What to Wear....What to Wear

It's a constant problem.  What am I supposed to LOOK like at my slightly advanced age?  I can't use my mother as a role model.  She didn't believe in hair color (it will give you brain cancer) and I do; didn't use makeup (I don't know why) and I do; and was entirely too friendly with Polly and Esther, despite living in Florida.  To my mind, Polly and Esther are entirely intolerable in Florida, and probably pretty much anywhere else.

So off I go to buy clothes.  And every time it is the same.  The staff at J Crew lock the doors when they see me coming.

And Talbots?  My former last resort when I didn't know what to wear?  I don't know what is going on there, but their offerings have been awful for years. Even though their clothes might have been a bit....conservative, boring...they at least were in style, sort of, and I could count on finding something appropriate for whatever occasion I was shopping for.  But now?  I never find anything there.

So there they are:  Chicos and J Jill, home of clothing for senior citizens.  On my most recent shopping trip, I didn't find anything at Chicos. I did at J Jill, but the problem there is that sometimes what they have reminds me of Garanimals---remember the children's clothing all designed to be very obviously matchy/matchy so that children could put together their own outfits? Even the tags were color-coded to give clueless kids a clue. That's what J. Jill clothing sometimes looks like to me.  Too obviously matchy/matchy, just without the color-coded tags.

Last week, I decided that I was not a clueless kid!  NO!  Not ME!  (Not I?) I was a brave, grown-up shopper. I was a REBEL.  I bought this shirt:

Cute, right?

and instead of pairing it with the cropped pants that the saleslady told me were, ahem, supposed to go with it, I bought these:

Pretty clever! Pretty stylish!  Positively BRAVE!!!  Right?

And I picked them out all by myself.

When I asked my husband what he thought, he said that the shirt was ok, but that the jeans didn't go with it.  I told him, and I am pretty sure I am right about this, that jeans go with everything.

But maybe not, maybe he was right, since these aren't your normal jeans. Nope. They are called "boyfriend" jeans. Perhaps that is a clue that they are meant for younger women, the kind with boyfriends, not husbands of 40+ years. And oh, dear, now that I think about it, perhaps the shirt could possibly double as a maternity top.

Hmmmm......

Oh, well.

Out I go, every day, still apparently clueless, hoping that no one makes fun of me, or that if they do, I don't notice.  But if anyone thinks that I am perhaps the world's oldest expectant mother, or that I have a boyfriend in spite of the wedding ring I wear, I might be wrong about all of my choices.

Polly and Esther.  Watch out.  I might have to join you.