Playing Dress Up

There was a brief period of time in my life when I was a fairly confident in my sartorial choices. I apparently asked my Mother when I was about two years old to please shorten all of my dresses so that the ruffles on my panties would show. I was all about the statement piece then.

Somewhere along the way though I lost my fashion mojo. I blame growing up in the 80's. How were you supposed to trust your aesthetic instincts when all around you stylish people were intentionally wearing parachute pants and acid washed jeans? Also my hair, curly and untamable, would not ever form those perfect tidal wave bangs. At this rate I was fairly confident that I was never going to grow up and dance on a Corvette in a Whitesnake video, so I devoted myself to more bookish and refined pursuits.

There was a period in the late 90's where my flannel-wrapped irony-drenched retro chic was in vogue in a sort of Daria meets Janeane Garofalo way, minus the black rimmed spectacles. And then I got married and had children. My fashion choices became, as they invariably do, about choosing something that doesn't show spit up. So after 12 years of child rearing and a career spent mostly in Early Childhood Education I find myself in my middlest 30's with no real fashion sense of my own.

I work for an artistic non-profit now that my kids are school aged and people there wear everything from those multi-layered artsy professional get ups to jeans and t-shirts. Mostly I wear jeans and the nicest blouse I can find in the clean laundry pile. It's a system that keeps me decent and clothed but not really stylish.

Search for #OOTD or Outfit of the Day or Stylish, casual, dressy or whatever descriptor you like in Pinterest and you will find thousands of head to toe examples of outfits. Some of them are laughably curated looks, like, no one on earth has ever held their purse this way. Or there's a thin line between hipster and homeless. But some of them seem, um, attainable? Like something I could wear and look like I gave a shit, but not like a give a shit about whether or not YOU think I gave a shit.

Take a moment. Think it through again, carry the one... you're with me? Good.

May I present... One of These Things is Not like the others.

The funny thing is, I think I got some of the details right, like apparently hair buns now are worn so high and tight you can go straight from brunch to auditioning to play Tuptim in the King and I. The jewelry is matchy, but not a set. My eyeliner game was ON POINT today y'all.

Sad eyed clown realness.

The bigger picture was sort of escaping me though. Like when saw the sandals in my closet I was all cute shoes! And then as I got out of the car they literally fell apart on me, like the front of the sole was flapping off the toe section. As I walked I made a jaunty little shuffle tap sound, but had to live in fear that the shoe would completely disintegrate, potentially in front of my boss. Apparently this outfit also required another shirt. Purusing Pinterest I see now that no one wears a single shirt anymore, unless you have an ironic cat sweat shirt, but even then you might wear a twee blouse with a starched collar under it. I am also currently sans sunglasses, which considering many of the looks I see with them, either sunglasses are instantly cool or half of the world's internet models suffer from the debilitating effects of glaucoma.

Today even my halting efforts to look polished were noticed and appreciated by the costume designer and project manager at work. She's a textiles artist by trade and she offered to help me come "shop my closet" and put together presentable outfits!!!! OMG. I think maybe my broken sandal was a Cinderella slipper! So, I'm going to take her up on it and I am going to blog the crap out of it, for you, for me, for AMERICA mofos.

Y'all are gonna be all



and I'm gonna be all,


Until inevitably I'm all,