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abilouiseIt all started with my recent obsession with watching Sex in the City on DVD (if you haven't watched more than 4 episodes you are NOT allowed to think less of me for this. I'm tired of girl-culture getting no respect!). Lately I have renewed an interest in clothing unheard of since high school, when I played with Bright Red Lipstick and color combinations not usually found in the 90s. I have too much clothing and I don't wear most of it. I am building a lean, mean, wardrobe machine (perhaps not lean because then it wouldn't fit me) and getting rid of all the crap I never wear, and all the stuff my mom buys me because she assumes our taste is similar, due to a series of ill-fated childhood attempts to win maternal validation by agreeing with her taste in my clothing. The ill-fatedness stems from the fact that, like today, I would refuse to actually WEAR the stuff once we got it home. Wah wah wah. My relationship with my mother was ruined by leggings or something. But yeah. I've been getting more honest with myself about what I like to wear and what is interesting conceptually, but is either ill-fitting, overly daring, or not part of my current lifestyle (I have this great business suit that doesn't come out much...). So I have pledged to get rid of 2/3 of my current wardrobe, because I realized that I only wear about 1/4 of it, but some of it is fun, and that things that I need but hate the version I have will get replaced so that I will have
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It all started with my recent obsession with watching Sex in the City on DVD (if you haven't watched more than 4 episodes you are NOT allowed to think less of me for this. I'm tired of girl-culture getting no respect!). Lately I have renewed an interest in clothing unheard of since high school, when I played with Bright Red Lipstick and color combinations not usually found in the 90s. I have too much clothing and I don't wear most of it. I am building a lean, mean, wardrobe machine (perhaps not lean because then it wouldn't fit me) and getting rid of all the crap I never wear, and all the stuff my mom buys me because she assumes our taste is similar, due to a series of ill-fated childhood attempts to win maternal validation by agreeing with her taste in my clothing. The ill-fatedness stems from the fact that, like today, I would refuse to actually WEAR the stuff once we got it home. Wah wah wah. My relationship with my mother was ruined by leggings or something. But yeah. I've been getting more honest with myself about what I like to wear and what is interesting conceptually, but is either ill-fitting, overly daring, or not part of my current lifestyle (I have this great business suit that doesn't come out much...). So I have pledged to get rid of 2/3 of my current wardrobe, because I realized that I only wear about 1/4 of it, but some of it is fun, and that things that I need but hate the version I have will get replaced so that I will have <gasp!> clothes I like. Also, I have decided that I need more occasions to get dressed that aren't work, or I'll never get to wear my cute skirts and dresses. I think I have more of an inner style-queen than most of you reading this. You'll just have to trust me that this is a positive form of greater self-expression and not a silly waste of time, money and energy.
I tried to go shopping today, for clothes, at a mall for the first time in ages. I was shocked and dismayed. All the clothes are the same styles that assholes wore in the 80s! When did someone decide that those sunglasses that fade to clear at the bottom were a good idea again? It's like my mother's storage closet (for the stuff she will never wear again) exploded in the Cambridgeside Galleria, or somebody decided that they were confused about recent politics and that suddenly it's the Reagan years again. I can understand the post-modern appeal of wearing a pink polo shirt over a lime green polo shirt with the inner shirt's collar turned up and the sleeves rolled up to reveal the retro-preppy color contrast as well as one's upper arms, but the irony is gone when it's in the window of J. Crew. Now I know how people who were growing up in the 70s felt when my generation decided that bellbottoms were cool again and I can appreciate the irony that I am sitting here writing this wearing a pair of 70s "maverick" bellbottom jeans. Leave me alone, I'm holding my breath for the 90s clothing revival, when store windows will be full of flowered cotton dresses and lug-soled boots and flannel shirts (to be worn together, natch). It's like clothes are a language and all the 80s rehash clothes are assholes laughing at me and trying to sell me junk bonds.
I tried to go shopping today, for clothes, at a mall for the first time in ages. I was shocked and dismayed. All the clothes are the same styles that assholes wore in the 80s! When did someone decide that those sunglasses that fade to clear at the bottom were a good idea again? It's like my mother's storage closet (for the stuff she will never wear again) exploded in the Cambridgeside Galleria, or somebody decided that they were confused about recent politics and that suddenly it's the Reagan years again. I can understand the post-modern appeal of wearing a pink polo shirt over a lime green polo shirt with the inner shirt's collar turned up and the sleeves rolled up to reveal the retro-preppy color contrast as well as one's upper arms, but the irony is gone when it's in the window of J. Crew. Now I know how people who were growing up in the 70s felt when my generation decided that bellbottoms were cool again and I can appreciate the irony that I am sitting here writing this wearing a pair of 70s "maverick" bellbottom jeans. Leave me alone, I'm holding my breath for the 90s clothing revival, when store windows will be full of flowered cotton dresses and lug-soled boots and flannel shirts (to be worn together, natch). It's like clothes are a language and all the 80s rehash clothes are assholes laughing at me and trying to sell me junk bonds.