• An Open Book: TMSW’s Library
  • Copyright
  • Food for Thought Recipes
  • My Right Eye: A Medical Memoir by Marci Rich
  • Praise and Awards
    • Writing Badges
  • The Midlife Second Wives’ Hall of Fame
  • Who is The Midlife Second Wife?
    • Contact
    • FAQ
  • Read Me On The Huffington Post

The Midlife Second Wife ™

~ The Real and True Adventures of Remarriage at Life's Midpoint

The Midlife Second Wife ™

Tag Archives: Fashion Mistakes

Don’t Look: She’s Not Who You Think She Is

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in The Well-Dressed Life, The Writing Life, Transitions

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Fashion, Fashion Mistakes, Style

FashionMistakeMidlife2ndWife

In the early 1970s, when I was in high school, a boy in my class had an older sister who worked for Glamour magazine. She edited its wickedly fascinating “Dos and Don’ts” column, with its pictures of ordinary young women going about their lives in various stages of street-scene activity. Unbeknownst to them, they were about to become anonymously immortalized as representing either sartorial savvy or a cautionary tale. If a face happened to be included in a photograph, black bars strategically placed across the eyes shielded one’s identity, sparing any number of poor girls the humiliation of being caught in broad daylight wearing ankle-strapped platform shoes with palazzo pants that were, sadly, too short. And with a panty-line to boot.

Believe me, having that kind of second-degree proximity to a fashion arbiter did make me think twice before getting dressed for school in the morning.

There’s little evidence in my own photographic archives to suggest that I had a terrible sense of style, or was prone to making serial fashion mistakes. In fact, I like to think that I was something of a snappy dresser, despite coming of age in the 1970s. Yes, I once purchased a belted polyester pantsuit, and I wore it with ankle-strap platform shoes. No, no pictures of the atrocity exist.

I did, however, come across this photo. What’s so wrong with it? you might ask. Well, quite a lot, actually.

The real fashion mistake here, aside from the tight curls that looked as though Harpo Marx dipped his head into a bowl of India ink, is the fact that this woman is not dressing for who she was.

Can’t blame her, really; she didn’t even know who she was.

The bridge in the backdrop of this studio portrait is fake. Even the pearls. And yes, the dress was polyester.

It was 1983, and she had dressed to play a role—the role of a certain kind of wife, a certain kind of woman. She was just starting to become who she was going to be…who she was meant to be. But she wasn’t there yet.

The word “corporate” comes to mind. This is a corporate look, whereas the woman fastened into it has a creative temperament. There was a poet and writer inside, struggling to get out, but it would be a year or so before the chrysalis would crack.

It was a film that would do it. She had recently seen Educating Rita, in which a character (played by Julie Walters) undergoes a metamorphosis through the study of literature, helped along with the tutorial guidance of Michael Caine’s character. Rita’s costume changes chart her evolution from tarty hairdresser—a streak of pink in her blond hair to match the color of her smock—to bohemian college student, dressed in studied earth tones, her hair allowed its natural brown. At the end of the film, Rita’s transformation is complete. Frank, her professor, presents her with a graduation gift: a dress. He bought it, he says, with “an educated woman” in mind.

“What kind of education were you giving her?” Rita jokingly asks.

I suppose the point of all this is that nothing represents our true selves better than our clothes. They are fashion markers charting the evolution of our growth and (at the risk of getting all New-Age-y), our self-actualization. In truth, the woman you see pictured here wasn’t representing herself falsely after all. Like Rita, her dress just hadn’t caught up yet with her education.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Twitter Updates

  • Hi there! I changed names; please follow me @marcirichwriter instead. 5 years ago
Follow @midlife2wife

Company

  • 166,925 Guests since 8/24/11

Receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,938 other subscribers

Topics

  • Current Events
  • Food for Thought
  • Giveaways
  • House and Garden
  • Humor Me
  • Indulgences
  • Inspiring Women
  • LifeStyles
  • Love
  • Midpoints
  • Monday Morning Q & A
  • Money Matters
  • Nostalgia
  • Portraits of the Artist
  • Product Reviews
  • Relationships and Family Life
  • Remarriage
  • Second Weddings
  • Second Wife Hall of Fame
  • Secrets to a Happy Relationship
  • Special Events
  • Technology
  • The Beautiful Life
  • The Cultured Life
  • The Healthy Life
  • The Life Poetic
  • The Musical Life
  • The Reading Life
  • The Well-Dressed Life
  • The Writing Life
  • Transitions
  • Travel
  • Well-Dressed
  • What's the Buzz?

RSS Feeds

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Archives

  • July 2019 (1)
  • December 2014 (1)
  • November 2014 (1)
  • October 2014 (2)
  • August 2014 (1)
  • June 2014 (2)
  • May 2014 (2)
  • April 2014 (3)
  • March 2014 (3)
  • February 2014 (3)
  • January 2014 (4)
  • December 2013 (9)
  • November 2013 (2)
  • October 2013 (3)
  • September 2013 (6)
  • August 2013 (5)
  • July 2013 (6)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • May 2013 (3)
  • April 2013 (1)
  • March 2013 (1)
  • January 2013 (3)
  • December 2012 (7)
  • November 2012 (7)
  • October 2012 (12)
  • September 2012 (9)
  • August 2012 (6)
  • July 2012 (4)
  • June 2012 (5)
  • May 2012 (4)
  • April 2012 (1)
  • March 2012 (10)
  • February 2012 (8)
  • January 2012 (9)
  • December 2011 (10)
  • November 2011 (30)
  • October 2011 (18)
  • September 2011 (12)
  • August 2011 (2)

Networks

NetworkedBlogs
Blog:
The Midlife Second Wife ™
Topics:
Relationships, Life, After 50
 
Follow my blog

bloglovin

The Blogs of Others

  • A Baby Boomer Woman's Life After 50
  • A.B. Westrick
  • Alexandra Wrote
  • An Empowered Spirit
  • Apart from my Art
  • Author Meg Medina
  • Better After 50
  • Books is Wonderful
  • Dame Nation
  • Darryle Pollack: I Never Signed Up For This
  • Dating Dementia
  • Diana Patient: Photography
  • Empty House, Full Mind
  • GenerationBSquared
  • Grandma's Briefs
  • Grown and Flown
  • Midlife at the Oasis
  • Midlife Bloggers
  • Midlife Boulevard
  • Midlife Mixtape
  • Reason Creek
  • Relocation: The Blog
  • Romancing Reality
  • Second Lives Club
  • The Boomer Rants
  • The Succulent Wife
  • Think Denk
  • WHOA Network
  • WordCount

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Midlife Second Wife ™
    • Join 448 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Midlife Second Wife ™
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: