McFashion Follies

In this blog last December I reported on a package that the USPS supposedly delivered that had gone missing.

While I waited on line to talk to a rep from the USPS about where the package was a recorded announcement told me that shipping holiday packages via USPS is a great way to send them.

In a curious twist five weeks ago a strange package I hadn’t ordered showed up on my doorstep.

The package was beat-up yet the contents were in perfect condition:

The Uniqlo sweater and two tee shirts that were supposed to have arrived via USPS in December 2017.

Was the package sitting in a warehouse all this time?

The moral of this story is that it’s too easy to keep buying clothes over and over.

Where exactly would I be able to store the sweater in a drawer bursting out to the dovetail joints?

I stuffed the sweater on top of a pile of sweaters on a shelf.

There’s a better way to go than “fast fashion.” We shouldn’t be complicit in fleecing others by buying and wearing a fleece jacket.

After the mysterious arrival of the package over a year later I decided: “Basta! Enough!”

I’m reading a great new book: We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages.

Reading this book has been shocking.

Pay Americans better wages and salaries and we could afford a $100 shirt created in a factory where garment workers toil in safe conditions with a livable wage, health insurance, and other perks.

The rise of globalization has benefited only U.S. transnational companies. The book I’m reading is a deep dive into the Truth.

I’m going to talk in coming blog entries more about the Fast Food Workers book.

After the arrival of the missing package I was forced to confront that I don’t need to buy a ton of clothes over and over.

There’s a better approach.

I stand in solidarity with the garment workers barely making minimum wage with hazardous conditions in Cambodia and elsewhere. I’m going to report on a sane tactic for managing your wardrobe.

While I couldn’t edit the contents of my closet and drawers down to 33 items like one blogger wrote about I’m convinced that having an endless parade of packages coming into your apartment isn’t the way to go either.

The blogger who edited her wardrobe to 33 items apparently did so to help herself manage her health better. She had a medical condition.

In a future blog entry I’m going to list my own solutions for over-consumption.

There’s no room at my inn for another item of clothing. My goal is to not buy any clothes for at least two years.

Making myself richer instead of million-dollar companies in the process.

Changing Yourself to Change the World

As I roll along in my fifties (with a birthday coming up) I would like to focus in this blog on hot topics that affect women going through “the change.”

I’ll be 54 soon. The Accidental Icon blogger Lyn Slater inspires me to no end. She’s easily 10 or 15 years older than me. She is a professor with a social work background who reinvented herself as a Fashionista later in life.

There’s something to be said about having the guts to act true to yourself without apologizing or having to justify or explain your choices.

This might be a luxury that only those of us in a well-off country like America have. Which is why in coming blog entries I also want to offer solutions that benefit the planet and other people living on it.

There has not ever been a better time to be an artist and act altruistic.

If you ask me dressing well is an art form. It does give us the power to reach for our dreams.

Yet we must keep in mind that other people don’t have it so easy.

Helping others lift themselves up is always in fashion.

As Michael Jackson sang in “Man in the Mirror” changing the world happens when you first change yourself.

54 is fast on my heels. I’m  a woman looking in the mirror. Do I like what I see?

I’ve become disenchanted with running on a treadmill of spending and consuming.

The arrival of a mysterious package on my doorstep prompted me to re-examine my buying habits.

Where did the package come from? Up next the moral of this postal story.

Clothes-Minded

I’ve been logging on to the Accidental Icon blog every week now.

Lyn Slater the blogger posted a response to one of her comments stating that how you dress impacts what you think and how you perform.

I was curious so Googled these research studies and here’s what I came up with:

Subjects dressed in formal business clothing as opposed to casual clothing had increased abstract thinking, a cognitive hallmark of creativity and long-term strategizing.

Subjects who wore a white lab coat clearly announced as being a doctor’s coat focused better and made half as many mistakes on an attention-demanding task.

In a twist, women who were told the expensive sunglasses they wore were counterfeit cheated more often on lab experiments with cash payouts. This behavior was thought to occur because wearing the counterfeit glasses made wearers feel less authentic.

An interview years ago in a magazine with Judith Hill a singer poised for stardom sums this all up in a down-to-earth way:

“I believe that playing the part on the outside affects how you feel on the inside…So even when I’m not feeling my best, I put on clothes that make me look confident.”

There’s something to be said for dressing the way you want to feel when you’re not feeling up to par.

I know that when I dress up I feel better.

Soon I turn 54. The focus of this blog in the coming months will be on what it’s like living through “the change.”

I would like to talk about the dual nature of fashion: the fashion a person wears and how she fashions her life as she gets older.

Lyn Slater has been a true inspiration to me.

I’m confident when I say that turning 50 heralds the advent of the best years of our lives.

Creating a Look Book

look book

I’ve figured out that creating a Look Book can help you figure out what pocketbook to choose and use with a particular outfit.

The photo album above holds 200 photos. I’ve also begun shooting photos of clothing items. You can use Pinterest on your cell phone or a device like an iPad instead if you’d like to create a Look Book.

I’m on the cusp of 54. A lot of woman at mid-life decide we want to do something new or at least change an aspect of our lives that we don’t like.

In this regard as I’m starting to reach the middle of my fifties I find that doing the things that give you joy can transform your confidence and give you self-esteem.

The point of creating a Look Book is that it can be fun to choose and use items in your wardrobe to make whatever statement you want to make on a particular day.

I would go so far as to say that style is the language of your soul transmitted sartorially.

Dressing well can spark joy in mid-life or at any time in your life.

Now that I’m leaving 50 in the dust and heading upward I can tell readers that you need all the help you can get when others in society–men and fashion editors alike–insinuate that a woman has an expiration date.

The goal is not to look like you’re 20 when you’re 50 or 60 or older.

The goal is to use your wardrobe to transmit to others that you like yourself and think you’re hot by your own standards.

Not by any other person’s view of what you look like.

I will end here by stating that creating a Look Book is therapist-approved. No kidding.

Spring Cleaning 2019

Spring arrives in only two days.

The weather in New York City is going to get better–the meteorologist promises.

In keeping with the theme of cleaning out your closet I want to recommend one genius option for storing things: the InterMetro storage rack that’s on sale as of this week from the Container Store online.

Two years ago I bought the InterMetro storage rack to hold more clothes and a trio of hat boxes on the bottom shelf.

Though I’m only five feet tall I was able to assemble this nifty item on my own. I put it together on the floor and lifted it up and wheeled it to where I wanted to keep it.

It doesn’t cheer me that I have a ton of clothes.

Only the storage rack with the canvas cover can give you extra room for your clothes. You can buy an extra shelf to insert at the top or bottom of this rack.

I still haven’t discovered the remedy for storing pocketbooks so that they’re easily viewed for quick choosing and using.

Taking photos of the pocketbooks can help. Otherwise when they’re not stored out in the open you tend to forget which ones you have.

I’ll have to think about the pocketbook dilemma more and report back in here on a solution.

National Clean Out Your Closet Week

The third week of March is National Clean Out Your Closet Week.

In the spirit of doing this I started to attack my wardrobe this week.

You might chuckle at what I found:

I had bought two pairs of faded cropped jeans that appear identical. There was only one difference: the inside label said skinny on one pair and girlfriend on the other. Otherwise you couldn’t tell them apart.

The trick is to keep on hand only two at the most spare pairs of jeans. You don’t need to have 5 or 6 pairs of jeans just in case you want to paint your apartment.

I’m an artist, yet even I drew the line. I kept only three “extra” pairs of jeans to use for my painting projects.

You can store off-season clothes in under-bed storage boxes. Not anything else under the bed please.

I have an advanced near-encyclopedic knowledge of Feng Shui principles:

Storing papers and documents under the bed can result in restless sleep.

Closet doors should be solid not a curtain you pull across to open. The closet door shouldn’t have a mirror on it.

The bed if you have a partner shouldn’t have a mirror facing it in front of the bed. This can signal adultery or a third party entering the relationship.

These 3 tips are all Feng Shui guidelines that I think make sense.

For off-season storage:

The Container Store is selling at a reduced cost their Cedar Stow storage bags.

They’re cedar-lined canvas storage bags that fit under the bed. They are a Green choice of storage.

I’ve bought 4 Cedar Stow storage bags at this reduced cost.

Plastic has health issues linked to it. It isn’t environmentally friendly.

While you’re not supposed to store other things under the bed I have gotten away with storing clothes in under-bed boxes.

More in the next blog entry about clearing out the clutter at mid-life.

Sometimes you have to say goodbye to the past and move forward.

A wardrobe clean-out can be the start of freeing up space to bring in new things and new people and new experiences.

 

Fashionista Heal Thyself

To act true to yourself has been recommended so often that it’s become trite.

Yet as vouched for in literature ill-health is the result of squelching your personality so that others can approve of you.

I have an actual Fashionista archetype. There is such a thing. You can go on the Archetypes website and take the quiz to discover your Top 3 Archetypes.

It’s my contention that living in synch with yourself is the way to be healthy.

Merriam-Webster online defines healing as: “To make free from injury or disease: to make sound or whole.” And: “To make well again: to restore to health.”

I think of how styling yourself in clothes can be a form of healing.  It’s an innocuous, healthy way to feel good. Yet it often provokes the ire of people who don’t understand that dressing well can be an act of love for yourself.

I would go so far as to say that doing what you love can enable you to heal.

Sometimes you need to take medication along with doing other things when you have a medical condition.

Yet I venture that popping pills alone is simply part of the solution not the endpoint of becoming healthy.

There are as myriad ways to heal as there are people.

A person’s individuality is a precious thing that should be honored embraced and accepted.

I say: do what you love. Do what you love. Do what you love.

Be who you are not who others want you to be.

That is the best way to heal.

My Signature Wardrobe Piece

bandanna purple photo

The Accidental Icon blogger Lyn Slater talked about having a signature item in your wardrobe.

The photo above attests to what has become my signature item: a colorful bandanna.

The summer I turned 51 my hair start to frizz up and curl in different directions in rainy or humid weather.

I’d dry my hair straight. Going out the door in the rain or humid air I’d arrive at my destination with unruly hair. You can predict the weather by looking at my hair.

That summer I bough 5 different bandannas in a dollar store. (I”m not proud that they have a Made in China label.)

Since I can’t wear a hat on my job I was pleased to be able to get away with wearing a bandanna to staff the reference desk.

Isaac Mizrahi in his book How to Have Style recommended wearing bandannas to brighten your mood.

A woman featured in the Andrea Linett book The Cool Factor sported a bandanna as her trademark.

These two fashion guides inspired me to start wearing bandannas as a bad-hair day cover-up. My cover has been blown.

In New York City the Human Rights Commission has made it illegal for employers to discriminate against workers because of their hairstyles.

I think I was able to get away with wearing bandannas at my job precisely because so many people wear different kinds of headscarves as a matter of course.

In fact: sometimes a hairstyle born out of a bad hair day can become a celebration of your individuality.

Taking away someone’s right to self-expression should be forbidden.

There are so many beautiful people walking around with hair that is a point of pride.

If the hair is not on your head you shouldn’t be concerned with what it looks like.

My unruly hair brings me no happiness.

The bandannas I wear bring other people joy. Walking down the street people stop me and comment on my choice of headscarf.

At midlife wearing a bandanna has become my signature.

In a coming blog entry I”m going to talk more about why uniformity and conformity should be illegal.

Art and Soul

crescentmoon lovers

This is my “Love You to the Moon” painting.

It’s the fourth painting I’ve created in the last seven years.

You cannot give up on yourself after you have a setback.

It could take one year. It could take five years or ten years. It could take longer.

Yet the point is you can recover yourself along with your mental health.

Our lives aren’t over by a long shot when we have a hurdle (or two or three) to clear in life.

My goal is to continue to go to the painting events.

I recommend you try one out in your city or town. The cost hovers around thirty-five to fifty dollars. You get one free glass of wine. Sometimes you can buy a personal pizza to have if you get there earlier.

The artists are friendly. It’s a happy place.

I believe everyone can be creative. That giving form to beauty via the creation of art and music and fashion is what gives us joy in life.

We could use more light love and laughter in the world.

At the Paint-n-Sip events the music is upbeat, everyone’s friendly, and the instructor gives positive constructive feedback.

You can click on my art work category to view my Golden Goddess painting too.

Dawn of 54

I will be 54 in the spring.

I’ve discovered the Accidental Icon blog I’ll link to at the bottom of this blog entry.

The goal is to admire not envy others.

In mid life it’s time to accept the things you cannot change.

And to change the things you’re able to.

I’m only 5 feet tall. I couldn’t possibly wear obdurate dangling earrings that steal the show. I would look ridiculous in a rust coat too.

Yet I find that observing that look I can take from it my own distinct variation: maybe my lightweight gray coat and the designer sunglasses picked up at a discount store.

It’s time to get wise to the Instagram-worthy selfies that others post on social media.

Research says that younger people are winding up depressed. Most likely it’s because they’re viewing the perfect-seeming feeds of peers.

“I admire people who seem to have a charmed life,” I told a woman I consider a friend.

“Seem to. That’s it. There’s no charmed life,” my friend shot back.

On the cusp of 54 it’s time to start liking yourself and your imperfections if you haven’t already made peace with these things.

I’ll only ever be 5 feet tall. I won’t have perfect hair ever.

Now I think trying to emulate another person who is supposed to be inspirational as a role model is a myth.

Trying to follow fashion trends is a myth too.

In your fifties you have to trust that you have enough and you are enough.

Regardless of what other people insinuate about your worth.

It’s called self-worth because it comes from within.

The Accidental Icon blog is my new added attraction.

I’m keen to riff on things this other blogger talked about.

Stayed tuned for my own city girl take on getting older.