Outfit of the Week: Lydia Deetz Goes to the Beach

If I had a white flag, I’d wave it. I’m done with winter even if winter isn’t done with me. I thought that picking out an ideal beach look for the vacation that I’m going on in my head might be a good way to alleviate some of the stress associated with knowing that I’m going to leave the office in a few hours and go outside into temperatures in the teens, but then I remembered that I am not exactly an ideal beach-goer, either, what with my pale skin, love for black and tendency to perspire.

I pretty much always look a little like Daria or one of her entertainment-world kin, with my heavy boots and dark wardrobe and creatively colored hair, but that comparison is never more apt than when I’m put on a beach with hundreds of people wearing bright bathing suits and wildly printed cover-ups. In that context, I am more or less Beetlejuice heroine Lydia Deetz, made famous by late-80s Winona Ryder, and dammit, Lydia Deetz wants to go to the beach today. (Fun fact: I’ve never seen Little Women or read Anne of Green Gables or any of that adorable girlchild stuff, but I watched Beetlejuice literally dozens of times as a kid, which probably explains some of my present-day sartorial choices.)