I've been doing that thing; I do it every season, where I look at my wardrobe and reevaluate it, shift it around, relocate it from everyday cupboard to not-everyday cupboard. We live in a cottage, there are no palatial wall to ceiling wardrobes; it's like everything else here: higgeldy piggeldy. I don't mind. It's a useful exercise putting away summer lights and getting out winter knits, which are like old friends I haven't seen for a while, but nor have I missed. I am a warm weather girl and increasingly, as the October days draw in, I think back to the Floridian summer and wonder if it all actually did happen? Was I really standing in a Disney log flume queue in 98 degree heat? Did I really sip chilled beer on a boat through the Everglades, my legs sticking to the seat with humidity? Yes it did happen. Now it's more like morning mist and condensation-covered car windows when we leave for the school run each morning.
Autumn term is always a marathon and this one is no exception. The sports fixtures alone have me clocking up hundreds of miles as I ferry my hockey-playing daughter about. My son is has decided to read Harry Potter from cover to cover from the first to the last book. We are one chapter in. I know all about the Muggles. And as for the lightning-shaped scar...
But back to wardrobe revolving. It got me thinking about how I have staples and how each year I think I need something new and then discover that in fact I am just coveting more of the same. I have to make a conscious choice to deviate the styles I buy. I have become set in my ways. Something about my current lifestyle has made this so. Limitations such as having to walk the dog (jeans and wellies) have made sartorial choices smaller. They have a common denominator: I need comfort and ease. This makes me a little sad as I have realised I have developed a Mummy Uniform. This is almost as bad as having Housewife Hair (see previous post).
CONFESSIONAL
I own 7 pairs of skinny jeans that are all the same style, just different colours.
I own 8 grey knitted jumpers, crew neck, V-neck, boat-neck all pretty much the same hue.
I own 4 striped Breton tops.
I own 2 satchel handbags (since when did hands-free become so important in life?)
I own a shameful number of coats, all required for the many nuances of British weather that we endure. Drizzle, slight chill, full-on rain, wind-cheater, sunny but cold, ice and snow and on and on.
If I put on heeled shoes I think my feet would revolt.
OH MY GOD.
What happened to my originality?!!
I have realised how standardised I have become and it is freaking me out. Something has got to change. I have become so intent on looking 'appropriate' that I have morphed into Mrs Ordinary. When I was working I would dress up, often in a manner that, looking back, was to please myself rather than as a requirement of my job. I used to accessorise. I now shy away from wearing jewellery as it gets in the way when I clean the house.
WTF?? That's a quote you'll never see on a Pinterest wisdom board.
I am staging an intervention into my own wardrobe. I have set myself some objectives to get more outlandish, to embrace what's different, to stop trying to conform to the dreaded school-mum-judgement-gaze. In efforts to achieve Audrey Hepburn-esque elegance I think we sometimes forget that clothes should be fun. Slavish fashion-following is not for the rural 40-year old. I want the quirks, the style, the 'something different' that is so attractive when you you see it. But oh so rare.
So - yea, that's my view on this Tuesday afternoon. Thoughts?
