I was a teenager the first time I ever saw that cliché involving two women who discover they’ve worn the same dress to a party. The first woman would enter full of confidence, a sashay in her step as she showed off her new dress, only to stop dead in her tracks when she discovered that another woman in the room was wearing the exact same thing. Egad, how embarrassing!

The first time I saw that, I didn’t get it. Not even a little bit. I just couldn’t understand what the problem was.

Of course, the first time I saw that, I was in my early teen years, and my friends and I happened to like wearing the same thing. We’d call each other up the night before, discuss what we’d wear the next day, and voilà, we’d show up as twins, triplets, or quadruplets—wearing matching sets so that the entire school would know we were all the best of friends, sharing the same mind of the same irresistable borg.

Well, I’m an adult now. I don’t do that sort of thing, and I have my own boring way of dressing lately that I’m not likely to wear what someone else is wearing on a certain day. So for a long, long time I haven’t had to experience that duplicate party dress cliché. Instead, I’d find myself amused as I watched it happen to other people—amused, because I still didn’t understand what the problem was.

My creative director at work, for instance, always managed to match someone in the building at least twice or three times a week. If he happened to wear blue jeans and a certain shade of red shirt on Monday, inevitably someone in purchasing or merchandising would be wearing the same thing. If it’s a grey-green shirt the next day, he might match one of the executives,… dark blue on Wednesday, someone in admin.

I watched this happen for a year and actually thought it was neat, but every time it happened he would stand there with his arms spread low, palms open, and mouth gaping open as if to say, “Now, come on. What is up with this? Who said you could wear that today?”

Those of us in his department would tease him about the situation. “Come on, admit it,” we’d say. “You guys called each other up last night and planned what you’d wear.” As if two men in their late 30s would be chatting on the phone late at night with gossip and giggles, planning what to wear. Or we’d tease him about his psychic abilities and his mental connection to certain people.

Then it started happening to me. I’d wear blue jeans, a black sweater and black boots, and a couple of people would be wearing the same thing. Grey-blue turtleneck, grey-blue thermal shirt. It didn’t seem that big of a deal at first because the match wasn’t quite exact; they might be wearing sneakers to my boots, a sweatshirt to my sweater, or short sleeves to my long sleeves, so that the match was more in color than in cut. But later, it became evident that two or three other women and I like to look through the same racks at Target. My black blouse with the white stripes, my purple hooded sweater, my tan hooded sweatshirt—the exact same brand, style, and color could be found in various other closets, and I’d have to be careful or I’d inadvertently call attention to my cheap wardrobe.

Finally, one of the women put her foot down. “You know,” she said. “We’re going to have to agree on this: I’ll wear this shirt only during the first half of the week, and you wear it during the second half. That way, we know for sure that we won’t wear the same thing on the same day.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

Then today, because she had run out of clean clothes, she wore hers… just as I decided to wear mine, and now, with us having matched each other from sneakers to sweatshirt, I completely understand the feeling behind the duplicate party dress cliché. I understand it now because compared to her tan hooded Target sweatshirt, mine (with all its lint balls and cat hair) seriously needed a good laundering or two. Maybe even three. Ew, now the whole world knows that I haven’t done laundry in ages, and I actually had the gall to wear something I’d already worn once or twice without washing…

Egad, how embarrassing!

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