Fashion – so much can be said about the changeable winds of fashion – fickle, frivolous, superficial. All true.  And yet…there is something to it – the idea of fashion, and the recognition of those who have genuine, personal style.  I grew up in an era that might have been labeled anti-style – the 60’s and 70’s, rejection of the values of those who aspired to upper middle-class. We were the jeans and tee shirt generation. If anything, the clothes were cotton, natural, loose, all about comfort, and perhaps aspiring to global style – Indian prints, dashikis, and sandals and beads. In retrospect, the fashion of those times seems a bit…unfortunate.  While defining of an era, it was never meant to be classic, lasting, elegant or refined. If anything, the opposite – childlike, unisex, egalitarian.

So, then, what happens at mid-life, when, along with other adjustments of point of view, there comes a grudging acceptance and appreciation of fashion, i.e., style? Although I rejected the concept for a long time, I see there is a certain power in it, and an expression of personal creativity that we may not have a lot of other opportunities for.  Like your home and your garden, this is perhaps one of the few places to make a personal statement. In any case, now that I’m more interested, I find I have little real knowledge of what makes it work;  yet, at the same time, a more experimental approach that I might not have had as a younger woman, more concerned with attracting male attention and/or being “with it.”   I find that I have no idea how to describe or verbalize what it is that makes personal style. But, I’d like to die thinking to myself that I had some.

A couple friends and I went to an exhibit of the clothes and fashions of Iris Apfel at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA last year.  It was a blockbuster of a show, well curated and attracting large crowds. Iris Apfel was not well known to me — not a designer, but a collector of fashions from designers and from bazaars and marketplaces on her travels. She was a petite person, prone to wearing oversize sunglasses; clearly many of the outfits were best suited for a small, trim figure. Some of the outfits were, yes, outrageous, and others delightfully demure. But they were fabulous, truly – the material, colors, design, and the way she combined elements. Wow! Of course, she had money and connections, but not everything was exclusive or expensive – she just had an eye.

Yes, the eye. I do think it’s a matter of taste and sensibility, which some have more than others. My mother had good taste; her mother not so much. It seems a question of opportunity and priority as well. Because I can wear a lot of different types of clothes, I’ve tried many on and they fit. However, that doesn’t make them the right style for me, so I’ve come to learn.  Like many people, I’m attracted to the same kinds of things over and over, but that again is no guarantee of success.  Funny thing, I have an inkling of my sense of style – that I would, if I could, wear togas, and sari’s, and all kinds of exotic clothes – except, of course, that they would look like costumes. And I know pretty well what I don’t like: too fussy, too plain, too much black, anything that looks sweet or young girlish, too sexy, and, lastly, anything with words on it – don’t want to be a walking billboard.  This I know – I don’t want to be caught up in Current Fashion, that which fades away; nor do I want to look like everyone else: blue jeans, black tops, etc.  I want to be one of a kind, but stylish.

Cost is a consideration on this fashion quest, and time to shop – since I don’t go anywhere besides Marshall’s, TJ’s and the local consignment shops. But watch out, world: I may be ready to break out into my very own plumage, strutting my stuff through the streets of small town New England, and waiting in line at the post office in something that looks right out of the costume shop at the high school.  If not now, when?  What is there to lose?  My husband rolls his eyes already, and my sons, so, why not?