Power of Clothes

Teen years are brutal time of trying to find your style.  I chose my style different than anyone elses.   In college, I took a clothing class since I realized by then that dressing to suit my mood didn't always suit my body type.  I was blessed with narrow shoulders making me look like a little kid.  When I was waiting for the bus to go to college, a cop stopped me and wanted to know why I wasn't in school.  Fortunately, the stack of books in my arms convinced him I was on my way.  I wanted to know about clothes so I took a class studying the subject.  After I married, my husband bought me a sewing machine on the faith that I would learn how to use it.  Mostly used it for patches.  Then I made a costume for my sister and I entered a magical world of taking flat pieces of nothing and turning them into something.  I fell in love.  Sewing grew along with my family.  Spending all my time in a fabric store landed me a job making the model garments.  They had me sew all the odd ball stuff that nobody else wanted to do, jeans jacket, dinosaurs and aprons.  Moved back to the city and needed a bit more income.  I wanted to do something that I could do at home.  I connected up with a costume designer.  Sewing for plays is a level of intensity that cause emotional break downs and divorces.  The year I did 9 plays, my family nearly divorced me with good reason.  I quit sewing. But not before I learned the power of clothes.

I happen to agree with Dr. Banks that clothes has more to do with ego than any other item we own.  Dr. Banks assured the audience that the only one that needed a mink was a mink.  Skunk will keep you just as warm.  How many skunk coats have you seen?  Over an over again they say don't judge a person by the way they dress.  However, that is the first thing everybody does.  See a man in a $1000 suit verses a $100 suit and most people could spot the difference in seconds.  When you know the language of clothes, you can watch an entire play or movie just by the clothes they were.  Certain characters dress in a way that you recognize the person by their clothes long before seeing their face.  Eliza Dolittle in My Fairlady attend the racehorses and everyone believed she was some kind of royalty by the clothes she wore and her manners.  Until she screamed at her horse to "move ye'r blooming a**."   Flylady tells her flybabies to dress right down to your shoes because what you wear reflects what you feel.  There I was back again with clothes speaking for me.  I started looking for and finding t-shirts with slogans to express how I felt.  The one KavinCoach liked the least was the day I wore a t-shirt that said, "When I snap you'll be the first to go."  I wore it on a day that I meant it.  Darn it, he knew it and was pleased that I was trying to push back.  My choices in clothes since integration were indeed a direct reaction to the memories and emotions I was feeling.  I wanted to cover myself in a hole in the ground and hide.  I used my clothes to do it for me.  Who would remember a nondescript old lady in frumpy clothes?  I wanted to loose myself.  I knew how to do it.

If you ever feel bored on a weekend.  Dress down in grubby looking clothes and walk into a jewelry shop and ask to look at their most expensive rings.  You will get some fascinating humming and hawing if they talk to you at all.  Then go change into something dressy and put on makeup.  Walk back into the same store and check out the difference in how they treat you.  I studied the fashion world at the safe distance of the library.  I learned why Coco Chanels coats are some of the most beautiful coats in the world.  I learned how models tortured their starving bodies to have 'the look' of the year.  I still remember the BC cartoon with letters to Dear Fat Broad.  (No insult intended it really was what it was called, before pc politically correct.)  The first two frames: "Dear Fat Broad, I hate women, I hated them all my life.  I want to make their lives miserable."  Last frame her answer, "Go to Paris and design women's clothing."  In my college course, I had the opportunity to listen to Edith Head speak at the Art museum.  ( Check her out here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Head) She dressed some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood.  I don't remember anything in particular she said I just came away knowing that clothes are powerful communicators.  NewCounselor just repeated back what I already knew I had said.  Like the doctor telling me I need to loose weight for my hearts sake.  I was surprised how I felt by his candid observation.  Kind of like balking when an editor says you need to alter a section of your precious book.  After all these years, I am still trying to find my style.  I need to love myself first and then my innerself will do the picking when it is time to buy my clothes.  Or I need to break out the old sewing machine and make my own style.