Abi rants about fashion and style

[abilouise]

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

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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.

Comments

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

I have determined that clothes shopping is even more frustrating than car shopping. I went this weekend with a couple of friends of mine to the Galleria to potentially get dressy clothing, but the whole place was useless. We had a single goal, to get him a black silk shirt, and it failed utterly. They don't make silk shirts in *any* color, it seems. I got sucked into one place by a nifty skirt, but it only came in salmon and neon-lime (who the fuck picks these colors?!?). Another place had a cool top in a color I was OK with (had it been a few shades darker I would've loved it), but it had integrated breast augmentation devices (?!? it wasn't a damned bra!). Hubba Hubba was a bust too. The guy at the counter was an utter dick who sent my PMSing self right over the edge, so even though there were boots worth buying we didn't buy anything.

I think I'll try the Garage, the hippie store usually has nifty things I want, and even though punk-in-a-box seems to have gone completely preppy-emo-ick they might have a belt that's good for my utilikilt.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

You could try throwing a clothing swap -- everyone puts everything they don't want any more into one big pile and then there is the mad trying on.

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

I actually attended Millstone Co-op's annual clothing swap, which was great, and had a wider variety of styles and sizes represented than I'd ever seen at a clothing swap before. The problem with throwing one is that for a large part, free clothes is how I got into this mess in the first place. If people want to hang out with me and root through my discard pile, they're welcome to it though. Also, one thing that prevents me from throwing a clothing swap is the miniscule size of my apartment. If someone *ELSE* wants to throw one, I'll gladly come to it...

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

You have no idea how strangely this post reads to someone who isn't fashion-conscious. It's like you're complaining that the sayings written on your T-shirts aren't what you want to be saying, and you have to go out and buy some T-shirts that say "Lado garabo dobagano", because your current T-shirts all say things like "gara balago donagolanu", and how could you be seen in shirts that say things like that? I don't speak Swahili or fashion-language, so it's hard for me to understand why it makes such a difference which Swahili slogan is written on your T-shirt.

The idea that the meanings of these magic Swahili slogans changes with time, so that even if I got someone to teach me the hidden meanings of the statements being made in the secret fashion code, the meanings would all suddenly change, is even scarier.

Scarier still is the fact that which Swahili slogans are appropriate to wear depends on where you are, and that you would choose what you do according to what places the Swahili slogans you want to wear are appropriate, rather than doing whatever you find fun, and possibly modifying your slogans to match what the natives wear to do those activities.

But the scariest part of all is that I am wearing these Swahili slogans all the time, and the people who aren't fashion-blind are reading them, and think I mean something by them. I have no idea what decade most of the clothes I own were made in, much less what message they send.

[cme]

Suspects the mailing list has clothing swaps. Are you on the list? Would you like forwards of the announcements?

Also, for reminders of the potentially obvious: Garment District and Goodwill.

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

To be fair, boys clothes generally send weaker messages than girls' clothes do, because girl's styles have more variation (see example: a high school prom)

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes all this slightly less scary. But only slightly. It's still true that all the women around me are presumably sending these messages, and I'm blind to them.

I hope the tone of my message didn't come across as superior or critical. I meant it as "wow, you see the world really differently than I do, and I find that interesting. Maybe you'd find it interesting to see a little of how the world looks to me".

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

Nah. I thought about interpretting your thoughts as "look how superior I, logical man am!" but decided not to because then I wouldn't like you as much.