The Outfits That Define Us

On choosing to define ourselves

Photo by JJ Jordan on Unsplash

It may be time to stop adding to my holiday decor. Then again, how many string lights are too many? I have three strands on my full-size holiday tree (it's not that big, just seven feet), I have one strand on the wee tree in my office, three strands outside (one out front and two out back), three draped around the various tables in the living room, one on the right side of the staircase and two on the left. Plus the dangling strand of moons and stars we got for the baby shower and which I kept just for the holidays. 

Oh and the one on the kitchen table and the one on the reindeer in the living room.

Have you lost count? I didn't even start. 

There is a holiday party looming in my future, and despite all these holiday lights, it is not at my house. It is also not a Christmas party per se, or a NYE party either. 

A good friend of mine is one of those connector people. She's wears Anthropologie’s most colorful dresses year-round, has a great big voice, is fun and cheery and takes the time to make friends with everyone. She had the idea last year to bring all her friends who don't know each other together into one room: her artist friends, her business friends, her workout friends, you get the idea. The parties are delicious - there is good food, but also they are not about anything. We don't talk about work, or try to get new clients, we're not there for any particular reason except to be in the company of other interesting women. 

The theme for this party, which falls just after Christmas and just before New Year's Eve, is to wear the fanciest thing in your closet that you've only worn once or never got to wear at all. Generally, this is a fun idea. The overpriced outfit that you knew you'd only wear once gets a second chance.

Except when you don't have one.

I mean it, not one. A different friend, who is also going to this party, texted me as I lamented about not having the right thing to wear, debating whether or not to even go, "I am LEGIT SHOCKED that you feel you have nothing dope in your closet. Shocked." 

She had good reason to feel shocked. I love clothes. Love them. I own no less than 48 carefully curated jackets and I live in a climate where only about five of these will see the light of day in the brief week we call winter here in Austin. She's seen this collection, so she has a right to comment. It seems reasonable that I would have at least one fabulous dress tucked in between all those lonely jackets.

But the fanciest dress I own is my wedding gown, which said friend suggested I could wear. The next fanciest is a little black sundress. Which I could wear to the farmer's market and not look out of place, so it’s off the table.

To put the pressure in perspective, the hostess will be wearing a gown, and I really do mean a gown. I was there when she tried several on at Nordstrom and chose this one for a gala sometime last spring. It has organza, it has silk, it has layers and layers and it has an attached scarf that’s more or less a train. She had it altered and they not only altered it unevenly, but they also stained it in the process. It was unwearable upon delivery and has sat in her closet ever since.

So that's the bar. 

I have been worrying about this party for weeks. I've bought several dresses, hoping they could work, realizing ironically they would be the dress I bought to wear to this one event that I never wore again. But I've been unsuccessful. I refuse to buy something that I don't really like or don't look good in even though I'm desperate for something to wear and the deadline isn’t getting any farther away. I am not the target market for a wear-it-once piece of clothing.

Dresses got harder in my late 40s and now my early 50s. I'm not stick-skinny anymore, I'm not perpetually tan, my boobs were never perky, but now it seems risqué to go braless. I also refuse to be uncomfortable. This rules out ninety-eight percent of my options. Oh, and I'm not willing to spend high hundreds or thousands of dollars on this outfit. 

If I could find a tailored suit that would be perfect, but I should have started that search back in June.

And then, as I was thinking about all of this, I read an an article by

Farrah Storr

in which she said:

"This was what cool women wore to parties- outfits that defined them as opposed to outfits that defined the party."

She went on to describe the cool women's outfits:

"They were never the ones in a sparkly dress or wobbling around on a pair of embellished heels. They were Alexa Cheung in a pair of ballet pumps and denim at a cocktail party; the photographer Laura Bailey at a ‘serious’ fashion party, in all black save for a giant velvet bow in her hair, which you only noticed as she walked out of the room. It was a much older woman who tipped up to a ‘black tie’ event full of twenty-somethings in Paris in a plain navy suit, a pair of white trainers and earrings so long they tickled her collar bone."

Farrah used to be a fashion editor, so she's seen these women and these outfits up close and IRL. Alexa Chung would look good in just about anything, so I don't know if she counts. 

But none of that matters. What matters is how I felt when I read that line: outfits that defined them as opposed to outfits that defined the party.

I've been searching for weeks for something that says, 'I have somewhere fancy to go!' Or, 'I kept this gorgeous thing forever, hoping I'd get to wear it again someday.'

That's not my life anymore. I used to have lovely evening dresses. Back in the days when weddings were abundant, and I still drank, getting fancy and going out was a thing.

Those dresses are long gone and so is the woman who needed and wanted to wear them.

I love a good night in with my husband. Since I stopped drinking, I don't so much love being around people who are - especially in large groups, in crowded hot rooms. I like to go to bed early and mostly at the same time every night. It's so grandma, but also so yogic and so part of holding onto my sanity. 

I need my morning routine to get me through the day, so I need to sleep well in order to be able to get up and get on my mat while it's still dark out. None of this requires a sequined suit or embellished stilettos. Besides, my feet left those behind in my late 20s.

I've also spent my life using clothing as a way to speak for myself or (more frequently) to hide from the world. There were a couple of decades where my entire wardrobe was grey, cream, white, black and beige. No colors ever, anywhere. A therapist told me we wear muted clothes when we are trying to not be seen. Bingo.

When being seen is unsafe, we do what we can – eat very little so we take up less space and dress so no one takes notice. 

I am mostly recovered from that. I can see a deep coral summer shift dress hanging in the open closet to my left (I had to count those jackets for you).

But I am still struggling with being a woman who doesn't have fancy clothes in her closet amongst a host of women who (I presume) do. My husband and I don't go to benefit galas, we don't attend black tie events, no one we know is getting married or remarried. Our lives are quiet and full of small beautiful things. Dinner parties I give for three friends, my bonus kids who visit and play board games with us. When Now Husband and I go out it's to ramen not prix fixe dinners, though we keep saying we want to get out more, so we bought tickets to a prix fixe dinner at this quaint little French bistro for Christmas Eve. We're trying. 

I could go buy something to wear to both the dinner and the party. But then I think, now that Farrah has pointed it out, is that me or the event? And when will what I already have be enough? Which of course leads to the question of why I don't think I'm enough to just show up at the party, however I’m dressed.

I should mention, the theme is not a part of getting in, in fact the hostess makes it very clear you can come exactly as you are, in pajamas or diamonds or whatever in between. The invitation says, "You do you." Verbatim. Maybe she already understands what Farrah is pointing out and what seems like a revelation to me.

So now I am left wondering. What outfit defines me and not the party?

I'll let you know what I decide to wear. 

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What would you wear to this party if you were dressing for who you are, not what the environment dictates?