Do It Yourself

Dear Jeepers:

What's your take on understated neutrals versus crazy colorful? I'm about to go on my annual Spring/Summer major shopping spree, and I feel torn in two directions.

Verity Whittelspoon


Dear Verity:

We're going to come down on the side of crazy colorful. And lots of pattern. Which way would you lean, Verity, if you had to make all your own clothes?

Someone needs to invent a machine that lets people design and print their own fabrics in the comfort of their own homes. This is how it would work: You'd buy a white dress, say, and bring it home. It would hang in the closet until the day you decided to pull it out. "I feel like peach polka dots today," you might say. Just punch a few buttons on the Pattern Plus XE 4000, lay the dress flat on the Input Belt, and 18 seconds later, you've got a dotted dress, sister! Within 72 hours, the dots would fade away, and you'd be left again with a plain white dress, ready for your next inspiration. Why doesn't this machine exsist?

Maybe Karl Marx would be horrified at our anti-labor fantasy. Polka dots, flowers, and stripes don't just magically appear on skirts. Someone had to think them up, draw them, TK, TK, and TK! (We're not clear on the process.)

Workers, unite!

Jeepers