Commentary on Three Photos
At 17, my wardrobe was largely white and lavender with a great many multicolored floral pieces. I often paired floral skirts with plain tops or floral tops with plain bottoms.
Then I got involved with the future ex who has photophobia. No, he's not scared of cameras. It's a medical condition that makes him overly sensitive to bright lights.
On bright sunny days in the Deep South, he couldn't look at me when I was dressed all in white. The glare was blinding for him. So I began wearing a lot of black and generally trending towards darker colors to accommodate his condition.
We were married for 22 years. Since getting divorced, I've been extremely poor.
While very poor, darker colors have been practical for a LOT of reasons and I have come to understand why formal whites are a tier above formal black outfits: You really need your act together and to have control over your environment etc. to successfully wear white.
I don't know how I might dress if I finally got my life to actually work the way I want it to work. If I had a successful career and adequate money, I presumably wouldn't dress the way I have in recent years and presumably also wouldn't dress the way I did as a homemaker with a photophobic spouse.
I write about clothes in various places because I've been extremely unhappy with my relationship to clothes for a really long time and I'm trying to find a path forward. I also write about clothes because I suspect I'm actually less unhappy with my relationship to clothes than most women.
The world generally seems to be at wit's end about questions like "How should career women dress?" So I have long imagined that I might start making my own clothes to solve my own problems and perhaps turn it into a clothing line.
Some time ago, I started a private website and posted three photos to it. I was trying to make a mock-up or sandbox for developing a clothing line to be sold online.
The photos were place keepers intended to give a general idea of what the site might look like if I had such a business, but they weren't chosen at random and weren't chosen merely because they were pretty.
This is a photo of two women in dresses. Both dresses use the same shades of pink and yellow but different patterns. One dress pairs those colors with white. The other pairs them with black.
In recent decades, I've trended towards darker colors generally, but the pattern of the black piece is more my style too. I like the photo for showing different patterns and different pairings of colors.
It captures something essential about what I want to do with a clothing line and I need a photo like this once I have sample pieces -- a photo showing different combinations of color options in different patterns.
Over the years, I have worn lots of leggings, long tops and long sweaters. I would absolutely wear an outfit like this.
But it was chosen in part because it is potentially an evening outfit created by adding a black and silver top to pieces you might wear during the day.
As a military wife, I sometimes attended military balls. Money was always tight and ball gowns tend to be stand alone pieces that aren't really part of a mix and match wardrobe.
However, one year I bought a two-piece dress in silver knit with a long straight skirt and kind of like a tank top or camisole style for the top. The following year, I was heavier and the top no longer worked but I could still wear the skirt. I paired it with a longer black sleeveless knit top and new accessories and was happy with it.
I have no idea how to include dressier options in a line of clothes intended to work well as a business casual vibe but this pic was included because dressing up shouldn't be some insane financial and logistical burden. It's possibly an idea for later development but it's an idea I hope to pursue should I ever do a line of clothing and this picture captures something for me about how that might be done.
I love this piece because I really do wear mock turtlenecks in preference to actual turtlenecks and I like that it's an artsy take on office wear: a bright plaid jacket, yellow shirt and bright blue pants.
It reminds me a bit of the wardrobe I had in Port Aransas with bright blue pants, orange sweater, brown T-shirt, yellow T-shirt, etc. That was artsy and bright and fun while still fitting my generally conservative tastes in clothes which are somewhat captured by the main adult character in Uptown Girls.
Watching Uptown Girls and analyzing why and how the movie resonates with me made me realize I dress vastly more upper class than I realized, which perhaps helps explain why I was routinely mistaken for being a tourist while homeless years ago.
The main character is an heiress and she dresses in a very artsy style unmatched by any of her friends with more ordinary lives. That's akin to how I dressed before ending up too poor to afford any sense of style.