I have always had a challenging relationship with clothes. I know I need to wear them. I just wish they didn’t spur so many troublesome emotions.
This may be one of the reasons why my parents sent me to a school that had a uniform. It was an insurance policy against clothing-related temper tantrums. At least, it was for five days of the week. And this is not to say one can’t have a clothing crisis when a uniform is required. After all, there was always the option of kilt or tunic, knee highs or tights.
I remember waking up one Sunday morning as a kid, wondering why my mother hadn’t summoned me for church. Not having any clue how to dress oneself fancy enough for the Lord’s eyes, I cobbled together an outfit that I thought suitable. I wore my school kilt and a blouse. That would have been weird enough, but I went one step further. I took my school tie and, instead of tying it in a half Windsor, I tied it as one would an Hermes scarf.
I skipped off to church, eager to see the surprise on my mother’s face as her little angel appeared, unexpected in the House of God. It was more a look of horror that greeted me, as her eyes went straight to my neck. Her hands were quick to follow and, in the blink of an eye, my finishing touch was relieved of its duty and stuffed in her purse.
Another Sunday, I remember putting up a fuss about having to wear a pink, cable-knit sweater. My older, in-the-know cousin who was living with us at the time, sleepwalked in from her room, pushed the sleeves half way up my forearm and mumbled, “There. Now you’re preppy,” before stumbling back to bed. To this day, I am forever pushing up my sleeves.
I often wonder whether wearing a uniform in those formative years stunted the part of my brain responsible for style. I remember equally hideous fashion faux-pas when I started public school in grade nine, a fashionably inept lamb to the social slaughter. One outfit, from the Gap, consisted of bright red leggings, a dark blue skirt, dark blue turtle neck and a boxy, bright red cardigan. And a scrunchie. I looked like a walking test for colourblindness.
Over the years, my choices muted, though there were certainly some questionable choices throughout my career. One time, I delivered a stand-up for the lead story on the six o’clock television news wearing a t-shirt that featured a naked lady riding a unicorn over a rainbow. In my defence, my actual job was in radio.
Somewhere along the line, though, I gave it all up. I think it was around the time I realized baby poop is to a mother’s wardrobe as dye packs are to a thief’s. It’s just safer if everyone wears blue.
Years ago, I asked a friend who is always beautifully dressed (despite having children) to come help. She brought an 11-page worksheet, designed to get to the bottom of my lost inspiration. The conclusion we reached was that I was a) too tired to bother and b) so long out of the game, I didn’t even know where the sideline was.
She started suggesting things that dropped my jaw to the floor. First, you *can* wear nice clothes whilst caring for children—all you need is an apron. Second, those clothes can be just as comfortable as the ones I was living in, you just have to find the right fit. Third, and this one really threw me, high-waisted jeans are for real where it’s at.
It’s been four years since that mind-blowing day, and finally I see her point about the jeans. Needless to say, she is high-fiving a million angels.
Of course, it isn’t true that having children means you need to wear burlap or a paper bag. Perhaps the best example of this is the school’s kindergarten teacher. Every day, I see this woman dressed beautifully with her gorgeous hair and minimal, bang-on makeup. I started thinking, ‘this lady spends her entire day with snotty-nosed, grimy-fingered, sometimes puking knee nibblers and yet she manages to don outfits that look like they could be in Glamour. I have to be missing something.’
So I asked her how she pulls this off. She said she noticed a number of years ago that she had beautiful clothes but that she never wore them. She always went for the same old things. Sounds familiar. The choice was either get rid of them or let them see the light of day, professional risks be damned. She said she’d rather wear something she loves and have it suffer the consequences of children, than wear the same thing all the time and stifle her self-expression.
I suppose I was at the same fork in the road. I have a lot of clothes I love looking at on the hanger, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t choosing to hang them on me. Looking back, I don’t even know why. Maybe I was thinking of them more like art than clothing. Something pretty to look at before I walked out of the closet in the same old hoodie.
Over Christmas, my mother-in-law took me to her favourite place on the planet. A thrift store. I admit, there was a bit of panic when I first walked in. It was huge. There was so much stuff. It seemed so random and without reason or order. It felt like it was going to be a lot of work. But, with the spirit of This Mom’s Gonna Snap in mind, I dove in, wondering what treasures I’d unearth.
With each new possibility that went into my basket, I got closer and closer to the spirit of my former, naked-unicorn-rider wearing self. When I finally reached the check-out, the lady at the til asked if I’ve always been into retro. It took a second before her words sunk in. Most of what I chose was bright, patterned, or bold. There’s a green knit sweater with huge buttons at the collar, a coat that’s already had a downtown debut and a sweet little cardigan with black hearts. I have never been so excited to bring home new (to me) clothes. This coming from someone who is heavier than I’ve ever been when not pregnant.
I don’t know what’s happened, whether it’s my friend’s patient guidance, the prominence of differently shaped social influencers, the EMDR, or the unexpected thrill of a thrift store find. Perhaps aspects of all of the above. But I finally feel good about (most of) my clothes. Now if only I could come up with an internal heating system so I could wear them all through this blasted eternal winter, I’d be high-fiving a million angels, too.