Confessions of a Latter-day Fashionista

Dear Blog Readers and Friends, my blog this week is inspired by Kyran Pittman, whose blog, “Planting Dandelions,” is one of my favorites. She wrote about fashion this week and asked her readers to comment on their own fashion history. My mind was suddenly full of memories and I couldn’t wait to use this as a springboard for my blog. Maybe you’d like to share your story with me or with Kyran – there is a link to her blog site in the right hand column.

I almost never walk out of the house regarding myself as “put together.” I see other women wearing scarves looped nonchalantly around their necks and think, “How do they do that?” I have come to the conclusion that some women “have it” — a sense of style, a certain élan, an undeniable panache, a flair— and I never will. It’s o.k. It’s rather freeing to have given up.

This is ironic, because in high school I had ambitions of becoming a fashion designer. From age 14 to 17, I spent all of my free time drawing outfits — for myself, for imaginary heroines, for my favorite teacher. I poured through fashion magazines and dreamt that one day I would be a famous couturier in New York or Paris. Right there under my picture in the high school yearbook is my write-up, “Wants to own a Paris original one day.” I even won a young designer contest at the downtown Bay department store. A friend’s mom sewed the soft grey crepe suit that I sketched. It had gaucho pants, a bolero jacket and a high-necked white chemise. I accessorized with high white boots and a red, wide-brimmed hat. A school chum modeled my creation in a real runway fashion show. I just about fell over when my name was announced, “Winner of the suit category is…”

After that, my dad took my future into his hands. He scooped up a bunch of my drawings without me knowing about it, and took them to someone he knew in the Winnipeg garment business. “My daughter has talent, don’t you think?” The man in the garment business said, “Well, if these are her own original drawings, yes, she does.” (IF they were original? IF!??! Hmmph!) “But, does she sew? Nobody makes it in fashion design if they can’t construct a garment.”  Previous encounters with my mother’s sewing machine had been such a tantrum-throwing frustration that imagining a lifetime of trying to conquer that demonic fiend chilled me to the bone. That was the end of my dream.

Apparently fashion was not my destiny. But, of necessity, one does need to get dressed every day, and I do care about how I look. However, this pursuit has caused a married life of asking the Mister, “Does this look good on me?” Poor man.

In reviewing my fashion history, I am pained to remember ardent striving to achieve a “look” only to fall short on some essential detail, which in my case I mean literally! The Annie Hall look? At 5’-1”, I just wasn’t tall enough to carry off the baggy pants, white shirt, vest, tie and wide-brimmed floppy hat. I tried wearing a tie with a shirt and khakis but ended up looking like a waiter at a pancake house. I continue to resent Diane Keaton to this day for looking so fabulous now that she’s well into her late 60s.

Actually, maybe I’m the eternal optimist for being excited about each new fashion trend. Maybe it will finally be the one for me! Although I never owned a pair of leg warmers, I have tried every fashion era on for size:

1. My Beatles Period: London rocked, Twiggy shocked and Mary Quant tights put daisies and polka dots all over our legs. In my first foray into fashion, I was a rockin’ teenage Mod in short polyester dresses, colored tights and a Twiggy haircut, even though my mother wouldn’t let me paint on those giant lower eye lashes, my dad forbid me from buying a leather John Lennon cap and I got chilblains walking to school in a mini skirt and short leather coat when it was minus 30 degrees.
2. My Hippy Days: 1970s Eco-Awareness, protest songs and a modernist interior design school inspired loose fitting blousons, wide-legged jeans and a scarf tied over my head on days I didn’t get up in time to wash my hair before the hour-long bus trek to university. This wasn’t so much a fashion period as it was an abdication of caring about it.
3. My Preppy Period:  In spite of the fact that I didn’t play tennis, ride horseback or attend an eastern Ivy League college, my early career was neatly supported by Ralph Lauren: a navy blazer, grey wool skirt, silk bows tied under a buttoned-down Oxford collar and sensible pumps. I wasted my size-6 years looking like a tour guide at Hogwarts.
4. My Heritage Years:  Some time in my 30s I sought connection to my roots and so I adopted tweed, herringbone checks and my family clan’s Scottish tartan. I couldn’t have done more to look like Miss Marple solving a murder mystery in a musty old castle in Yorkshire.
5. My Earth Mother Era: Teaching design students in my early 40s seemed to call for comfy dresses and voluminous sweaters worn with black jeans. The look I was shooting for was “approachable, caring type,” until I overheard my 20-something students making fun of my matronly appearance. After that, I started my next phase:
6. My Look-Like-an-Architect Days: Black. Head to foot. My uniform for teaching design and then working for a Frank Lloyd Wright historic site: serious; no nonsense; classic. Also very slimming. If I could have cantilevered something I would have.
7. My What Not to Wear Era: The TV show that rocked the world revealed how I had been hiding my body inside voluminous, gloomy garments. From then on, I vowed to seek V-necked tops, smart peplum jackets that draw the eye away from the hips, snug shapes that accentuate the waistline, cheerful colors and boot-cut trousers that elongate short legs. Where had Stacey and Clinton, the show’s hosts, been all my life?
8. My Matronly Years: Somewhere along the line, I reached 62. I’ve reached a weight that I swore I would never reach and a shape that looks a lot like my mother’s. Size 6 youth is gone, wasted in too much fabric and high necklines. But there is no turning back the clock and now it isn’t so much about being fashionable as it is about hiding my midriff. This necessitates tops that come below hip level and fall away from the body. Oddly, I think I look better than I ever have. I choose flattering, “age-appropriate” apparel, the relaxed insouciance of Eileen Fisher separates and clothing I feel good wearing. Six decades later, I think I may have hit my stride. I even have a dress with horizontal stripes! At last! Old enough to dress how I want!