A Rainbow Treat: Putting the Fun in Fashion

After grading all weekend and just generally being stressed out lately, yesterday I was finally able to at least temporarily relax (even though I still had to go to work and teach two classes).


I just got this rainbow striped sweater in the mail from Darla at The Vintage Zoo (aka zoo_gal on flickr and a regular over at Wardrobe_Remix) and wanted desperately to wear it.

Monday was the perfect opportunity. Fall came a-knockin'. Seriously. Temperatures dropped significantly, and it was rainy and windy and gray. Everyone else I saw was wearing grays and dark blues to match the supposedly dreary weather, but I was excited and I wanted my outfit to show it.


It was only after I'd gotten dressed and taken photos that I realized I not only felt a childlike joy, but I looked it, too. I looked like a pop culture icon of my 1980s childhood: Rainbow Brite or Punky Brewster, perhaps. All I needed was the hairdo. Pigtails or a side ponytail, anyone?














It pleased me a great deal to realize that my outfit for the day so clearly reflected my joy, my comfort, and my own past--or at least a small fraction of it. Fashion, after all, needn't be such a serious business. It's something I spend a lot of time and effort and money on, so it can sometimes be easy to forget that, to focus instead on looking appropriate or looking attractive or looking adult. There are certainly serious issues tied up in the realm of fashion, issues that are important to consider and discuss, but if that's all we see, we're not doing fashion right. We're not getting the most out of it. We're missing the fun.

Well, yesterday at least, I had the fun. And everyone could see it.


So here's to childlike excitement and childhood inspiration! May we never forget the joys of looking like, acting like, and, most importantly, feeling like children from time to time.

Scrapbook from the Past: Dress Drama

I found my old style scrapbook from high school (maybe early college). I used this folder to store photos from fashion magazines and catalogues that I really really liked. Sometimes I got creative and arranged them on a page, but often I just stored the whole magazine or catalogue page in the folder.

Looking back at my choices, I can see that there are some clear and recurring themes in my taste of approximately 10 years ago. One is dresses! In bright colors and dramatic shapes!



The dresses I kept photos of are ones I wouldn't have known what to do with if I'd had them then, dresses I would probably have been afraid to actually wear. And not just the high couture ballgowns of the first photo, but the more "normal" dresses of the last two images as well. But my desire for these bold, attention-getting dresses says a lot about my taste, even though it was yet in its infancy when I developed this collection. After all, I still have a thing for dresses in bright colors and dramatic shapes, only now I'm growing brave and creative enough to wear them when I find them.



Part of the shift my rediscovery of this folder highlights, from the girl who drooled over the photos but could imagine doing no more than that and the girl who would now gladly wear these dresses or others equally dramatic, has come from getting to know myself and what kind of person I am and, thanks in large part to teaching, becoming more confident on the whole. Another part of this shift is thanks to Wardrobe_Remix. I've been watching, commenting, and posting there for several months now and I already feel much more confident and inventive in this arena. In my case, my personal development and my development of style have gone hand in hand. As I've become more confident in other arenas, my willingness and ability to experiment with fashion has grown, too, so that, for me, style really is power.



[Unfortunately, I can't provide much information about the source or date of these photos. Mid-to-late-90s, I suppose. Probably a combination of Seventeen, Glamour, Vogue, and various shopping catalogues.]