Scenario:
It’s a wintery Saturday. Somehow you’ve been able to arrange child care for the day to attend a watercolor workshop, Painting the Landscape, held in an historic mansion surrounded by pine forest.
Yikes! What to wear?
Three levels of leisure-wear:
- Active Leisure = sport-specific athletic clothing (track or yoga pants, runners, ski-gear, etc).
- Outdoor Leisure = clothing inspired by outdoorsy sports (i.e. flannel and polar fleece).
- Everyday Leisure = sportswear separates worn informally (jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers, no jacket).
Honestly, although necessarily many people spend the majority of life in the dressier – and more fun – clothing categories, IMHO, a vast number of offenses occur in the leisure categories. Offenses like: wearing clothes with big holes in them – EVER, wearing “slob casual” when one of the above classifications is called for, or wearing one of the above instead of professional clothing. Do I harp on this topic too much?
(The above category breakdown was developed by me, inspired by Sherry Maysonave’s Six Levels of Casual and my own ideas on lifestyle segmentation.)
Back to our scenario. What would you wear to such an activity?
OUTDOOR LEISURE! Outdoor leisure… that is what I am… I always wondered how to discribe the style of clothing that I enjoy (yes, ENJOY) wearing more than any other and you have given it a name! Outdoor Leisure… that’s me!
What is funny is I have no clothes that are casual like these! Everything feels too dressy for Saturday mornings like that! But I wish I had the outdoor leisure look!!
I would probably wear something along the lines of Garnet Hill or Hannah Andersson – skirt, flat boots or clogs, sweater.
I’m 42, about a size 12, and have vowed not to wear knit yoga pants out of the house, as comfy as they are. I’ll leave that to my 15yo daughter.
Amy – LOL. And that’s a fabulous everyday style for our neck of the woods, isn’t it?
Mrs MK – That’s so interesting! Maybe you want to explore Eddie Bauer?
Polly – that look would definitely work for our scenario. (Unfortunately, that look doesn’t work for me at all, EVER.) Thanks for throwing out an idea. Would you be worried about getting paint on your nice clothes?
I wonder if I can just reserve some of my better, but worn, leisure items for painting in. I know it’s supposed to wash out, but there are watercolors with staining pigments. And I will soon begin working on theatre sets again, which means probably two days a week in painting clothes.
The problem with casual clothes is that we enjoy them comfortable, and what can happen is they can become really saggy, daggy and baggy, pilled and old and UGLY very easily.
I like to think of casual clothes like a block of apartments, they can be a Chyrsler building, or they could be Housing commission
Keep them fresh and in good shape.
This is another one of those things I wonder how we end up thinking the way we do. Certainly today, wearing my dark green tee with the pleated neckline, jeans, cordovan oxfords and suede jean jacket, I am dressed in everyday casual AND I am every bit as comfortable as I would be in something beat up and scruffy. But I feel immensely more presentable.
My biggest worry when it comes to my true leisure clothes is ruining them with paint or bleach or something. I think I just need to loosen my grip a little. 😉