365dressup

It’s grant-writing season at work, so today was very long and hardly anyone saw what I wore because hardly anyone saw me! I will post my work clothes for today and tomorrow when I am done with the grant. But here is a picture of me wearing my post-work outfit, which is partly in honor of my cousin Debbie, who died a year ago today. We were the same size, but she had better fashion sense and an amazing sense of style.

When my first husband and I split 22 years ago and I needed a work wardrobe, she sent me a work and casual after-work wardrobe that was beyond beautiful. Mom’s comment, “You don’t even look like you *need* a job!” about summed it up.

This blue Liz Claiborne shirt was among them. The jeans are the 528s from Mass Bay. Oh, when I come home thrashed at 8 p.m. after a day of grant writing (and haven’t even finished the grant) and the only reason I put on clothes instead of pajamas is to walk the dog, I’m gonna wear the after-work outfit two days in a row.

So hold the snark.

Today’s big news is…. Meet my editorial board! (Also, this post includes two days worth of wardrobe choices.)

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from my sister. Here’s how it started:

“Some unsolicited advice about your blog, and please don’t take it the wrong way but I thought I’d point out: I know you are writing things quickly and probably don’t have time to proofread but you have some pronoun-antecedent issues.”

Here is part of what I wrote back:

“This project is about me, my clothes, and the relationship between what I wear, what I do, who I am, who I am becoming and what, if anything, it means. Sometimes we get dressed in a hurry and don’t look quite put together. That happens when we write in a hurry, too. (At some point, this will be the topic of a post and Clinton Kelly will be

in it, too.)

“So do not worry about offending me by pointing out grammatical errors or suggesting ways to make the writing better.”

Then, this morning, I got a message from my pal Andy in New York. He had a lot of really helpful things to say too (and doesn’t care about the grammar). One of them was this:

“I wanna see YOU in the pics, not disembodied vestments on a hanger.”

So, thank the Editorial Board for one of today’s pictures. And thank my pal Marge, who took the photo.

Today, Saturday, I am wearing a Fitigues black waffle knit cotton shirt with a neckline I do not have the vocabulary to describe (I’m sure there’s a word for it and will be deeply grateful to anyone who can teach it to me). If it were human, it would be old enough to vote and drive. There used to be an entire store full of the stuff , which was frightfully expensive. Try not to gasp in surprise when I reveal that it was located in one of our fancier ‘burbs, The good news for the rest of us was the back room where they stashed and sold past seasons’ leftovers. At $20, the shirt was a great deal, and I got a long black hooded robe-like garment that makes me feel like Morticia Addams every time I put it on.

Today is the last day before bath time for the 524s. Tomorrow, I shall wear the 528s and another shirt that turns me into a billboard. But what kind of a curmudgeon would I be to crab about advertising a National Monument? Especially after the glorious October afternoon my sweetheart and I enjoyed there in 2010. Muir Woods. A great place to buy a T-shirt after a walk with someone you love.

The first time I got married, it was in a synagogue. I wore a fabulous raw silk cocktail dress from Valentina. It was ivory, cost $400, and had pockets.  The second time I got married, it was in a courtroom. I wore a fabulous hand-painted cotton dress from Valentina. It was yellow, cost $265, and had pockets. The third time I got married, it was in our parlor. I wore the 528s and, over a spandex tank top, a white hand-embroidered dress shirt my father bought sometime during his two-year stint as a U.S. Army chaplain in Okinawa (1955-57). It was my “something old.” Gene wore jeans (our “something blue”) and a white T-shirt he’d picked up at the Ravenswood Winery in Sonoma Valley a month prior – our “something new.” The borrowed thing was my mother’s gold chain with the Mobius Strip Shema on it.

The next day, Black Friday, Mom & Debby wanted to go shopping. Mom wanted to go to the Land’s End Inlet. Debby wanted to go there and to the mall. I told them they were insane.

We went to the Inlet. I got the yellow hat and grey nightie. Then, after dropping Mom off at home so she could nap, we went to Bayshore Mall so Debby could find something – I forgot what – she had been instructed to bring back for my niece Elizabeth. There are two stores I love at Bayshore. One is Williams-Sonoma.

The other is Lise & Kato’s. Or, as I call it, “Lise & Kato’s: My favorite place to get in trouble.” I used to buy more clothes there – one nice thing a season to wear to work. But a few years ago I figured out something and had to stop. When I was 14, my dear friend Joe signed my high school yearbook: “To a rose in the vegetable garden of life.” Vegetables working in semi-corporate settings can wear funky arty clothes to work because they’re vegetables. Roses cannot. Dressing more like a vegetable at work doesn’t make me any less of a rose. But it does help me look a little more like I’m in the right garden.

Anyway, Debby and I wandered in there. By the time it was over, I had spent on one outfit what I usually spend on three. It is my absolute favorite work outfit. It straddles the vegetable/rose dividing line, but it works. (I got the Roots sweater at the outlet in Edmonton this past summer.) I wear it with boots, or, lately a pair of Naot Mambo shoes. They’re new. Mom moved here in October and when Debby arrived from Canada for Thanksgiving, she had on the Mambos. I ordered a pair the next day. That woman is a bad influence.

After work, I changed into the 528s and a shirt I bought to wear to a Superbowl party last year. I couldn’t bring myself to buy an official Packer’s shirt because I knew I’d never wear it again. Then I remembered Brew City, which specializes in Milwaukee and Wisconsin themed clothes. Problem solved.

Clinton Kelly would probably have a heart attack and beg someone to tear his eyeballs from his head over today’s hoodie. The safety pins hanging from the strings! The faded logo in the back!

“Why would anyone leave their house wearing their grandmother’s 40-year-old hoodie?” my inner Clinton Kelly is shrieking. His eyes are squeezed shut and his fingers are in his ears. He is yelling “LALALALALALALALA.”

He misses the answer. I’m leaving the house because my dog needs a walk.

Three people told me today that I looked cute or that they liked my skirt. My mother gave it one of those looks that sets your inner “Ask Why She is Looking at You That Way at Your Own Risk!” alarm jangling.

I asked anyway.

“You don’t like it?”

She stared at the triangular hemline, forehead furrowed, and considered the question.

“I’m not sure,” she finally said.

The skirt is a European size 40, brand name Golf and Company. It’s wooly brown white and turquoise tweed. It’s asymmetrically cut, with light brown lace trimming at the bottom of the hem. Alex left it behind on one of her Milwaukee stops between a visit to Israel and her first post-college job in Edmonton. After a year or so of sliding it from one side or another in the skirts-and-nice-stuff closet while hunting down something to wear to work one day, I tried it on. At the time she bought it, we were pretty close to the same size. It fit. Today I paired it with a light blue Liz Claiborne mock turtleneck sweater that used to belong to Megan’s mother Pat. Pat was cleaning out her closet and getting rid of clothes she had finally decided were not going to fit her again. I was the lucky recipient.

Post-work, I just went with the top I wore on Tuesday and the 528 jeans. Note the small hole in the knee. That happened when I fell off my bike last year while trying to give my cousin’s dog some exercise. We’d been champs at it the day before. All was well, then she made a sudden pull to the right as I was deciding whether we were close enough to the left edge of the road to give wide berth to the pickup truck coming up behind us. We went over and I ended up with a skinned knee, bruised chin and a small patch of road rash in a place where I did not know it was possible to get road rash. The dog was fine.

I limped home walking bike and dog, dreading the scolding I was going to get from my mom and aunts for thinking it was a good idea to do circus tricks in the road. Which was kind of cool, actually. Because for most of us, the last time we have that experience is sometime around our tenth birthday, and I am 52.

One of my working theories about life is that bad things happen and one of the few things we can do is be kind to each other. The fallout from that is that I have amassed a collection of pretty terrific friends. Megan is one of them. She’s 24 (I think) and just got her master’s degree in social work. She grew up in the ‘burbs and has a really good sense of work fashion that she inherited from her mother Pat. We met five years ago when I was looking for someone to speak to a group I was facilitating (I do that kind of thing in my work) and put up a post in a Facebook group. Megan answered. We met for coffee and the rest is history.

Anyway, one year she decided to take me shopping as a Christmas present. We’d discussed my fashion-impaired ways and she was sure she could help. I believed her. At 20, she knew how to rock professional clothes in a way I’m still working to figure out. It felt a little weird for her buy me clothes when I was perfectly happy to let her pick and have me pay – her advice was the real gift here – but she would have none of it. She was taking charge. So I embraced my inner Barbie and let her dress me.

We hit the sale rack at Ann Taylor, and by the time it was over I had two shirts, a twin set, a pair of pants and a blazer. The twin set has become a staple of my winter wardrobe, and it’s rare when someone doesn’t remark that I look nice today when I have it on.

The brown pants are from the same Eddie Bauer shopping trip as the sweater I wore yesterday.

They’re okay, but when I get home I head straight for the blue jeans. Today it’s a pair of Levi’s 528s. They’re my favorites. I got them at the same time I got the 524s, but I like the way these fit better.

Today’s shirt raises an important issue: The Human Billboard Conundrum. Generally, when advertising a product, I like to be paid for it. That is one of the reasons I own – and wear – several T-shirts bearing the logo of my employer.  But we live in a world where, as often as not, we pay for the privilege of hawking the company that made or sold the purse, the shirt, the jacket, whatever. Expect to read more about this over the course of the year. For now, I’ll just say that today I am a display ad for the library school where I am a graduate student.

And I’m keeping warm in the Eddie Bauer cardigan my boyfriend gave me before he became my husband. It used to be his, so it’s a little big. He, however, is a perfect fit.

Work clothes and after work clothes got equal time today, because I ended up spending half the day helping my mom out after she got a cortisone injection in her hip. During a lull in the ice on/ice off rotation, I dashed home, changed my clothes, grabbed the dog and went back.

I really like the work outfit I wore today. The sweater came from Eddie Bauer at the beginning of the fall 2010 season, and they didn’t have my size in the store. I let the sales clerk call other stores until she found it in my size and happily accepted the offer to mail it to my house, postage-free. The undershirt got left behind by one of my children (Alex, I think). It is a wonderfully practical garment, especially on cold days.

The pants are from a very fancy store called Fayes 1, and were were made by ISDA and Company. I got them on sale; they were frightfully expensive and I love them. They are as comfortable as pajamas, they are mad flattering and they look really professional. There’s  only one drawback and it’s a big one. If they were lesser pants it would have been a deal-breaker.

But I forgave them for not having pockets, and have been wearing them to work happily ever after since July 1, 2009. That was the day of my first salvo in Operation Dress to Be Taken Seriously.

The after-work shirt is a very comfortable thin cotton shirt, which is why I always wear it with one of those Old Navy undershirts. And again, the Levi’s 524s. We keep the heat pretty low at home, saving money and all that. The brown hoodie came from the Roots Outlet store in Edmonton. Roots is FUBU for Canadians. Great clothes, purses and – I think – accessories. I’m not so good at accessories. But I am a sucker for a hooded sweatshirt, and I do not care that Clinton Kelly hates them. He might not mind this one, because it is rather fitted and gives me a shape. Clinton Kelly is big on shape. More on this – and on his role in my decision to spend the year shooting my clothes with a camera – in future posts.

I had such big plans for the start of this project. Piles of clean, folded laundry. A staging area to photograph what I’m wearing. And a brand-new memory card so I can keep all the pictures in one place. HA! The bedroom floor is littered with dirty clothes and even though I am going to be very selective about sharing “dainty unmentionables” information, what you see in the pocket of that sweater is my very last pair of clean socks. Guess what I am doing when we get back from New Year’s Day Brunch at Old People Harvard, where my mother lives.

Anyway, about the clothes. Because this year, it’s all about the clothes. The shirt used to be Ann’s. Ann is a family practice and criminal defense lawyer who spends most of her time trying to make the world a better place. I don’t know why she didn’t want it any more. My youngest daughter Talia was at her house one day and when she came home, she handed me the shirt and said Ann had given it to me. The brand is One World, which is pretty much all I can tell you about that, but it is a very comfortable shirt that washes well.

Alex, Talia’s older sister, gave me the sweater for Hanukkah a few years ago. She got it at Target. I’ve sometimes perused their sale racks and found things, but it’s not a usual clothes-shopping destination. I would have picked out that sweater, though I’m not as sure I would have bought it. I like it a lot. It’s fuzzy and warm, like a hug. But it pulls a little across the chest if I button it all the way. (Disclosure: “Special Needs Breasts” run in my family, and I got a pair.) But it was a gift. From my daughter, no less. And who buttons long cardigans all the way up anyhow? Today it is windy and cold. I can’t wear a blanket to brunch. I’ll wear a hug from Alex instead.

The blue jeans are Levi’s 524s. They came from the Mass Bay Company in Hyannis a couple of years ago. My friend Kathy said they looked good on me and I should buy them. I met her in 1977, at my first “real” job. Mom did not allow Debby or me to work while we were in high school. Studying was our job, she said, so babysitting was as close as we got. When we graduated, we were informed that we had to get summer jobs to pay for books and incidentals in college. We lived in Utica, New York during the school year. But in 1975, a year after my father died, Mom used his life insurance money to buy a small house in Cape Cod. That’s where we spent summers.

Waitressing is a great way to earn money on Cape Cod.  I ruled it out immediately. It’s a bad profession for a klutz whose anxiety in stressful situations plays out in getting confused and shutting down. So I decided to hit the retail shops on Main Street and see if one of them might hire me. Within an hour, I had a job. I spent two summers* working at Mass Bay – then called “The Jeanery.” It was a fabulous Army/Navy, clothing and all kinds of other cool stuff store owned by a gorgeous (and taciturn-but-good-hearted) guy named Billy. Kathy was his girlfriend then, and worked there, too. Billy’s brother Paul ran the Edgartown store; his sister Lynn operated the one in Provincetown. Fast-forward to 2011. Billy and Lynn both died, too young. Kathy and Paul co-own the Hyannis store. Kathy and Billy’s son and daughter are in their 20s, roughly the same age as their dad was when he opened the Hyannis store. It’s still one of the most popular on Main Street, and I love to shop there whenever I’m on the Cape.

*In 2009, Talia spent a summer on Cape Cod. I told her she should introduce herself to Kathy and say hi. In a surprise twist, Kathy hired her on the spot. (I called and told Kathy she should fire her if she screwed up. She burst out laughing and told me that she’d hired the son of another friend earlier in the summer, and he’d told her the exact same thing.)**

(**Talia did very well and was asked back the following summer, but had settled in Madison by then.)

“I don’t think of you as being someone who is fashion-conscious,” my sister  Debby said when I told her I was going to take a picture of everything I wear for a year and write about it.

“That’s exactly the point!” I responded.

I don’t know what’s going to happen over the next 365* days, but I am sure it will be interesting. And even though I don’t officially start until tomorrow, I will tell you that I am wearing a long grey Lands’ End cotton/flannel nightgown under a brown hoodie I got in a trade. It showed up at my house some five years ago on the back of one of my daughters, who borrowed it from her friend Leah. When I told her how much I liked it, she said I could keep it. I offered one of my Roots Canada hooded sweatshirts in exchange. Which, now that I think of it, I am not sure she received. (Leah – if you’re reading this and I owe you a Roots Canada hoodie, please let me know.)

Leah’s former sweatshirt has the words “Lambeau” across the front in white-trimmed gold felt letters. Centered beneath, on a white felt oval trimmed in gold thread, is an embroidered image in copper, silver and white of Curly Lambeau throwing a football. It’s framed on either side by 19 and 57, the year the Green Bay Packers played their first season in Lambeau Field. (I never knew those letters were felt. I’ve already learned something interesting.)

Packers attire is ubiquitous in my city, which is not surprising given that it’s pretty much the unofficial state uniform here in Wisconsin. But I have never seen a sweatshirt like this one.

As to the nightgown, I like Lands’ End well enough, but I don’t go to the Inlet very often because I’m not much of a shopper. My mother and sister, however, are cuckoo for Lands’ End, and a couple of years ago they were here at the same time – Mom from Hyannis and Debby from Edmonton. Debby wanted to try and find some khaki pants for my skinny nephew Noah. She didn’t, but Mom and I each got one of the grey nightgowns and I found a bright yellow very warm-looking fleece hat in a back-of-the-store-closeout-sale-bin for $8. Then my friend Grace’s dog Zoe gave me a felted rose pin for Hanukkah. I pinned it to the hat.

A month later came a day when the temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chills no one wants to think about. On the walk to my office from the parking structure a block away, a young man exiting his car started yelling at me.

I kept going. He kept yelling. I stopped and looked back.

“I like your hat!” he yelled. “Can I buy it?”

The hat was keeping my head warm. I was not interested in selling it and even if I had been, I was running late and not interested in taking time to conduct sales transactions on the street in the dead of winter.

“Thanks and it’s not for sale,” I said as I resumed walking.

He kept yelling. I turned back to face him while continuing to walk in the same direction.

“I’ll give you $100!”

That stopped me. $100? What to think? Was this guy part of a reality show? Was a camera crew hidden somewhere? Maybe there was a woman in his life – girlfriend? mother? – whom he knew would love the hat so much that he was willing to buy it off the head of a stranger on the street in order to please her? The answer was still no. I liked it. I was keeping it.

I have other hats, but that’s the only one with a name. I call it my “$100 hat,” and have been told many times by people who’ve heard the story that I should have sold it. One day, I may give it away if I don’t wear it any more. But I don’t think I would ever sell it. It keeps my head warm, but there’s more to it than that.

A passing stranger once wanted that hat. He wanted it so much within seconds of seeing it that he assigned it a tangible value and made an offer to purchase. He gave my hat an identity and a story. His actions that day elevated the hat’s status as an object. Mine turned it into a symbol. Realizing that I wanted to keep it more than I needed $100 was an unprecedented event in my adult life.

No one ever offered to buy something I was wearing before that morning, and no one has since. Which is just fine by me.

*I know it’s a leap year. One day – and I do not know which – I am going to leave everyone wondering.