Black Dress

The black dress had a singular sound and feel,
the Audrey Hepburn dress, the clerk said, and it was sold.

A wide décolleté draped with a wavy collar framed my cleavage.
It wrapped around my ribcage like a baby's swaddling

pulled me in tight and feminine, the swishing skirt flared
to my calves with the urgency to twirl.

The rhinestones on the cuffs and swinging from my earlobes
matched the ones on my shoes and around my neck.

I opened my handbag to check on the two cotton handkerchiefs
I had been given, then I momentarily put my carefully made-up face

in my hands, but caught the tears before they marred my visage.
I moved down the aisle in a happy trance and sat down

to watch my son begin the life I had always dreamed for him.

My New Heroine

Dame Helen Mirren, 66 years old, was recently voted "Best Bod" by a fitness magazine. This is what she recently said to Women and Home magazine.
"My big complaint is, why aren't more dresses made with sleeves? I don't want to wear a frumpy jacket over a sleeveless dress, and it enrages me that it's so difficult to find anything beautiful with sleeves. If you think of Elizabethan dresses or turn-of-the-century fashions, there are some amazing things you can do with sleeves, so why do so few designers put them on dresses?"

My sentiments EXACTLY! Thank you Helen. I hope someone listens.

Wedding Dress Shopping

What could be more fun than shopping for a wedding dress? My future daughter-in-law was sweet enough to include me on her special day with her mother and sister and my daughter. She chose a dress - which is top secret of course, but just seeing all the dresses was quite a sight.

National Flip-Flop Day!

Happy National Flip-Flop Day! Wear them all day. Wear them everywhere! Happy Friday!

Buying A Pair of Jeans

It could take a whole day, maybe two -
the pulling up and pushing down of blue denim.
You know before it wraps around your thigh
whether to continue the heated upward effort.

Sometimes you miscalculate
as they smoothly rise over your hips
to discover the button will not be forced
into its matching hole from two inches away.

Boot cut, flare, straight leg, wide leg,
curvy, slim, skinny, low-waist, ultra low,
faded, dark wash, ripped, bedazzled,
stretch, regular, ankle, long, petite, short,
5-pocket, 4-pocket, button-down, zip.

Then a pair slides on without tears.
You button, you zip, you turn to view the rear.
You squat, you stand on tiptoe - and you sigh.
You pay a lot of money, bring them home

and try them on to make sure it wasn't a dream.
At long last you sit into the ease of your new jeans
and smile. You pray they won't shrink.
You hope you don't gain any more weight.

You touch the soft blue fabric and rejoice
in the comfort you so valiantly sought.
It's a victorious day - and then your husband says,
so what did you do all day?

Bad News, Very Bad News

I had heard vague whisperings and inferences, but I didn't believe it - couldn't believe it. But now I have read it in black and white from a style reporter - straight from New York Fashion Week (for fall 2009). We're regressing back to the style of the 1980's, and when I use the word regressing I mean it in the worst possible way. Four seemingly innocent words, when put together make me shudder - big hair, shoulder pads. Actually big hair wasn't mentioned, but just the thought of it makes me want to throw up a little bit. I can't even extrapolate my hair into medium let alone big. My only hope in the 80's was a curly perm. I had one good one and 27 bad ones (well, it seemed like that many). Even then I had to bribe and coax my lifeless locks daily to get them to be anything but small hair.

Shoulder pads - I spent an entire decade cutting them out of every piece of clothing I bought. I already have the shoulders of Michael Phelps - no help needed. I collected a whole drawer full of them and then realized I would never be using them and they went in the trash where they belonged.

Let's see, what else was fun about the 80's? Bushy eyebrows? ( I don't even have any eyebrows to speak of), ripped sweatshirts, leg warmers to attractively add to the bulk of your calves, dresses that hit that unflattering mid-calf section, humongous costume jewelry - nope, none if it worked for me then - or now.

Oh well, hopefully this new trend will either stay on the runway or bring back such bad memories that consumers will boycott bringing back the worst fashion decade in history.

PS - don't click on the photo to enlarge unless you like being horrified.

What Fades Away

Today I'm pondering something seemingly unimportant, but I write about it to ask the bigger question - how does our culture slowly change? Most of us can identify each decade in the twentieth century by clothing, music, government, and national or world events. (I'm not sure about this decade and I'm not even sure what we're calling it yet.) Here's a question to my female readers: Did you play "dress-up" as a child? Did you have a box full of cast-offs from older sisters, cousins and your mom? High heels to toddle around the house in? Then as a teenager - what was the most exciting part of dances and proms? The dress, right? (Hopefully it wasn't the paramount focus of your wedding though.)

In my young adulthood I attended many employee Christmas parties, some class reunions, weddings, anniversary parties and my annual union banquet. At all of these events everyone dressed formally - suits and ties, dresses (sometimes long) and your best jewelry. In the last ten years I have watched it all disappear. Company Christmas parties have either been discontinued or relegated to appetizers in someone's family room. My neighborhood Christmas party lessened in its formality until it was in a bar in January and this year ended altogether. Class reunions that used to be dinner-dances are now picnics or golf outings. (My daughter just attended a class reunion. She wore a flirty Betsey Johnson dress and said all the other girls had jeans on. )

I used to buy something special every year for my union banquet, but over the past ten years people have come in increasingly casual outfits. I think it's kind of sad. I'm witnessing a cultural tradition disappear in my lifetime. It's not that pricy clothes are so important - it's feeling that the event is special, that it's something to look forward to, that it's not just another occassion to wear jeans.

When I started teaching I dressed like a, well, a teacher! Skirts and blouses, nice shoes. I remember wearing suits when I would be meeting parents for any reason. Now teachers wear jeans, tennis shoes, sweat suits, shorts, anything goes. Another example is from the times I have attended Broadway plays in New York City. I thought the theater was a place to get all gussied up. But tourists are at the shows in their shorts and tee-shirts after schlepping around the city all day.

I don't think I'll try to rebel against this trend very much. I like to wear something besides jeans on holidays or when I'm entertaining, but I don't care what anyone else wears. I wonder who sent out the memo telling us that we don't dress-up for anything anymore? When did that happen? And if I do dress up am I just going to look like an old person from another era because of it? Kind of like my grandma who wore dresses and nylons to clean house?And most importantly where will little girls get the their dress-up clothes from now?

Project Runway

I am not a fashionista by any stretch of the imagination. But my daughter has a degree in fashion design and worked for the iconic designer Betsey Johnson (if you're not familiar look her up on the web). I have learned to appreciate fashion and all the creativity and skill that it takes. So I started watching "Project Runway" a few years ago, and then my daughter and I could chat about it the next day. The show is definitely set up to entertain, with infighting and drama - but the talent of these designers blows me away. Each week they're given an imaginative challenge, maybe $100 and 12 hours or so to create something FABULOUS! While in NYC a couple weeks ago my daughter and I walked past a candy store window that displayed one of the Project Runway challenges from last season. They had to create dresses from candy wrappers! If you're interested a new season starts on Bravo in July. (The photo on the right has a dress made of the brown Reese's cup holders.)