Four girls, one Prius, and 3,365 miles between New York City and Los Angeles.
Four girls, one Prius, and 3,365 miles between New York City and Los Angeles. But what daunted me most throughout the road trip was not the possibility of a tire popping in the middle of nowhere, or whether oat milk would be accessible across the country, or if our flimsy car would get blown away in a storm. No, I had stress dreams about what clothes I would pack.
My twin sister, Maisy, and I grew up in Southern California between Santa Barbara and Ojai. When it came time to attend college, she chose to go to Connecticut and I headed to New York City. She studies photography, I study fashion writing, and although we’ve grown to be different people, there is truly no one who can ground me like her. Our sisters are treasures and there is no one else I would be able to stand driving across the country with in a tiny white Prius other than her and my two roommates, Maria and Beanie. Sometimes a tiny New York City apartment can also feel like a cramped car hurtling through space at 90 miles per hour.
Maria grew up between Moscow and London, and Beanie between Cape Town and London. Somehow the three of us found each other in New York and have been strangely inseparable since. I asked them to join us on the road trip because America is so much bigger than New York. I wanted to explore tiny land-locked towns, cities with lakes that look like oceans, and dusty roadside tourist traps. I also hadn’t been home in over a year. I craved California.
Gaultier on the Go
I won’t bore you with my final packing list but I will say that by the time the trunk was shut and seatbelts were buckled, our rearview mirror was unusable and we had to strap a massive bag to the top of the Prius that, by the end of the trip, was not only encrusted with dead bugs, but also left a permanent dent in the hood of the car because it was so heavy. In our defense, Maisy and I had to pack for an entire summer of living away from home. Although, I will admit it was excessive. I probably could have left my Prada butterfly kitten heels at home.
My road trip companion was a blue and red denim Jean Paul Gaultier bag that hung from the crook of my arm everywhere we went, whether I wandered through the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois or hiked above the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It fit all of the road trip essentials: lip gloss, water bottle, melted peanut butter cups, Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes, and my growing collection of postcards from each state. I wrote one every day and sent it to the boy I loved in New York, affixing stamps with various state flowers and slipping them into post office boxes in places like Elmore, Ohio, where the entire town consisted of a bank, post office, and a few restaurants and cafes where we ordered iced coffees and contemplated buying a piece of inexpensive land to share. At Mount Rushmore in South Dakota we walked past signs telling visitors that smoking isn’t allowed and guns must be left in the car. Every state’s flag billowed above, creating a runway down to four faces carved into the mountain known by indigenous Lakota people as the Six Grandfathers before it was chiseled in 1941 into the monument we know now. This mountain was and still is a sort of spiritual battle ground surrounded by an amphitheater, 50 flags, and a hot dog stand. I stood there shading my eyes and contemplating America’s history while Gaultier was slung over my shoulder.
Mary Janes in the Mountains
Maisy isn’t as fashionably inclined as I am. But she is also the right-brained one between the two of us and planned the entire road trip after I said we could just “go with the flow.” Bless her heart. Maisy raises her eyebrows when I tell her how much I spend on The RealReal, rolls her eyes when I ask her if she wants to know the brand of my new shoes, and, despite being a photography nerd, barely knows any fashion photographers. However, she has style. She’s a simplistic gal with Jane Birkin-esque long dirty blonde hair and perfect bangs that she’s trimmed herself since high school. She’s got her classics on rotation: tailored Ganni jeans, fitted Brandy Melville t-shirts, and black leather Mary Jane ballet flats that she acquired while studying abroad in Rome. One of her multiple film cameras are always the chicest accessory on top of her immaculately stacked silver jewelry. And we always wear matching hoop earrings. Always.
I assumed that Maisy’s simple style would fit right in at our first stop on the road trip in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. One of the lessons this trip taught us was to never say no to a free place to stay, so we stopped in a Pennsylvania town we had never heard of to stay with one of Maisy’s college friends. She put us up in her attic, which wasn’t an attic at all, but a life-sized dollhouse with pastel purple and blue walls and bunny rabbit pillows on the beds. Teenage rebellion had taken over half of the room with A$AP Rocky and Amy Winehouse posters plastered over painted daisies and white picket fences. Our host was kind enough to invite us to the Sewickley Country Club’s summer barbecue, so we changed into our bikinis — mine was an exceptionally skimpy one. Though simple, Maisy’s style was nothing like the conservative bubble of East Coast suburbia. Her ballet flats and jeans stood out against boat shoes and Vineyard Vines khakis. As everyone washed off winter in the pool, we queued for hot dogs and hamburgers and then ate tiny desserts also shaped like hot dogs and hamburgers. I encouraged Maria and Beanie to take it all in. This was the quintessential landscape of an American country club. Murky waters, sunburnt noses, and a not-so-shocking lack of diversity.
Maisy wore her Mary Jane ballet flats every day of the trip. We got caught in the middle of a rainstorm outside of Chicago and waited it out in a gas station. While we were all distracted by a group of Amish smoking cigarettes, eating pizza, and driving in a van, Maisy accidentally stepped in a puddle. Her feet remained dry, proving the resilience of her leather vestibules, while the London girls gawked at the Amish people they previously thought only existed in TLC TV shows. Maisy wore her Mary Janes in national parks through South Dakota and Utah and in the mountains of Colorado when we hiked up Boulder Creek. At the end of the day, she just wiped the dirt off.
Wedges in Wyoming
Maria won’t be caught dead in a flat shoe. When faced with a road trip of unpredictable terrain and guaranteed pit stops in national parks, she packed her leather wedge booties, the same pair she wears every day in New York. Most often they’re paired with low-waisted baggy corduroys or a pair of men’s plaid shorts that end just below her knee. Maria loves silver belts and bangles, and layers fur vests over tops that she sews for herself out of old bedsheets. She is a fine art student who spends her free time hunched over a sculpture, spray painting on our fire escape, or scribbling on synthetic skin with her tattoo gun. Maria is also a dedicated rock collector and left ample space in her luggage in preparation for the rocks she wanted to bring back from the trip. In order to allow this space, she packed a very limited amount of clothing, but the wedges were a necessity.
The Great Plains of South Dakota quickly turned into white rock that jutted from the earth like pale sand castles. Badlands National Park resembled the moon but instead of hopping weightlessly from rock to rock in astronaut attire, we had our Mary Janes and boots. Maria climbed around and collected moon rocks — angular chunks that she would later sketch from every angle. We scrambled up slippery slopes in our subversive footwear, scuffing and tearing at their materials. A few hours later we pulled over to the side of the freeway for two emergencies: Beanie needed to pee and Maria needed to spray paint her tag on a cargo train stopped on the tracks. So she scaled the side of the massive metal mobile and left her mark in black paint. We all squatted in the Great Plains but made sure not to pee onto our shoes — they couldn’t take much more.
Dresses in the Desert
Perhaps it was my desire to feel superior in a way that nobody else understood, but I wore a minidress to Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. I grew up in nature and spent many high school years backpacking and hiking, but I felt out of practice after living in the city. Maybe I wanted people to look at me and judge my clothes instead of the fact that I was out of breath on the shortest hike in the park. The dress was off-the-shoulder and had two strings that I cinched in little bows above and below my bust. The blue, white, and gray gingham pattern perfectly clashed with my camouflage baseball hat. It was neutral enough. I wasn’t trying to distract from the scenery, only my own athletic inadequacy. When we approached the massive stone arch that stretched several hundred feet above us, I realized I would need to climb, and these tourists were about to receive a show. I made it to the crux of the arch where we could look out at the sprawling rocks and try not to get blown away in the desert wind. I kept my thighs glued together and balanced tediously on the edge of the very steep cliff. Usually my balance is flawless. As I climbed down, I got some laughs from the other tourists, but they wore tie dyed t-shirts and incredibly ugly sneakers and sandals that couldn’t be justified no matter how sensible they were. I was the only one in a minidress and that is one thing I could feel proud of. I found the balance between existing not only as a freak of nature but also as a part of it.
Cargos in the Club
Beanie is the final installment of this article/packing list because she had the item that got passed around the most: a pair of cargo mini shorts. Maria borrowed them in Wisconsin, I snagged them in Arizona, and Maisy was the encore in Nevada. Beanie wore them while curling up in the back seat of the Prius while knitting her rainbow scarf, calling her ten-year-old sister on the phone multiple times a day, and twirling her naturally platinum hair around her finger. Beanie is a bit posh, but we don’t hold it against her. She provides the Gimaguas and Paloma Wool for the group and makes sure everyone gets sufficient cigarette breaks even when we’re on a tight schedule.
I don’t know what brand Beanie’s cargo shorts were but they had buckles on each side and one of them broke so it had to be tied with a hairband. Regardless of their minor dysfunction, they were cute and short and a bit baggy. They paired perfectly with our various boots, wedges, and Mary Janes — so much so that Maisy wore them to the club when we got to Las Vegas. We stayed at the Motel 6 on the strip where crazy characters tried to sell us tickets to the Sphere and men stared at us in our bikinis but it was so hot that we truly had no other choice but to lay starfish in the pool. The concrete burned my feet even through my shoes and we all showered and got dressed for everyone’s first and most likely last night out in Vegas. Maria wore her wedges which were now caked in dust and desperately needed to be resoled. I felt a newfound sass in my miniskirt and boots as we walked to the liquor store to get drinks to sip in the shade as we waited for the sun to go down. Despite my dress in the desert and Jean Paul Gaultier bag, I hadn’t felt like myself for most of the road trip because of my limited wardrobe. We sipped horrible mixed drinks that we made ourselves and revealed our deepest darkest secrets under the influence of bottom-shelf vodka. We might’ve gotten a bit emotional, just four girls around an outdoor table on the last night of our American odyssey. Soon, we will be exiting this beautiful bardo of a road trip. No more long drives or crummy cafes. Soon I would be somewhere familiar, somewhere where people knew me, and somewhere where a minidress couldn’t shield the inadequacy I always seemed to feel. But we hadn’t even gotten to the club yet.
Maisy made me walk ahead of her because she wore her Mary Janes and I wore knee-high platform boots. I stomped my way to the bouncer and got my bag searched. They confiscated my gum, my Sharpie, my allergy pills, my eye drops, seemingly everything except my lip gloss. They tried to take Maria’s film camera but she stashed it behind a casino slot machine in hopes that it would still be there when we got out. The DJ played Drake and Bruno Mars, it sucked. Beanie and I kissed boys from a town in California I’d never heard of. One complimented my top; it was Beanie’s, and, on the last night of our trip, it smelled like a mixture of sweat, gas station snacks, and messy motel rooms. I hated clubs, but this boy was cute and he spun me around and kept me sufficiently hydrated. We danced as well as we could on a floor that was sticky with spilled drinks.
We made one last stop on our way out of Vegas to commit our final fashion faux pas: purchasing matching hot pink booty shorts. They were as obnoxious as they sound, with metallic rainbow angel wings on the ass with “Las” and “Vegas” plastered in cursive across each cheek. God forbid I ever wore these outside of my bedroom, but the four of us committed to them for the last four hours of our drive. Our picture in front of the “Welcome to California” sign had to be cropped from the waist up before getting sent to our parents. Only a few hours later as I arrived home, the air smelled like jasmine, orange trees, and the smoke of a certain recreational herb. Deep breaths. I no longer needed my closet as a comfort. I could embrace my mom and my little sister and my dog even in my sweaty and cranky post-road trip state. I could let my guard down. But the Gaultier remained over my shoulder the entire time. 🌀
Jane Lewis is a writer, editor, and fashion journalism student at The New School in New York City. She spent her adolescence playing and working on farms in California, but now wears her Marc Jacobs FW 2005 plaid trench coat every day and always matches her shoes to her bag. Find her on Instagram (@janethefarmer) and Twitter (@janelikethesong).