My eye was caught this week by a headline in The New York Times asking “Can you Be Too Old For a Jean Jacket?”
The answer, of course, is no! But Vanessa Friedman, The Times fashion expert since 2014 and author of the piece, seemed to think there was more to it than that. “How do you know,” she continued, “when the time has come to retire a much-loved item?”
That answer is simple, too: When you can’t get into it any more.
Or, perhaps, when you’re the last one to be wearing it.
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple once said, “I remember being in Paris with my mother and my grandmother, and we went to have tea at the Elysée Hotel. And my grandmother looked around, and she said suddenly, ‘Clara, I do believe I am the only woman here in a bonnet!’ And she was, too. When she got home she packed up all her bonnets, and her beaded mantles, too — and sent them off…to a theatrical Repertory Company.” That book, “At Bertram’s Hotel,” was published in 1965.
There used to be all sorts of rules. For example:
“You can’t wear white shoes after Labor Day.” Why not? What will happen to you?
“You can’t wear pink with purple.” I never understood this one, and neither does anyone I’ve ever asked about it. Maybe this was just my mother’s rule, but I wish I could afford to show her all the outfits that break this rule—beautifully.
“You can’t combine stripes and polka dots.” Well, I agree, but is this really a rule? Or just my OCD talking?
The trouble is some people not only think there are rules, but set themselves up as the arbiters and enforcers of such.
Take, for example, United Airlines, which in 2017 denied boarding to two teenagers because they were wearing leggings. Today, United Airlines would be hard-pressed to find two passengers on the entire plane who AREN’T wearing leggings or their frumpier cousin, sweat pants. They should be grateful to have passengers at all.
When I was little, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. This meant skirts, even in the teeth of a cold winter wind. This stupid rule did not change until I got to high school, and even then only because of student protest.
What most of the rules amounted to when they existed was that you had to be uncomfortable to be taken seriously. This went quadruple for women. But who can do their best work when their legs still sting from the cold? When their feet hurt in fancy shoes? Or when you can’t take a deep breath because you’re holding your tummy in eight hours a day?
One of the few good things about the pandemic is that for two whole years nobody outside my “bubble” ever saw me below the neck. I could wear whatever I wanted, whether I was working, joining a book group, or “zooming” to Friday night services. Go back to uncomfortable rules? I don’t think so.
Even if I never violated the Pink-and-Purple Prohibition, I faced some challenges. I recently resurfaced from an afternoon’s dive through old family albums, and I have to say there are some outfits in those photos that would poke your eye out. Thanksgiving dinners where every single attendee is wearing a different-pattern blouse or shirt — stripes next to polka-dots, next to many multiple-color paisleys.
Most notable was one family photo where, between the five of us, there were eight separate plaids: Each of my brothers’ shirts and ties; my Dad’s jacket, shirt and tie; even I was wearing a diagonal-plaid vest and skirt. Only my mother dissented — in polka-dots.
One of my sons, peering over my shoulder, asked, “Could I have a copy of this?”
“What for?” I asked, a little suspiciously.
“To show to a friend.”
“Because we’re such a good-looking family?”
“Because they’re always saying I have no fashion sense.”
“It’s not genetic, you know.”
“You mean there’s hope?” he said, squinting from the photo to me and back again.
It’s true, I’m no clothes horse. If anyone ever catches me on the leading edge of fashion, it will only be because fashion has come around full-circle and lapped me. But I would like to proclaim one fashion rule from now on:
Comfort is the new fashion!