“YOUR BOSS IS AT THE CLUB”

Thinking too much about Reformation's brand emails.

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Photo: Reformation.com.

As a rule, I hate brand emails, mostly because I hate emails. Every day I do my silly little skincare regimen and do my silly little tasks: check my email, check Twitter, open a Google doc to write three complete sentences, check my email again, respond to someone too quickly and respond to someone else two days late, and then open up a Google doc again, only to hate the three sentences I just wrote. Most of my emails are, “That works, thanks!” or “Hi, sorry for the delay here…” or “Do you mean PST or EST?” Not enough of my emails have phrases like “a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils” (You’ve Got Mail) or have the flirtatious-disastrous energy of the emails characters write in the superior Sally Rooney novel Conversations With Friends, an incredible book about emailing.

Despite all this, I have opened many emails from “slutty Eileen Fisher,” or, the brand Reformation. As a person of small boob experience, many times I have expected a Reformation titty top to change my life. This almost happened once, but ultimately did not happen, for reasons I do not need to get into here. (A teensy bit more about that here.) I wore a Reformation linen dress for my 24th birthday, and the strap broke before I even left my apartment for the pregame; I think it’s funny that, pre-2020, Reformation had the exact same taste in white girls as Leonardo DiCaprio, and I think that’s why they refused to ever repost me when I tagged them in an Instagram in 2018. (Lame, I know, but let she who doesn't want free stuff cast the first stone.)

I stopped shopping there during the summer, after former employees described a culture of racism at its stores. Somehow, I can’t escape the Reformation email list and their messages. I open more Reformation emails than not, I am ashamed to say. But in my defense, these emails are utterly wacky and make me laugh all the time. “THE LINEN COLLECTION,” their latest email screamed at me, as I looked out my window and frowned at the snow on the ground.

“YOUR BOSS IS AT THE CLUB” is not an email I open because I think that my boss might actually be at the club. (I also don’t have a boss.) It’s an email I open because: what does this possibly have to do with a $200 linen dress, or whatever. These emails aren’t advertising anything, really. They read like one-off missives from that girl you met in line for the bathroom at that concert that one time — a truly important genre of relationships that the Jonathan panDemme has robbed us of. But what if, after you and that girl exchanged numbers and swore to get drinks sometime, she just kept texting you?

And what if she was kind of rude?

Like, right, I never said I was?

I have so many ideas about this character, who appears in my inbox every so often. I imagine that she really is someone I met once, but the details are foggy. We had one conversation, and the same day I get a push alert from Clubhouse asking me to “welcome her,” she’s sending me an invitation to her wedding with the gloriously clear subject line: “SECOND MARRIAGE.” She’s like your good friend’s other friend, the one you see once a year at a birthday dinner and have no plans to build a friendship with because why would you?

This is another one: unprompted, you get a message from her that says, “DOING NOTHING IN A HOT TUB.” Is that an invitation or a dare? These are the kind of texts I reply “haha wut” to, because, Kimberly, what else is there to say! But I like this fantasy of a phantom cool girl eating In-N-Out in a hot tub, texting me for no reason other than she’s bored and thinks it would make sense for us to be friends, whatever that means.

There’s another genre of Reformation emails, too. The “ex” email, which is: a subject line that appeals to my desire to impress someone I used to see and am no longer seeing, which is not an emotional void I have ever bought clothes to fill. 

I buy clothes optimistically, to make things true about myself: I want to be elegant and feminine, but unfussy. I want to look casual but nice. I want every night to feel like The Last Days of Disco, and every morning to feel like To the Wonder. I want to have a picnic and not spill a little something on my shirt and get eaten alive by mosquitos. I want my collarbone to always be on display. Nothing about that has to do with dressing for a man (?!) that I’m not making plans to see (?!).

These subject lines make me laugh every time! Girl. I’m not going all the way to Dimes Square.

Though not directly ex-focused, “HICKIES” does seem to come from a similar misgiving. I don’t want to see an ex and I also don’t want a hickey. I’m an adult. I’m saving money for a Dyson vacuum. No, I’m not en route to get a damn hickey.

There’s a third genre of Reformation email that I can only call: completely unhinged.

This one was advertising sandals.

This one was advertising spring dresses.

This one was advertising the fact that they began selling Girlfriend Collective.

This one was advertising an outfit to wear during Thanksgiving??

This one was advertising denim.

I would be remiss to not admit that one time, in the spring of 2019, a Reformation email worked on me: 

They sold a shirt that said this, and I bought it immediately. It was in honor of me losing it over A Star Is Born. This one I don’t regret.