently when you show up just-a-little-bit dressed up. Not in a bad way, mind you. But different.
Like they think you know something they don’t or maybe you’re meeting someone after brunch who will care if you wear jeans. Something about walking around New York City; what is supposedly the most stylish city in the world; and being the most put-together person in the room just….felt good. Powerful, even.
Case in point: Earlier this week, I was wearing a vintage ’70s cocktail dress I found at Buffalo Exchange (black with subtle gold threading) over a thin white henley, with ripped-up Doc Martens and a denim jacket. The dude at my local bagel shop; who has commented on exactly ZERO of my outfit choices over 3 YEARS OF BUYING BAGELS THERE; stopped slicing bagels mid-chunk to ask, “You going somewhere later?” “Nope,” I said, which was not meant to be deep but honestly kind of was. He nodded, approvingly.
“Cool. I’ll give you extra cream cheese today.” How had I not been doing this sooner? Life just got a little bit more interesting when I realised I could wear sparkly dresses to the bagel shop.
I gave Mia a call that night to fill her in on my worldly observations, plus my newly-formed theory that wearing night clothes in the daytime is actually an act of optimism. An expression of hope that there will be enough good times to go around for you to wear that insanely-overpriced-but-also-100%-handmade-in-Italy dress more than once. Or at least a recognition that yes, this particular day is special enough.
“It’s wholesome,” Mia said, “but also I kind of just didn’t want to wait to wear my new blazer. I only go to, like, three fancy things all year.” Fair point. There is also the very real benefit of getting more wears out of your fancy clothes.
Before dawn luxe, I avoided wearing that beaded jacket outside of “dressy occasions” because the cost-per-wear was enough to make me pass out. Now, I’ve worn that damn jacket three times in the past week and change. My emotionally-priced ($300!) Christian Louboutin-inspired heels have got more pavement time in the past month than they had in the past four years.
Suddenly, my closet is both a place of beauty and practicality. Okay, there are limits.
I will never,in good conscience, wear my thrifted alice + olivia floor-length black silk gown to pick up medication at CVS, though I may or may not have considered driving all the way across Brooklyn to do so last Tuesday.
When I have raging allergies.
I draw the line at full-on ballgowns, and really anything resembling a Prom Dress circa 2007. But besides that…bring on the brunch dresses.
So go! Pull out those bedazzled jackets you’ve been saving for “when the world stops freaking weeee-ing,” and wear them with jeans. Try that silk cami under a jumper instead of that third blouse you own that’s exactly identical to it.
Slip into those feather heal pumps with some skinny jeans and a tee and tell me how it feels to own a literal garment designer dreamed up in the middle of the night. Own that dang sundae,kir by wearing something sparkly to pick up your kid from school. Or, you know.
Wear your sparkly clothes when you pick up your kids from school. Your call. I, for one, will be wearing my silver lamé skirt to a breakfast meeting tomorrow.
With an oversized grey jumper and flat boots. #BusinessInTheTopPartyOnTheBottom for days.
