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on the street · the dopamine dress-up den · a crystal in the window

Helen’s idea · open to everybody · no dress code

Dopamine Dress-Up Den

Mix it, layer it, clash it. Nothing here comes in a size.

Dopamine dressing is wearing what makes you glad to have it on: colours, textures and styles chosen for how they make you feel rather than for how well they help you blend in. Our glossary sets it beside unmasking, and it is often what happens when somebody stops dressing to pass. This is a shop on the street for it. There is a wooden valet stand in the middle of the floor and rails of clothes round the walls: put something on your head, something over the top, something underneath, the bottom half and your feet, in any print and any colours, and nothing has to go with anything.

The valet stand

On the stand: a slouchy beanie in stripes, all the colours there are; a haori in patchwork, moss and rust; a button-down shirt in plain denim; and Thai fisherman pants in bold florals, hot pink and lime.

The sun comes in through the front window, and there is a crystal hanging in it. Most of the light comes straight through white, which is what lets every colour on the rails look like itself; the rest the crystal takes apart into the colours it was made of, and they land on the wall as small rainbows.

The stand is dressed in Ryan’s usual when you walk in, because this room started from his wardrobe. It is somewhere to start from and not a suggestion.

The rails

On your head
Over the top
Underneath
The bottom half
On your feet
And the rest

Off the peg

Looks to start from, if you would rather not start from nothing. Each one puts itself on the stand, and then it is yours to change.

A look of your own

If you would like a look on the peg with your name on it, tell us what you wear, in your own words, and the house will put it on the stand.

Send it through the Stimpunks contact page or in our community. It is on the Community Center’s service board too, beside everything else the street takes in.

House rules

  1. There is no dress code. Our Dress Codes entry is about what dress codes do to people, and it has a school in it that banned black clothing on the grounds of mental health. So nothing in here is required and nothing is turned away, and black is a colour in here too: every rail comes in all black, and choosing it is as much dopamine dressing as choosing all the colours there are.
  2. Nothing comes in a size, and nobody is measured. Nothing here is sold. The clothes hang on a stand rather than on a drawing of a person, because a drawing of a person is a body, with one shape and one skin and one gender, handed to everybody who walks in. Whoever is wearing these is you.
  3. No rail is for men or for women. A gown hangs on the same rail as a T-shirt, and a big wig beside a beanie. All the colours there are is borrowed from the title of our course, Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are.
  4. How it feels counts as much as how it looks. Every garment on the rails says how it feels and how it goes on and comes off. Ryan wears Thai fisherman pants for sensory and comfort reasons first, and his own field guide says all of his outerwear has a means of escape, so every jacket in here says how you get out of it; it also says the knot on the pants is not accessible to everybody, so every other bottom half does up without one. Our Why Sheet for a hoodie makes the same argument to a school.
  5. Nothing has to go with anything. This street says on its front door that clashing is not the same as illegible, and in here that is the whole shop. Florals on patchwork on stripes is an outfit. Nothing is too much and nothing is too little.
  6. The dial never takes anything off the rails. The sequins, the boa and the big wig are all here at Gentle. The dial changes how much the room moves, which in here is only the rainbows on the wall, and only at MAX GLITTER; nothing flashes, and nothing sparkles on its own.
  7. Nothing is rated, kept or sent. No score, no like button, no best-dressed. The rails keep nothing, and the copy button puts what is on the stand on your own clipboard, for you to take wherever you want it: a shopping list, a message, nowhere. Closing the page empties the stand.
  8. Dopamine is in the name because that is what people call it. Nothing in here claims a colour does anything to anybody’s brain chemistry. It is a word for a feeling you already know, and the only one who can say what gives you it is you.

Whose this is

The room and its name are Helen Edgar’s idea. She suggested a Dopamine Dress-Up Den for the next shopfront, and the rails are the brief Ryan wrote from it: his own wardrobe first, which is Thai fisherman pants in bold florals, bold blocks and patchwork, button-down shirts in all sorts of colours, a haori over the top, and beanies and slouchy beanies in a staggering array; then Helen’s cardigans and flowing dresses; and then the rest of our community, some of whom take it further, with a veritable drag show of colour and variety. Helen’s look was relayed by Ryan rather than given by her, the witchy prints on it are the house’s guess, and she has the final say on it.

The haori and the pants are named plainly. A haori is a Japanese jacket worn over a kimono, usually tied at the front with two short cords, and Thai fisherman pants are made so wide in the waist that one pair fits anybody, wrapped round and tied. Both were read off Wikipedia rather than remembered, and neither is anybody’s costume.

tools/make-dressup.py builds this room out of one data file, and it refuses rather than guesses. It will not build a garment that does not say how it feels and how it comes off, a garment or a print it cannot draw, a set of colours with no all-black one in it, or a look with somebody’s name on it and not their own words. And it sweeps the room’s own copy, so that nobody can add a word here about anybody’s body, a rail for one gender, a rule about what goes together, a claim about brain chemistry, a word that turns somebody’s clothes into a costume, or a way of rating an outfit.

The type is DynaPuff, by Toshi Omagari and Jennifer Daniel, for the sign and the headings, and Plus Jakarta Sans, by Tokotype, for everything you read, both under the SIL Open Font License and read off their own records rather than typed. The stand, the clothes on it, the prints and the crystal in the window are ours. Everything is credited in the liner notes.

Job marker — a feather, come off the boa, on the floor

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: Black is a colour

Before the code: Every rail in the Dress-Up Den comes in one colour, whatever else it comes in. Which colour?

Hint 1

It is in the first of the house rules.

Hint 2

It is also the last colourway in every colours list on the rails.

Last hint

A school in our Dress Codes entry banned clothes in it.

Give me the answer

The answer is Black. Black is a colour in there. Our Dress Codes entry has a school that banned black clothing on the grounds of mental health, and a room that said colour was the cure would be that dress code with a nicer name. So every rail comes in all black, and choosing it is as much dopamine dressing as choosing all the colours there are.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: FEATHER

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.