Fashion: What I Wore Monday

I'm Dressing again.

For the past few months, my clothing criteria have been that my clothes be (1) clean and (2) mine, as opposed to stealing Himself's. Actually, I didn't always adhere to (2).

But cold weather seems to suddenly activate all the girly parts of my brain. Today, I wore that scarf, that coat and skirt (the skirt is the barely visible bit of black-and-white), and those boots. I wore a gray collared shirt, too, but I'm still wearing it, so I didn't include it in the photo op.

I also dug out a pile of assorted rhinestones and am looking for an opportunity to wear them. And you've seen the re-interest in perfume in recent posts.  And I dug out the tentative batch of makeup that I bought a year or so ago and seriously debated well, wearing some. You know, outside the house. Maybe. It could happen.

Weird.

Fashion: What I Wore Friday (Plums!)

I'm often (contrarily) annoyed when I like something that's in fashion. Last year, I spent weeks craving garments in a particular plum-like color, then realized that I was craving them not because I had conjured up that shade from my imagination, or from seeing an actual piece of fruit, but because that shade was everywhere, in store racks and on people. Once my craving was revealed to be a Caving In To Evil Consumer Forces, I resisted for a while. Resistance was aided by the fact that I could never quite find the right shade in the right garment in the right size.

Then I found what I wanted in a tee, and a darker version in a sweater, and I realized that I already owned a lighter version in a scarf, and the caving was complete. I wore them all today, with the my now-customary knee-length black skirt, black tights, and what I call my Dutch Girl Shoes. (A pair of black Dansko flats, but not the clog-shaped ones.) I enjoyed all the color, and am now tempted to go find three shades of green.

That is all. I suspect, frankly, that I just wanted to post the photo.

Image: Mine.

Fashion: What I Wore (Last) Saturday

Bwahaha!

OK, the "fashion" title is mostly joking, but I did have some thoughts about comfortable and not-unflattering extreme-leisure wear, while I was in the Land of the Mouse, that I might be blogging in time.

Meanwhile, that is all.

Image: Mine.

Fashion: What I Wore Friday, or, Transcending The Ball O' Wool

There's been snow and ice on the ground for a week, and temperatures in the single digits (Fahrenheit) at night. That's big winter stuff, for this town. The car giggled at the very idea of driving on the roads, so we trudged (carefully) into town to buy snow boots. I now own five, count 'em, five! pairs of little short boots, but only this most recent pair is suitable for snow and slush.

This was an exercise in attempting style against counter-style influences. Most days I've been a booted ball o' wool, my greatest fashion ambition being avoidance of the garden grubbies jeans, and my greatest ambition in general being Not Falling Down. I did wear silk scarves every day, but not for the look of it--a doubled-up silk scarf clings nicely to my neck and is startlingly warm. Silk is no good at all for shielding my face from the wind, though, so for a day or two I was wearing a plum-colored silk scarf and a plum-colored woollyesque scarf, making me a waterfall of fabric swatches from neck to waist.

I digress. Friday I was only mostly wool--an unlined medium-length fawn-colored coat, brown-and-fawn houndstooth skirt, and a woven-patterny black and white scarf that haunted me into buying it. The non-wool that crept in was the drapey white knit shirt and textured cotton overshirt from this post. And the amber necklace that Himself gave me long ago. And the snow boots.

Texturepalooza. By my standards, anyway. I enjoyed it. Given my somewhat high girth-to-height ratio, a ratio increased by woolly clothes, I tend to have a Paddington Bear or Boarding School Child look when I bundle up, and I find that I rather enjoy that, too. Even if I lose all the weight I want, I'm never going to be willowy--depending on what I wear, I'll either be curvy or tailored-and-sturdy. So I may as well embrace those vibes now.

It appears that that is all.

Edited to append: Actually, it's not all. I find my thoughts returning to the coat. The fawn-colored coat, advertised as a "car coat". In the past, I never understood the idea of coats being fashion. I remember Mary, in the old Mary Tyler Moore show, trying to figure out how to afford a coat that she loved, and I remember thinking that, well, she already has a coat, so...? I suppose that this is in part about being a child in a middle-class frugal home; I think that most kids at school had one winter coat that they wore every day. They might have had something sportier and and something dressier, but all I saw was what they wore to school.

I own several coats now, but they were all purchased for specific functions: The raincoat. The one-step-warmer-than-a-sweater jacket. The long lined black wool coat for when it's really cold. I did buy the black wool poncholike thing because it was fun, but there were no style'esque thoughts of what it would go well with, or what mood or vibe it might contribute to. I just bought it. I also bought it years and years ago; the fact that it feels a little steampunky when worn with the right shoes is pure coincidence. Most of my coats stick around for decades.

I bought the fawn car coat, on the other hand, with thoughts of how the color and texture and general hang of it would look with clothes and with my figure. I cared that it would work as an outdoor coat but also not be too bulky as an indoor jacket, for occasions when I'm bouncing indoors and outdoors. The soft-shouldered cut was a compromise between the fact that I want a  jacket that fits at both shoulders and hips, but I'm not going to get one that fits precisely until I commission one from that seamstress/tailor that I'm planning to contact in January.

I bought a coat for fashion reasons.

I'm scared.

Now that really is all.

Images: Mine

What I Wore Friday: 21st Century Jeans (And a Note on Aftelier Cuir de Gardenia)

The world must be ending. I wore non-Mom jeans.

I don't mean that I wore those scarey low hipster jeans. But the "hug" of today's jeans ends two or three inches lower than I'm used to. It's giving me the sensation that my pants are falling down, and I keep checking to make sure that my top is long enough to hide my underwear. Because I'm still wearing Mom underwear. (I'm providing too much information here, aren't I?)

I didn't buy the jeans for the non-Momness, but instead for the (compared to my other jeans) narrower legs and heavier fabric, and a much nicer solid black "wash". (Why is it "wash" and not color? I'm sure there's a good reason.) My other jeans are a weird streaky light blue that signals gardening grubbies no matter what I wear them with.

The Momness or otherwise of the jeans is largely irrelevant, because today's top, a drapey cowlneck sweatery thing, hangs to somewhere around mid-hip. But it feels weird all the same, both rebellious (against my determinedly fashion-blind stance) and compliant (for exactly the same reason.)

Purely for entertainment, I took off the drapey sweatery thing and considered how the jeans looked with just the dark-pumpkiny tee underneath, and to my surprise, there was some good there. While I wouldn't wear that combination without (shudder) "shapewear", I was surprised to see that my overall bulk has a half-decent curve in to the waist and out to the hips. I'm not a column. Who knew? Then I put the sweatery thing back on and there's a subtler version of the curve even then. So I'm rather pleased. This is by far the most close-to-current-fashion jeans look I've worn since--I was going to say "since forever", but there was a moment in my teens, in snug jeans and a gauze top...

Momentary "have I told you this before?" divergence: You know how sometimes on What Not To Wear, they'll ask the subject of the show when they last felt beautiful? If I were the subject, that would have been my answer--that moment when I was fourteen, more or less, looking in a full-length motel mirror while on a driving trip to meet one of the parents' relatives. I thought that I looked beautiful--and I thought that, therefore, the mirror must somehow be defective.

All right, moving on. I didn't feel beautiful in today's jeans, but I felt good.

Did I mention that after I bought boots, and more boots, I remembered that I already owned boots, and more boots, purchased several years ago? I now have four (four, count 'em, four!) pairs of little short boots. Aparently I've been having a little-short-boot craving for quite some time, one that I didn't know how to actually deploy.

Today's boots waited a very long time (five years? ten?) to get to work. I wore them for the very first time a couple of weeks ago as part of an undocumented skirt outfit, with brown tights, to avoid the effect of, "Oh, my God, someone cut off her foot and glued on a boot!" that I got when I tried them with plum-colored tights. I wore them again a few days later with the gardening grubbies jeans. They didn't seem all that happy about that; I think that they crept in while I was sleeping and instilled a post-hypnotic suggestion to buy the non-Mom jeans. Except, I'm told that brown boots with black jeans are not ideal, so perhaps they got the message a little muddled.

It snowed today and I needed a hat when we went to lunch. I quite forgot that I owned this one, a sort of plaid newsboy cap, so I didn't wear it. However, that may be just as well--I'm beginning to conclude that a newsboy cap with long hair is "cute", and I definitely don't want to be cute. It's better if I put my hair up, but my hair generally declines to stay up.

The perfume? Aftelier Cuir de Gardenia extrait; I've started buying samples again. I didn't give it a proper review-esque monitoring, even by my rather slack review standards, but I like it very much. It started out both feminine-ladylike and delightfully animalic-dirty, two separate aspects that managed to mesh perfectly. It was fairly emphatic, though it still wasn't a projection bomb--a good thing, in my book, though I realize that many people wish that naturals would speak a little louder.

Over a few hours the ladylike aspect grew stronger, and I got a whiff of New Barbie Doll Note. I always assumed that this scent came from something synthetic; now that I've experienced it in a natural perfume, I'm determined to figure out exactly what produces it, similar to the way that I figured out that Pencil Eraser Note is iris.

New Barbie Doll Note was accompanied by Smelly-Doll Note--that is, sweet peas. That tiny doll in the photo, one of my favorites as a child, came pre-scented in a perfume-bottle-shaped plastic clamshell. Officially, she was a Liddle Kiddle, but we called her Smelly-Doll. I always assumed that she just smelled of "perfume", until I encountered my first real life sweet pea at a relatively advanced age and immediately flashed on "Smelly-Doll!" Did Mattel really spring for a photorealistic sweet pea scent? I can't evaluate her scent any longer to try to answer that question; it's long faded.

So Cuir de Gardenia shifts, for me, from a delightful animalic-ladylike melding to equally delightful childhood nostalgia--dolls, flowers, and candied notes. I love it, but I doubt that anyone else will share exactly my experience of the drydown.

And that is all.

Images: Mine.

Fashion: What I Wore Thursday

My skirt wasn't black.

Neither were my tights. (They were maroony red.)

Neither were my shoes.

Hey, waitaminnit. I don't think I wore anything black on Thursday. (Well, except for my coat.) Even the dark part of the houndstooth was brown, not black. And my shirt was also maroony red. See?

Am I allowed to wear not-black? Is there a law?

Three weeks ago, I suspect that I would have seen Thursday's outfit as risky or daring or something. Actually, I suspect that I saw it that way when I put it on. Houndstooth, after all. A pattern! In something other than a scarf! But I was over it by the time I took it off.

The boots, the lower-risk steampunky pair rather than the fancier heeled pair, also seemed risky; little short boots with a skirt. I don't see those as weird, but I do see them as young, and the possibility of dressing "too young" does make me nervous. 

I was tempted to also wear a brown-leopard-print scarf that I bought recently, but that felt like pushing it. Well, and the scarf was deeply unflattering to my face. That's the sort of thing that I want to understand. Was the problem the brown? The large-scale print? The shiny texture? The pale background? The square-folded-to-triangular scarf shape? I can't figure out why, but my instant reaction upon turning to the mirror after draping it on was "Eeew." And, "Maybe I should try that makeup thing." That's a new and alarming thought. It's not necessarily a wrong thought, but an accessory that immediately triggers that thought is not a successful accessory.

I wore the same boots a few days ago with black skirt and a collection of plum shades--bright plum-colored tights, even brighter knit shirt with a neckline that was almost but not quite entirely covered with a darker plum sweater, and a kinda-filmy bluish-plum silk scarf. I enjoyed that, though it continued to feel possibly too young.

Color. I'm wearing color. Matchy color; red-tights-red-blouse, plum-tights-plum-sweater-plum-shirt-plum-scarf. But color. Also cool boots. 

Progress.

Yes?

Oh, and you'll notice that the photos this time include me. They can't really be said to be photographs of me, but bits of me are in the shot. Also progress?

Hmmm.

Images: Mine.

Fashion: Chasing Color (What I wore Thursday)

So, What I Wore Tuesday was all neutrals. The same for Wednesday--a white knit shirt with a drapey front that I got from a Multinational Megalith, a beige/brown woven cotton thingie that I got from the sample sale at Webster's, freshwater pearls that Himself gave me some years ago (yay Himself!), a knee-length knit black skirt that also has a drapey front (Megalith), and the same black tights and black flats that I keep wearing.

The photo, left, is unexciting. But I really liked this outfit on me--the V shaped neck and rumply draped front worked well for my face and hair, and the vaguely suit-like impression and the pearls made me feel like a well-dressed little old lady about to go to a board meeting. The average woman probably wouldn't think of "little old lady" as a success, but for a person who loves old-lady perfumes, perhaps the appeal is unsurprising. I felt like a grownup. That's both fascinating and a little frightening for someone who's been dressing like a college student for over twenty years.

But I did notice an ongoing lack of color. So on Thursday I wore a red velvet shirt that I've had forever, possibly since my early twenties. Wearing this shirt is part of a long-term plan to put idle clothes to work or get rid of them. To reduce the eighties silhouette, I cut out the shoulder pads, and I plan to (gasp) throw it in the Delicate cycle rather than obey the Dry Clean Only tag. If it goes to pieces, then its fate is sealed permanently; if it doesn't, then I'll probably start wearing it more than once a decade. Either outcome is a win, though I'm hoping for the second, because I really do love the red. I love almost any red, but this dark blood-red with no touch of blue or orange is my favorite.

Following the same philosophy of Wear It Or Lose It, I added a pair of screw-on earrings that belonged to my mother or my grandmother or possibly both--I tend to forget these things. Matchyness again. Is matchyness in jewelry wrong? And wore it with, again, another knee-length black skirt, black tights, black flats, blah de blah de blah. Wearing earrings was another cool novelty. Much to my surprise, screw-ons seem to be less painful than clip-ons.

Friday was less matchy. I wore a boxy denim shirt trimmed at the sleeves and hem with purple velvet ribbon and little bits of beadwork, and a silk scarf with a floofy flower print in which red-pink dominated, and (whee!) a knee-length black skirt, black flats, and slate-blue tights. And the same red starburst earrings as the day before.

Am I going to keep a perpetual diary here? Actually, I probably am, though not necessarily recording every single day on the blog. I suspect that in six months I'll be very curious to see what I was wearing six months before. But just to finish up to date, today it was a brown linen shirt with an interesting shape--I'll photograph it someday, probably the next time I wear it--with black SkirtTightsFlatsBlah, the flowery scarf, and those green Dorothy earrings. Color! That's the top photo, of course.

So. Color. At least, color above the waist--I keep on wearing those black skirts. (I have three knee-length and one calf-length, and that's ignoring any lurking among the neglected clothes.) I feel as if I must have pages and pages to write about color, but...nothing is coming out. Not a thing. I guess I can't go all rambling philosophical every time.

So I will, for now, declare that that is all.

Images: Mine.

Fashion: What I Wore Tuesday

The journey--and confusion--continues.

Tuesday I wore a calf-length black linen skirt, a brown heather crewnecky knit thing with decorative visible serger seams (architecture! yay!), black tights, little navy blue loafers, and the silver necklace photographed in the frippery post. You can see it all lounging on the Fashion Chaise in the photo there. (I've realized that the conflict between refusing to be pictured in my own blog and writing about a visual subject can be resolved by allowing my clothes to star in their own photos without me.)

This wasn't a fashion triumph--it was all neutrals, and the navy blue, in particular, had no excuse for being there. I'm choosing to read it as black. But all the same, this outfit is a successful implementation of some of my goals.

First, of course, I "dressed"--I wore a planned set of clothing. And it all fits--it traverses my curves rather than drowning them in a heap of fabric. It's casual enough to wear on jeans occasions while looking far better on me than jeans. And it's comfortable enough to wear all day until I go to bed, though that means that I have to be careful not to splat anything on it when I eat dinner.

That extra care feels new. The book Overdressed (Elizabeth L. Cline) reminded me that there was a time when people took off their "good" clothes when they got home every night, and aired and brushed and neatly hung each garment, because clothes were scarce and expensive and it was important for them to retain their good-clothes status as long as possible. I don't know if people still do that very often. I'm embarassed to say that this Saturday when I changed out of the jeans and tee that I had worn for gardening, I not only dropped them where I stood, but later, since my hands were full and I was in a hurry to tidy, kicked them across the floor from bathroom to living room to laundry room. This is a far cry from the reverence that clothes once received.

I would never do that to a garment that I had sewn, or to most of the garments that I've been buying lately. I'm setting that as a goal for new clothing purchases: If I'd be willing to kick the garment across the floor, I shouldn't be buying it.

I probably won't be explaining that goal to salespeople.

Another goal is to consider who my money's going to. For example, I was feeling guilty for buying several garments from a company that I categorize as a Multinational Megalith, but then I realized that this particular Megalith offers an unusually extensive selection of clothing in plus sizes. I want to encourage that. But I also want to encourage fair wages. And safe working conditions. And environmentally friendly production and materials. And small businesses, both manufacturers and retailers. And high, non-disposable quality. And local business. Whee! Sometimes it seems as if I should have a scoring checklist for each garment.

WARNING: Linkyness commences. As usual, no affiliation.

Tuesday's clothes would have gotten a decent score on that checklist. I made the skirt with natural fiber fabric that I bought from a local shop (Fabric of Vision). I bought the crewnecky thing from another local shop (The Websters). It was made by a company (Odd Numbers) that appears to be small and independent, emphasizes environmentally friendly dyes and natural fibers, and produces designs that I like.

The necklace, as discussed in the frippery post, was made by (Catherine Hartley), and purchased from (One Of A Few), small businesses, though they weren't local to me. I think that I bought the shoes at a local shop, though my memory is fuzzy there. Only the tights violated most of the rules--synthetic fiber, made by one Megalith and purchased at another. At least I bought them in person instead of having them shipped.

All of this sounds picky and geeky. I've realized that the geekiness helps me to enter a world where I don't feel welcome or knowledgeable. Long ago, in a post about Bvlgari Black, I said "I prefer geek perfumery. I like things best when I'm the one with the extra knowledge." That's what's going on here. Reading books about fashion and having quirky, high-maintenance demands for the clothes that I buy make me feel more in control.

For similar reasons, I check seam finishes and other construction details when I'm in stores that sell serious costs-more-than-a-mortgage-payment designer clothing. Construction is the rare area where I have more of a clue than the average fashion shopper. It doesn't make sense for me to touch the stuff; I'm just there to learn from the colors and shapes and styles and then run away to cheaper retailers or my sewing machine. Nevertheless, I examine their expensive interiors--gently, and with clean hands.

(It's a little weird sitting here with that disembodied outfit lounging five feet away on the chaise. It looks more ominous in person, though still ladylike, as if it might get up and demand a glass of iced tea.)

(Otherwise, that is all.)

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.
Photo: Mine.

Fashion: What I Wore Monday

Monday, I wore slate-blue tights, a royal blue shirt, a knee-length blue denim skirt, and black flats.

Why am I telling you this? Because I want to record my tentative fashion forays in words. I can look at a picture of clothes and say, "Ooh, pretty!", but that visual experience is unsatisfying; I need to ask questions and answer questions and ramble and enthuse. Why is it pretty? Why does it work? What does it mean? Hey, my grandma had a coat like that!

I was all matchy on Monday, or at least color-themed. I think that matchiness is out of style nowadays--"nowadays" being, oh, post-1987. But I enjoy it. Enjoyment of my clothes, of any kind, motivates me to "dress"--to wear a planned combination of clothes rather than grabbing a random tee and a pair of Mom jeans.

"Combination of clothes." Heh. I dislike the word "outfit". Because it feels girly? Because it's part of the fashion world that I've rejected up to now? Because Mom's outfits were set in stone, so that poor malachite necklace was forced into a permanent monogamous relationship with that slightly-faded boatneck top, never to see the world in any other company?  But I can't think of a better brief way of describing, "a planned combination of clothes." It's a useful word.

So. What is there to say about Monday's (gulp) outfit?

Most significant to me was the fact that the skirt was short. Short-for-me; just about at the knee. In the past few years my skirts have been drifting longer and longer--I often need to lift them in order to descend stairs without tripping. It was liberating, pleasantly weird, to display the bottom half of my legs to the general public.

My slate-blue legs. Hosiery is another area where I've rarely stepped past the entrance hall of the feminine universe. When I wear a skirt, I'm usually wearing black tights, the sturdy kind that hold up to many washes. Once in a while, it's beige tights. When I was in Portland, I bought myself a pair in slate blue and another in a sort of tweedy gray. (Such daring!) I eyed the fishnets and polka dots longingly; I really think it's only a matter of time, maybe very little time, before my legs are (occasionally) patterned.

That will require that I learn to launder less-sturdy hosiery, however. Or that I become fabulously wealthy so I can just throw hose out after one wearing--a policy that sounds less shocking when you consider that the things seem to be built to ensure that you only get one wearing anyway, which is part of why I went to the sturdy tights in the first place.

Um. What? Oh, yes. Laundry. And the whole topic of maintenance. "Dress"ing requires that I do some maintenance on my clothes, and for a person who rarely even bothers to snatch things out of the dryer before the wrinkles set, that's a pretty big demand.

The other significant fact about Monday is that both my shirt and my skirt fit me. I tend to wear clothes so large that I can pull them on without un-doing the fastenings, so large that when I change position, such as sitting down so that the stomach is repositioned in a poofier way, the fabric just gives way without offering any resistance whatsoever. I think that this is what people mean when they sometimes say, "I don't like my clothes to touch me." Monday's clothes touched me. Aiee!

Clothes that "fit" are often less comfortable than clothes that are wildly oversized. And that's a big element of my past resistance to fashion--why would I want to wear uncomfortable clothes in order to look better for other people?  I find myself wanting to rush off and find quotes on the topic. C.S. Lewis in The Chronicles of Narnia, on the idea that your "best" and most festive clothes should be your most comfortable. The Little Mermaid, with all those words about beauty requiring pain. An Episode of Sparrows, where Lovejoy's pride drove her to wear her best shoes long after she'd outgrown them.

OK, that's probably another post. Right now my pain-for-beauty issue is all about shoes. (Well, and earrings, but that's also another post.) Heels. Like many women who are sufficiently plus-sized to have trouble finding the clothes they want, I love cool shoes. I just love them in the abstract, because I'm not willing to have uncomfortable feet. I would love to be able to wear heels wherever and whenever, but I'm just not sure if I want to endure the pain required to get "used to" them.

Um.

That seems to be all.

For now.

(Oh, except--that's the "Cthulhu on a supermodel diet" vintage pin. Cool, huh?)

Photo: Mine.