On a recent family trip to Palm Springs, CA, my husband and I decided to eat at the Jonathan Adler-designed, psychedelic, Rat Pack-inspired restaurant, Mr. Parker’s. The restaurant wasn’t exactly us, but the womanizing, drunk historical feel of the place had alluded us up to that point. Even the motel we stayed at was a ranch-like oasis with a barn, pool, and no televisions in the rooms. Mr. Parker’s was a purposeful roadside carnival — albeit an expensive one — a symbolic representation of old school Palm Springs that we didn’t want to miss.Except I felt intimated. In New York, black jeans, booties, silk top, and blazer would work in pretty much any restaurant, but Palm Springs was a whirlwind of prints, silks, and flowy garbs. Would every woman be in a Tory Burch orange-and-yellow Greek-key patterned dress? I follow Martyn Lawrence Bullard’s Instagram and his posts from Palm Springs are filled with electric pinks, blues, and geometric-mirrored wallpaper , like the kind my mother decorated our house with in the ‘70s. What do you wear to such a place?That’s when I remembered my new purchase: A jet-black, floor-length linen caftan from the No. 6 store. If I’m being honest, it’s more like a black tent. The only design element is the black-on-black edging along the V-neckline.I brought it along on the trip because I had a desert goth fantasy about wearing full-black in the stark sunshine. I even dragged my unimpressed sister-in-law out to the desert so she could take pictures of me in it, and suddenly, we — the caftan, the desert, and I — reached fashion symbiosis. The dress and the desert both lacked structure; they were both mysterious. You can disappear in both, and I did, which made me fall in love with it even more.“I’m wearing my new dress,” I said to my husband.“Really?” he said, a little skeptical.“Caftans are super in style right now,” I assured him, though that’s not why I was wearing it. It seemed so obvious that it would be the right statement piece — overflowing, shapeless, decidedly unflattering. But I was wearing it because, as Rachel Syme wrote in a piece detailing the importance of the caftan, it was a “body-swallowing masterpiece.” I no longer had to worry about my shape, about the sag under my arms. I’d fade out in my unflattering caftan and my persona would rise like a phoenix, because the kind of person who could walk into a place like Mr. Parker’s wearing a black tent, really, can do almost anything. When you feel empowered by fashion you are, in your own mind, Kate Moss, Beyoncé, Kim Gordon, or the ladies from Bananarama. You’re just a better, more attractive alternative of yourself.I gave myself a smoky eye before I slipped on my blue booties and fake gold bangles.“Babe, you look great,” my husband told me.But I didn’t need him to tell me this. I already knew.