"Adornment is Never Anything Except a Reflection of the Heart." Coco Chanel

I had lunch with a few friends yesterday. This is not something I often do, but we all carpool our sons in the afternoon, and it seemed like a good idea to get together and chat. It's always good to get another mom's perspective on homework, how often baseball clothes need to be washed, and what to pack for the upcoming field trip to DC.



I had a few errands to run beforehand, so I decided to dress up a little bit. It was a New Year's resolution of sorts to start dressing up a little more. I noticed last year that when I put on something besides my jeans and tank top, The Husband would ask where I was going. This told me that I might need to put a little more effort in to my appearance.



I have about 6 minutes to get ready in the morning, if I am lucky, and I generally do this in as little light as possible in order to avoid disturbing The Husband, who is still in bed. This means I can brush my hair, put on some lip gloss...and if I am really being fancy, a bit of eyeliner. I always spray the perfume too...I have to do this...it must be my genetic link to my french ancestors, because I feel naked without it. That generally leaves 2 minutes for clothes. Now, the first thing I see in my closet are my old torn jeans that I generally wear at some time or other everyday. They are my "go to" piece of clothing. The problem with those jeans is that a shirt or t-shirt must be thrown on too. Last year, I left my pajama top on a few times, and of course, those were the days in drop-off line at school that someone would walk up and say hello. See, school drop-off line fools you a bit. You think you can get by with the TV announcer trick of wearing a decent shirt with sweatpants or gym shorts.....because you know, everyone only sees you from the waist up...but you cannot get sucked into this thinking, because just when you do, a teacher will call out to you, and you will be forced to get out of your car and reveal the fact that you are wearing a blazer over your sweatpants.



The moms I lunched with commented on the fact that they have seen me wearing heels in the morning. This is true. But the fact is, I have only 3 choices in my shoe wardrobe...tennis shoes, heels or boots. I just don't do flat heels, and I only wear tennis shoes with my sweatpants. (This rule was drummed into me by my best friend in Paris who declared the American woman habit of wearing tennis shoes with anything but workout gear as "gauche")



It's so easy for men...you put on the suit or the khaki pants and dress shirt....and you are good to go. But for women, there are so many choices. And you know, just one more way to express yourself...and be judged for it.



Here is the thing. I like clothes. I like to look nice. No crime in that, right? I don't care what anybody else is wearing. I assume that most people are just trying to be comfortable or appropriate. But I spent several years watching people put together different "looks" for me to wear on a runway or in an ad...and I enjoyed it. It's a creative outlet. The other thing is...and this is probably something psychological that needs to be discussed in therapy...for the last several years of her life, my mom stopped putting a lot of care into her appearance. Especially after my father died. She just gave up. And this broke my heart. So sometimes, when I look in the mirror and I haven't tried very hard....it makes me so sad.



So today, I'm going to remember that what I wear is not always based only on function. Sometimes, it feels good to look in to the mirror and feel like those 6 minutes in the morning were put to good use...



Until tomorrow...

When You Meet a Man, You Judge Him By His Clothes. When You Leave, You Judge Him By His Heart.

I'm reading a book entitled "My Mother's Wedding Dress: The Life & Afterlife of Clothes". I'd been searching for this book for months, but it was out of print and I couldn't find a copy. Last year, I started writing a very similar book. My working title was "My Life in Shoes", but the theme of the book was very similar. The clothes that we wear evoke certain memories that remind us of a time or place. Even if your not a so-called "fashionista", most of us can recall what we were wearing to certain events at certain times in our lives. This book that I am reading will cause me to re-work my own. It is written by Justine Picardie, a former features editor of British Vogue. She writes with such a lovely style that it causes me to re-read what I have written and cross out and delete. But that is beside the point...




In "My Mother's Wedding Dress", the author describes her mother's wedding dress. It is a black couture dress with french lace...extremely chic. She feels it was representative of what her mother wanted to be, as opposed to who she really was. The dress was "gone and disappeared, lost like my parents' marriage, yet it lives on in my memory". This reminded me of my first wedding dress, worn when I was barely nineteen. It belonged to my favorite aunt, who felt that bestowing it upon me was a huge honor. I took one look at the beautiful dress and knew in my heart immediately that it was not for me...not my style,,,though at 19, I had not quite developed what one would call a "style"....But at 19, I was certainly not willing to say 'no" to such a generous offer. My only hope was that it would not fit, but as fate would have it, it fit like a glove. My mother and my aunt were beside themselves, thrilled with the prospect of seeing the gown worn again. I was quietly distraught, but would not realize until years later that you have to speak up when things don't feel right. And sometimes you are allowed to hurt people's feelings when it involves your own life. But that is a story for another day...



When I think of all of the people close to me in my life, I picture them in clothes that are meaningful to me...not necessarily them. Early on in my life with The Husband, before he was The Husband, he showed up to work on a Saturday morning wearing khaki shorts, a green t-shirt and brown leather boots (the short JCrew kind). I can still remember seeing him across the building, walking up to his office, and thinking "That is a very handsome guy". And to this day, that green t-shirt is my favorite thing for him to wear. He looks good in almost everything, but the green t-shirt just carries the good feelings...



My mom had an ochre dress that she wore with a purple scarf...it sounds hideous when I describe it, but when she wore it, I thought she was the most beautiful lady in the world. After she died, I scoured her closet looking for that dress, but it wasn't there. So it will just have to remain a memory, which is probably a good thing, because the dress itself probably would not have held up to the memory...


I have absolutely no memory of anything special my dad wore except a Cubs baseball cap. This in itself speaks volumes about my dad...because he could have cared less about clothes...a point of contention for he and my mom all through their life...


The kids are easy...for Big Sister, it was her Punky Brewster hairstyle early on, and later in life, her lovely wedding dress. For The Rebel, her Snow White costume on Halloween. The Boy appears in my mind in every baseball uniform he has ever worn...and for Little One, it has to be the little red french jacket that Grandma brought back from Paris....

I don't know what my own would be...I guess that is for others to decide. When I married The Husband, the dress was not perfect since it was a product of time, money and environment. We were married over-looking a beach in Jamaica...so this required something a little different...I ended up with a black off-the-shoulder dress with a cream collar. At the time, I wasn't overly crazy about it, but when I look at pictures...it seems to fit not only me, but the occasion.

I know they say that clothes don't make the person, but there is no getting around the fact that clothes are an expression of who we are. Each time we put the effort..or don't put the effort...into what we wear, we show others a little piece of ourselves. Who we are...who we aren't...or who we want to be...

So until tomorrow, when I will remember that what I am wearing today may be what someone remembers about me years from now...