Catalog porn: Python print dress lust

I'm easily seduced by catalogs. Here's a insouciant silk twill python-print dress from J. Crew.

I want it.

No, wait. I want to be a coltish Seven Sisters senior invited to Spring Fling by my lacrosse-playing boyfriend, Graeme. I want to be able to drink six Manhattans and dance to dirty house till 4 am. with no hangover.

Graeme proposes, and offers me a 2 carat pear-shaped diamond, which might be flashy, but it's a family heirloom. I will admire the ring while I study for my theoretical physics final- have to maintain my "A" average.

This is catalog porn; the clothes as metaphor for a life, which may be desirable or merely entertaining, depending on your dreams.

I would love to have this dress cut longer and large enough for my shape (a healthy 14-16).

I could comb fabric stores ("Do you have an olive python printed silk?"), hire a dressmaker, and hope it turns out. But that's even more of a fantasy than my life in the dress.

A more womanly interpretation could well result in a costly disaster: mutton dressed as snake.