YTH. ANN: I just bought a new skirt to walk my dog ​​with. I say it out loud to everyone at Encore Consignment & Bridal Boutique: “This is my new walking dog skirt.” The cashier smiled supportively. The other person in the shop said “yes!” I feel victorious. What happened to me

DEAR READERS: It’s happening to all of us, and it’s 2020! And thank goodness, because how else can we get a real-life understanding of historical tropes like “Civil War tore apart families?” Or “can rodent control and sanitation help the outbreak spread?”

Obviously the metaphors come true for you, Reader, are of people dressed up to walk in the woods or meadows. It’s not from a specific history lesson, but is definitely a thing of art and literature – characters talk about jewels they will need to be pinched or pressed or whatever to wear as they slowly walk through parks or fields or small hills. Or paintings of ancient Europeans in bustle, hats and gloves, all for a special standing in the park.

If you think about something about these sketches before the 2020 quarantine, it might be, “I guess that’s all they have to wear” or “I think they just look endlessly fancy.” Apparently not. It turns out that when the highlight of your day is the constitution in the green space closest to your home, and there’s nothing else on your schedule that requires dressing at all, it turns out that you’re dressed for the garden. You think about what to wear in nature’s company because that is one way to keep the planning and color coordination parts of your brain from slacking off. And suddenly the women in the painting didn’t look like idiots. They looked like steel, like caring and resilient high priestesses, carrying the traditions of their ancestors before those who did the same even in the past with animal skins and bay leaves.

Good for you, reader, for passing on that legacy. To dress like the day is important, to shop locally, and to delight the audience as you step in a make-up known as your dog’s walking skirt.

YTH. ANN: My extended family took advantage of the oddities of 2020 to finally do the thing we’ve been talking about for years, which is not to exchange holiday gifts. On the one hand, I still feel relieved not to think about gifts for people I don’t meet very often. On the other hand, for the first time in my adult life, I was facing January without a new stack of soap and lip balm in a holiday gift pack. How do I progress?

DEAR READERS: Congratulations on granting agency extraordinary self-care routines! For the first time in your adult life you will choose your own textures and fragrances, the things that define your daily disposition. And if you think your disposition is not affected by the use of gift soap that you secretly find smelly, you are wrong, because I assure you that throughout that soap’s life, you emit traces of arrogant contempt wherever you go.

But not anymore. As a picker of your own hand soap, shower gel and lip protector and anything you don’t get in exchange for a family gift that you don’t have, you are completely responsible for the fragrance you breathe and the attitude you produce.

Be wary of post-holiday barn wash sales, as it is as logical as picking up a 70% discounted glittery cake scented product yourself, which will only send you back to where you started, rolling your eyes, this time just beating yourself up. Take 2020’s oddities one step further. Come forward. Be the boss of your balm.

any question? Send it on annrosenquistfee.com (click Ann’s Fashion Fortunes).

Ann Rosenquist Fee is the executive director of the Saint Peter Arts Center and host of Live from the Arts Center, a musical performance and interview Thursday from 1-2pm on KMSU 89.7FM.