Back in the day, I sold dresses. I was trained to realize that dresses are the quickest, most fashion-forward item on the department store floor (which is where the majority of us find our fashion reality).
It took me until a recent season of wardrobe challenges, though, to apply that knowledge. Here’s my strategy: focus on the emerging silhouette for dresses, while living in the current silhouette for leisure and casual clothes.
Because, for the woman on the street, how your separates combine has alot to do with lengths. And, as a wise woman once pointed out: a peplum top needs a high-waisted bottom. It sounds so obvious!
More on my recent wardrobe trauma to come. What are your current challenges?
I have the worst time finding dresses. And they make some sense for a coat lover like me. The same one and done total coverage. I hate all the jersey, hate wrap style dresses, hate the surface finish on ponte, shirt dresses tend to make me look like a parcel….
I am in the middle of my current challenge. 😀 You know those style questionnaires – or entire books! – where you answer useless short quizzes full of choices you’d never make or else long introspective affairs. I’ve done endless number of them, including working through the entire Style Statement book. Now, I have no trouble putting outfits together – just have learned to remember that the outfit has to be for *me* and not just an outfit for itself. And I don’t have lack of confidence, if not hubris, when it comes to clothing and I don’t have body issues and dissatisfactions, so I’m not trying to hide anything.. But I tend to acquire a lot thrifted, wear the latest things a lot and use whatever direction it is to purge an equal or greater amount. Tired of the cycle and being outwardly influenced.
So I took yet another quiz –
http://myyearwithoutclothesshopping.com/fashion-style-shopping/10-questions-for-finding-your-style/
and this one worked pretty well. Maybe because it’s like that MMPI where they endlessly re-ask and rephrase the same questions. 😀 Anyway, it keeps digging down. I had just been
rereading Duchess’ post about Strict Parisian style and liking the subtlety of it when I came across a remark about it having no patterns. No pattern! Omigawd. Not for me, then. Funny, my husband observed recently that he didn’t like patterns in cllothing. Yes, now I see that’s so.
My clothing must really make him wince. 😀
I got a little stuck at the beginning fashion icon part as I always do. I like some of Sofia Coppola’s style and some of Jackie Kennedy’s. I like the mix of dark and light, the slimness of the clothing silhouettes, the flyaway hair in some pictures. But they’re brunette. Where they place the darker parts is different for me. I like a lot of Angelina Jolie’s looks. More brunette.
Not much in the way of patterns for any of them. And Jackie looks miserable in some of the patterned frocks she’s pictured in. Stripes are another story and I wear those, too. So I turned to Anna Wintour. Sometimes sports hair color closer to mine, though certainly no flyaway hair. And I wore that style all through the sixties. But patterns? Oh man, the queen of patterns. And I notice that one necklace she sometimes wears with everything as though it is a collar. Otherwise, I am drawn to pix of the other ladies where they are not wearing scarves or jewelry, unless perhaps earrings hidden in the hair. And all of them seem to wear few pieces of clothing. I like that. And of course Winter with her amazing coats, patterned and otherwise.
Continuing, I often wondered about the difference between my summer and winter palettes.
The summer palette has more intense color and often a lot of black, white and raspberry. So every fall I vow I will wear sharper combinations in winter and every winter end up in taupe and frosty greys. When I began to enumerate and describe past successes, I saw most of them were brighter and clearer and crisper. The only anomaly was one fall where I traveled to upstate New York to visit a boyfriend. The day before I left, it was over 90 degrees there and so I packed that kind of clothing and the day I arrived, the temperatures plummeted and chilly fall has set in and I had nothing for it. Yes, I could walk around in his clothing but I looked around town, found some sidewalk sales, an old line department store going out of business and bought a pair of jeans (not ordinarily a daily jeans wearer), 2 slim henley style tops – burnt orange, which I never wear, and a grape – a burnished small leather shoulder bag just because, an aqua silk full dress that fell from a round yoke in the nightgown loungewear department – that fell nicely once I cut out the polyester lining, and a military style wool melton midi trench in stone/putty. Far from vivid, no patterns and yet I was happy.
Here’s my insight from all this so far, though. I bought those things and stopped shopping.
When I was in college I visited a family friend for the weekend and she liked to shop so she took me with her. I saw a hot pink mod style funnel neck wool cooat with asymettrical closure on a mannequin above my head. I bought the coat even though I had to borrow the money from her. I wore it until it disintegrated from all the dry cleaning necessary because in those days Philadelphia was an exceeedingly sooty and grimy city. I had some other tamer coats but I wore that one. And didn’t need or want to look for any more. And it was a bright color in the winter. Now I don’t remember anything about winter accessories. Pretty sure I didn’t own a wool scarf. And you know, when you’re young… The coat was important to me partly because I never knew you could wear a coat in a color that wasn’t sensible. I wore it on a weekend visiting some cousins in New York City and my cousin observed that everyone was looking at me. I was startled. Why? Because they’ve never seen anyone dress like me. Oh, okay then. Now they had.
Now it happens that I’ve taken a shopping hiatus at least through the end of the month and perhaps going forward after that. Don’t know yet. Being forced back unto the wardrobe I have is helpful to me. The feeling I’m after is that one-time certainty about what I wanted to wear and to be content wearing it, without seeking out more. It’s not a money thing. I thrift mostly, get some passalong clothing from a years long round robin clothing swap a group of us have and stay at around fifty dollars a month.
I’m not necessarily done noodling around with that questionnaire but last night I started listing out the bright colored cold weather clothing I have and was surprised at how much I actually had. Am thinking of separating all of that out and taking a good look at it. Maybe starting from there. Of course, none of it is a dress. That would make everything easier. 😀
Vildy, do you like sweater dresses? Even though they are not in the “fit n flare” shape, usually, that I was thinking of when I wrote the post, they are something I have been gravitating to the past few years as easy to dress up or down in the winter.
We went to an opening the other night at the college I graduated from. The Fantasticks, it was hilarious. At the last minute, because it was trying to snow, I changed my plan and wore an aubergine sweater dress, with flat boots; the dress is the same color as my new hat. I felt perfectly myself in the given circumstances, which is always my goal.
Jill Chivers’s blog looks very interesting, but that quiz looks like way too much work for me 😉
I have been thinking recently about sketching out a way of building the idiom where this element is drawn from this particular source and another from another. Which very vague sentence requires a “for instance” ;). For instance, color is inspired by the individual’s coloring and fabrication from one’s manner of movement. I think naming one’s style icons is mostly fun, maybe inspirational, but not very practical. 🙂
Like what you are saying with fabrication being connected with manner of movement. Will have to think more on this.
Sweaterdresses used to be my dress of choice for many years. When most people were choosing to wear, say jeans and a top for their casual wear then I would be sporting a sweaterdress. For a while I was choosing maternity sweaterdresses because they gave a
sweeter more ladylike effect, not being clingy. Maybe it is time to reconsider them. Thanks!