Not a Slave to Fashion

A local fashion writer came to our office unannounced one day last week to photograph people for an office style column. It was no surprise to me or anyone else that the coworkers who made the cut earned the attention and accolades – these ladies always look good. I’m jealous, impressed and in need of their advice. They accessorize and wear strappy high heels and probably have current subscriptions to InStyle magazine.

I can’t remember the last time I thought of myself as anywhere near the vicinity of fashionable, but I know it was definitely sometime before I became a mom. On the day the reporter visited, I was wearing an ensemble thrown together from what I call my cat burglar collection – everything was either grey or black. It’s my Garanimals strategy: all my shirts match all my pants so whatever happens to be clean will work with similar pieces. If one of my children uses a part of my outfit as a napkin during breakfast, I can easily swap it out with something else before heading out the door to work.

On that particular day, I was wearin pants that were black at one point, but now they are so old that they are closer to a dusty charcoal color. My black cardigan sweater, bought on the cheap at Old Navy last summer before returning to work after maternity leave, is still definitely black, so points are due there for wearing something that wasn’t too shlubby to be seen.

My shirt was actually kind of cute that day – a grey short-sleeved blouse from Target that is different from the more boring stuff I usually wear, but still grey, like most everything else in my closet.

The ensemble’s crowning touch was an organic accessory: the detritus of motherhood. A light film of baby drool dried in the outline of Isaac’s lip print on the left shoulder of my sweater, where he had reflexively wiped his mouth that morning. A few stray dog hairs, lint, a crusty splash of milk on my left shoe. And I’m sure there must have been a Disney Princess sticker with the Little Mermaid saying, “You did it!”, courtesy of Lucy, somewhere on my body.

All in all, it was an unremarkable outfit and the columnist proved her fashion chops by passing me by with less than a cursory glance in my direction. I’m really not interested in having my head-to-toe photo run in big daily newspaper, anyway. I’m just saying that I have two little excuses for living my life flying beneath the fashion radar.