In response to Ann Nichols’ “What I Wore” post recalling favorite outfits.

I hate fashion. Hate it. Fashion is fascism:  Other people telling you what to wear in order to get you to spend ridiculous sums of money – and to look ridiculous in the bargain.  (Think that’s too harsh?  How often do you look at old pictures of yourself and say, “Gee, that was a stunning outfit!” vs. cringing and wondering what you were thinking?)

I’m also all about the comfort. One of my sayings is “Life is too short to wear uncomfortable clothes.” I dress for the occasion and like to look attractive enough, but I don’t like to fuss over what I wear and I want to feel comfortable, so I buy simple, easygoing clothes. I've always loved those movies set in the future where everyone wears jumpsuits, with just minor variations in color or style.  That seemed ideal to me.  No worries or fuss over what to wear and comfort galore.

I’ve never understood why women like to shop. It’s a real chasm between me and most women. I’m like a guy in my feelings about shopping. I’ve never faked an orgasm, but as a teenager, I faked enjoying shopping with my girlfriends because I felt like a mutant for not being wild about it like they were.  As an adult, I’ve dodged invitations to go shopping from women friends for so long that I can’t remember the last time I was asked. For the past 20 years, I’ve largely bought what I need online and in a local consignment store. Shopping malls feel like death to me.

And don’t get me started on shoes. I have hard-to-fit feet (in no less than four different ways) and so the comfort thing reaches its apex when it comes to my tootsies.  If it were practical, I’d go barefoot most of the time (as I did as a kid), but I settle for finding the rare pair of comfortable shoes that I proceed to wear until they fall apart.  The major boon of working from home has been that I live in a pair of sheepskin slippers.

I say all that and yet I have a closet full of clothes, and have spent more hours and dollars of my life on them than I ‘d like to admit. Of course, it’s nice to feel you look attractive, and there’s part of me that’s drawn to the decorative aspect of clothing. For me, it comes out largely in accessories, especially scarves and earrings, of which I think a woman can never have too many.  (The only way I can understand how many women feel about shoes is considering how I feel about scarves and earrings.)  Honestly, I could be happy going the Georgia O’Keeffe route and adopting a black kimono for my daily garb…as long as I could add those two accessories. (I’d have to do that in the futuristic jumpsuit world, too.)

My feelings about clothes have been consistent my entire life.  As a kid, I loved being in comfy clothes that allowed me to climb trees, ride my bike and play games.  Dressing up was a necessary evil for school and church.  (I was a bit like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird.") The only wardrobe item of my childhood that I have a truly warm feeling about is a pair of shoes that I’m wearing in an Easter Sunday photo I still have. Made with patches of soft leather in varied pastel colors, they were cool-looking but I can also feel the comfort just looking at them.

 
Up through grade school, my mother told me what to wear and I was fine with that when we lived on the East Coast, where dresses were required.  She even let the sunshine in a bit, buying me a bright orange pleather jumper in 1968 that I proudly wore with matching orange tights.  But just before 6th grade, we moved to Southern California, and I had a long bruising fight with my mother to be allowed to wear pants to school, while enduring ridicule for looking like Rebeccca of Sunnybrook Farm in a sea of surfer dudes and chicks.  The first time my mother broke her, “No daughter of mine will wear pants to school!” rule, I came dressed in houndstooth trousers and a wool turtleneck, which as you can imagine barely made a dent in the teasing.  However, by junior high, my mother had capitulated and I was dressing myself in cords, Hang Ten t-shirts and moccasins like everybody else.

By high school, the Renaissance hippie look was in full flower, and girls often floated around in long dresses. Out on a reluctant shopping trip with a girlfriend, I found one that made me happy in a way few articles of clothing ever have.  Made of summery-light fabric of red cotton with sprigs of white flowers and topped by a plunging neckline with a lacy white collar that flattered my nearly invisible bosom, it was my “Scarlett O’Hara” dress, and I felt like a Southern belle every time I wore it.

In college, a small used clothing store near campus opened my suburban mall kid’s eyes to secondhand shopping.  I first focused on the military surplus, becoming addicted to khaki pants, fatigues, and those dark blue wool sailor pants with all the buttons (which a guy who wanted to get into them once told me were quite intimidating).  But not long before graduation, I started looking at the vintage silk blouses the shop sold, and bought one that I found useful as I started my working life in glamorous San Francisco, where I was supposed to look professional on a secretary’s tiny salary. 

The solution presented itself when I found a vintage shop in Berkeley that sold not only silk blouses but cashmere sweaters and wool suit jackets from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s for as little as $4 (I never paid more than $9).  I spent many happy years pairing classic skirts with my vintage finds, thus minimizing the hideous and boring "Dress for Success” suits of the era that I had to buy.  I think that was the closest I ever came to being stylish (as opposed to fashionable) -- many people actually told me how much they admired my personal style while I suppressed the urge to confess that a large part of my fashion strategy was budgetary.  Some saw past my facade of creative dressing, though, as when I told a co-worker that I'd gladly wear a uniform to work and she drily responded with a near-wink, "But don't you already?"

 Wearing one of those vintage jackets, one of the few good perms I ever had and my all-time favorite sunglasses, sadly lost in a restaurant later.

Work wardrobe was one thing, but post-college dating in the city meant I had to have something to wear besides the comfortable threads I had for hanging out with friends.  Thin as I was at the time, for dating clothes, I became obsessed with minimizing the little muffin-top (as we call it now) that I’d inherited from my mother. High-waisted flat front pants and skirts were the ticket, and most of my shopping energy went into finding them -- in black, of course, which is not only the most slenderizing color but also goes with everything, is always in style and never shows the dirt.  

It was then that “black bottom, colorful top” became my fashion template – one that I still live by today, in my sartorial laziness.  My simple taste means that little of what I’ve worn has been memorable, even though there were favorites that I wore to death:  Anything in emerald green, my favorite color, especially if made of velvet or velour. (But also those emerald green cords that I paired with a bohemian black turtleneck in college.)  A wrap-around Indian print skirt always worn with a leotard – an emblematic outfit of the 70’s.  A denim mini-skirt I wore on dates 20 years and pounds ago, paired with low motorcycle style boots.  Some vintage satin lingerie that made me feel like Veronica Lake.  A gorgeous chocolate brown vintage cashmere sweater that I carelessly shrank in the wash. A lovely mulberry-colored wool sweater that met the same fate.  (Did I mention that I hate dry cleaning as well as fashion?)  Some smartly tailored vintage jackets that I no longer wear but can’t bear to discard. A pair of high-top red sneakers from Smith & Hawken.

These days, when the occasion calls for it, I pull some nice clothes out of my closet and fix myself up, but most of the time my unfashionable life continues, as would be proven were I to snap a picture of myself right now, sitting here writing while dressed in my uniform:  a pair of black jeans and an emerald green shirt.