The State of My Dress 2014

So news flash, I have just discovered the miracle of high rise pants. I am talking the highest of waists. I pull them up into camel toe territory and then lower them ever so slightly. I CINCH them in place with a belt and seal it all in with a nice form fitting long tank top. It feels great and I makes my shirts and ass look better.  I'd call that a fashion win, but I'm far from an expert in that arena. (read on) it has me feeling so great I thought you'd all enjoy reading about my recent fashion musings in my blog.

I'm not sure why it took me until my 30th year of life to learn how to properly wear pants. I may be a little slow to catch on in the "how to wear clothes" arena. Or it maybe because during my formative fashion years, the approximate distance between crotch and waist of any pant was 1.25 inches. In order to avoid crack issues in pants that low of a rise you must remain completely upright and straight-as-a-board. Now to mention they look horrible on anyone with hips that don't lie.

Low Rise Disaster. Her Hips Don't Lie.

In order to solve the dilemma of chilly backs and whacky cracks, the shirt makers of America got together and decided amongst themselves to elongate their product. Hats off to shirt makers for cover the ass of pants makers who dropped the ball around the turn of the millennium. I still very much appreciate your elongated shirt products even though I now rock the highest waisted pants and as a result no longer have issues with crack.

I am not really talking about the trend where you tuck shirts INTO high rise jeans. No, that way of pant-wearing is only for the trimmest and fittest of women. I'm advocating for slimming the hips by covering them with the high rise pant and shirt.

Some of you will say, I am a couple years behind the high waisted pant trend. Touche. However,  I am also still learning how to tie a scarf and by the time I master it, the trend will be over. Even still, I will stubbornly rock them for at least a year after the last fashionista decides to donate her scarf collection to goodwill. (Has that happened yet?) When it comes to fashion trends, I am so "far gone" that there is little hope I will ever return to a place where I feel comfortable in any place you find trendy people. I am actually so far gone I'm not really sure where trendy people congregate these days. If I had to venture a guess I'd say, juice bars?

You know  that Stacey London show where they followed frumpy moms around and secretly videotaped their daily fashion disasters and then made them give up EVERY THING THEY OWNED in exchange for a couple of fashionable outfits? Can I Netflix that show? When I actually watched it I was not in need of a makeover. Now, I very much am the frumpy mom at which the stylists would scoff as I went about my day. My secret videotape montage would sound something like this:

"Are those elastic bottom sweat pants? THEY ARE! This is a whole new level of frump! The least she could do is buy some yoga pants." - "Look at the puke stains on her shirt. She left the house without changing her shirt?! - "Did she even brush her hair today?" - "Can anyone tell us the last time she DID NOT put her hair in a ponytail. Anyone? Anyone at all? - "Wait! Back up, is that a hole in the crotch of her sweat pants?" 

 -Btw I TRY not to leave the house in my holey crotch sweat pants. I'm not gonna say it "never" happens.

I am JUST NOW discovering that being stylish and being trendy are different things! I KNOW! I offer this as a defense, the last time I even thought about fashion was just before I was forced into my first maternity clothes, I was 24 and trendy.

Oh my gosh, you do not know how desperately I need a gay man in my life that can order my fashion world. I would wear pretty much anything he said so long as he approved of  high rise pants. If pants near the belly button have no place in the wardrobe of a stylish 30 year old, well then count me out. I am desperately clinging to them, and you will have to pry them out of my cold dead fingers before I give them up when I've only just discovered them.

In absence of a style guru or a stint on What Not To Wear, I executed an exhaustive fashion investigation...and by that I mean Google searched it.  So here's what I learned: being stylish is dressing to fit your body and your taste within some conventional parameters. To do that effectively you need really solid "pieces" in your wardrobe upon which you can build outfits for many "seasons" and only "accent" with Tim Gunn approved trends to stay relevant. Well...that sounds complicated and expensive.

There is also a whole other issue that won't be addressed in this blog but deserves a shout out. This quest to bring "style" to the masses is patronizing at its most basic level. Like, GOD FORBID anyone consider cargo Capri pants acceptable. If you can't be someone's friend because they wear cargo capri pants you just shouldn't be anyone's friend. Didn't we get over this all in high school?

You know what show I would love to watch Tim Gunn's Goodwill Makeover. If he could walk into the Goodwill and build someone a wardrobe that was "stylish" on a shoestring, then I'd buy into the fashion world just a bit more. I just have a hard time with all the materialism that fuels the incessant need to make a statement with your clothes. But, that part of me is in direct contrast with the part of me that wants to look my best. I'm still working it all out and maybe that's another reason that for the better part of the last three years "comfortable" has been the driving force behind my fashion choices. I guess I can't blame it all on my kids.

I do plan to make some fashion improvements in 2014. Being "stylish" doesn't seem attainable nor am I convinced it's a worthy goal. If anything, I know that until I can wake up and have a reasonable expectation that I won't be puked on, or have snot or crummy hands wiped on me I'm sticking with a "wash and wear" wardrobe, which by definition is not stylish. I'm in the thick of it, and we're talking years here people. So as part of my New Year's resolutions,  I plan to look bit less disheveled and have maybe have three outfits that won't land me on anyone's frumpy mom list. On my budget that's about all I can reasonably commit to improving.