Sunday, February 10, 2013
I'm a late bloomer in the style department. In high school, "fashion" was all about labels: everyone wore T-shirts and jeans, some were just 10x as expensive as others. So I never cared about what was popular. College was much the same, maybe even more relaxed - if I wore jeans, I was better dressed than about a third of my classmates! After college, I became a cook. My every day consisted of the same comfy twill pants, plain T-shirts, and my chef jacket. Hardly an opportunity to be a style icon there.
Then I had my first son. I stayed at home for economics more than anything: daycare would have cost as much as my paychecks, so why bother? But staying at home with a baby, not even getting dressed every day, plus the post-pregnancy body, was a killer for the self esteem. I started wanting to feel pretty - I'd never really been down on myself before, but I realized that my T-shirts and jeans diet had gone from "student casual" to "frumpy mom".
Enter the internet, and especially Pintrest. Suddenly, I had an epiphany: there was more to clothes than what JCPenney had to offer! There were clothes that were *gasp* cute! And my denial of any feminine desires was simply due to the notion that if I didn't agree with what the runway thought was fashionable, that meant I was personally not fashionable. What a sad myth - I had fashion, and I had style, and just because it wasn't worn by models didn't mean anything after all.
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Day after Day Dress in Leaves |
What did I find? I found fashions from fussy Victorian to the mod 60s, and I loved almost all of it. I loved the lace and beading and embroidery, I loved the full skirts and fit-and-flare dresses, I loved the pretty blouses and cute cotton prints. I found Modcloth and Unique Vintage and recently, Lady Vintage and EShakti. I found that I wasn't alone anymore: the clothes I had drifted towards all these years were loved by other people too. That "old-fashioned" had become "vintage" - glamorous, nostalgic, and trendy after all! I also found - miracle of miracles - that there did exist clothes that would flatter even my new mommy body.
So while I could have sworn I would be the last person - ever - to comment on clothes or fashion, here I am with a new-found love of looking my best. And it feels so free to proclaim that style is whatever I want it to be, whatever I think looks good on me!
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