Every time I go online, I’m assailed by these pop-up stories they want me to read instead of letting me go straight to my favorite home shopping site. I can get all kinds of info, life hacks and warnings about what not to eat and how to tell if I’m a latent psychopath.
The big pop-up topic right now seems to be fall fashion. It’s too early to even be planning for fall clothes here, but the designers want to get us buying now, so that by November 1, when we may finally be able to wear fall clothes in Mississippi, they have squeezed every single penny out of our clothing budgets.
When I do go to these fashion websites that tell me what’s “in,” I find that the advice I get is confusing and downright manipulative.
The fashion directives for this year especially are inconsistent. I skimmed one online article that was called something like “Ditch and Switch,” telling me what to stop wearing and what to start wearing in its place.
I was told to “ditch” the oversized clothing from last year, the shirts and jackets and bottoms that are made three sizes too big, that swallow you in unnecessary yards of fabric. I was to told to “switch” to the tailored look this year. I ‘m OK with that, though you can hide alot of fried chicken dinners in an over-sized shirts.
But the advice three paragraphs along was to “ditch” body-masking over-sized sweaters and sweatshirts and the floppy wide-leg pants that would hide a litter of piglets if you were amind to haul them around with you in your huge cargo pockets.
Another suggestion was to “ditch” animal prints, followed by three photos of trendy women wearing beautiful tailored blazers in leopard print. So do I ditch or do I switch?
All this inconsistency just tells me that I can wear anything I want to, including my flowy zebra pants with a flapping cargo pocket full of squealing piglets on each thigh if I want. Or worn out body hugging denim leggings that make me look a bit like a squeezed and squealing piglet myself. It’s anything goes!
Unfortunately, the designers are showing “anything goes” and expecting us to fall for it. They’re telling me that I should wear clunky white sneakers, AKA tennis shoes, with my skirts, dresses and flowy piglet pants. This is a totally inconsistent look. I don’t know who started the trend, but the designers are trying to convince us that it’s “so now” to wear a heavy sneaker with a skirt. It isn’t.
A big closed-in shoe makes your legs look heavy, which is not what you want under a cute skirt. Heaviness is not a “now” look. In order to even pull it off, you need a stork-like build, and most of us southern women have dined at Bubba’s Fried Chicken Emporium too many times to remain stork-ish past the age of 16. And most of us are not abnormally tall either.
If you wear a size 5 or 6 shoe, you might get away with sneakers under skirts, but that’s not me. My personal gripe with the sneaker look is that in my shoe size, sneakers look like motorboats flashing in and out under my skirt or dress as I’m walking, especially if the shoes are white. Kind of like the QE II pulling in to dock. I’ve tried to wear the look, but I’m just too distracted by my big white (or blue or red) shoes churning around under me. I keep thinking, What just jumped out down there?
And remember that fashion is a business.
That means the creators of fashion have more on their minds than making us look good. They must manipulate us into buying pieces of clothing regularly. If I already have five pairs of skinny jeans, I probably won’t buy another pair.
So what’s a greedy designer to do? He has to manipulate me into believing that my old skinny jeans will make me look hopelessly out of date. He has to sell me something I don’t have. So he’s going to bombard me with these pop-up ads of 6 ft. tall, 100 pound 16-year-olds stalking around in wide-leg jeans that I must buy right this minute to keep from being arrested by the Fashion Police.
The translation of this idea for men is the opposite. Get them to trade in their perfectly comfy straight-leg pants and roomy blazers for the “sucked in” skinny suits — peg leg pants and shrunken jackets that look too small.
Maybe wives and husbands could swap outfits —she gets hubby’s old wider leg pants and bigger blazers and he gets her old skinny jeans and jackets that won’t button across his chest.
No. That’s too awful to contemplate. And before they could get comfortable in each other’s clothes, the fashion industry will have them switch again — back to skinny for women and floppy for men.
Nope. I’m not 16, and I’m not 6 feet tall. Or skinny. I’m just going to take the piglets out of my side pockets and go for a sensible look in what I already own, and when I see you sashaying down the street in your skirt and sneakers, I’m going to think - Just because they make that in your size doesn’t mean you have to wear it. Bless your heart.
But I won’t say it aloud.
