Fashion for Writers

FFW Heart-to-Heart is a new feature in which Jenny and I have a, well, heart-to-heart about sartorial and style concerns (and whatever else you might want us to talk about). This week’s topic: overdressing, dressing up, and why we don’t like Halloween.

M: So, Jenny, you mentioned the concept of overdressing, which I often read about in major fashion magazines — as in, DON’T DO IT!

J: Yes! It’s an issue dear to me, and, I suspect, to lots of people who like dressing up and like clothes. I’m thinking specifically of a moment in my life, maybe at some point in high school, when I first had a vague idea of my style and wanting to wear clothes that represented my style everywhere.

M: What was that style, out of curiosity?

J: Well, in high school, it was wearing dresses and skirts every single day, and often wearing my mom’s clothes and her shoes and her accessories to school or to the grocery stores, or to go to the movies, or any place, really, where everyone else was sure to be wearing just jeans and a t-shirt.

I think in high school, I used to wear a lot of my mom’s clothes from her modeling days. There was this one white jumper dress — it was extremely high-waisted, with a cinched corseted-like waist, and I used to wear it to school with these black lace-up boots.

M: Black lace-up boots were definitely a thing. Still are, I guess.

J: And I remember endless comments from my peers: “Hey, so when are the Ice Capades happening?” or, “Are you the Chinese Heidi?” or, “WATCH OUT, THIS GIRL IS ABOUT TO YODEL!” All of this is to say that it’s sometimes awful to stand out, but there’s also something about feeling awful and feeling like a five nostriled freak that has always made me want to continue dressing the way I want, and even to dress more provocatively.

M: I would like to insert here the well-known fact that high school is horrible.

J: It’s the worst!

M: No one ever asked me if I was the Chinese Heidi, but I did get comments on my clothing in high school. I remember in particular one teacher of mine making a snarky comment about the Goodwill (where, incidentally, I didn’t get my clothes, preferring instead to go to a local thrift called the Happy Dragon).

J: Everyone should experience being called the Chinese Heidi, at least once.

M: I’ll get on that.

J: Did you have a style in high school?

M: I did — as you know, I was into riot grrrl at the time, and my style was heavily influenced by that. I wore a lot of homemade t-shirts (including one that said, “Who will be the king and queen of the outcasted teens”) and Bikini Kill shirts. I wasn’t what I would call overdressed — just quirky. It wasn’t until college that I really started getting into clothes. You and I went to different schools for the first two years of undergrad, but I seem to recall Stanford having the same pajama syndrome that Yale did.

J: Absolutely — at Stanford, simply wearing a button-down shirt and jeans felt like an act of overdressing sometimes. How have you negotiated this — wearing clothes you want to, say, class, or a social gathering, where you know most people will be dressed very casually, and more often than not, dressed very differently from you? And have you ever purposefully tried to dress down for those reasons? How would you dress for a party, for example — let’s say a WRITERS’ party – hi blog!

M: I don’t tend to dress down unless I feel like I’m going to be truly offensive by dressing up (for example, when I go to volunteer). I hate wearing t-shirts. I was just complaining to Chris yesterday about how I have so many t-shirts. As far as parties go – I have to say that I tend to dress up for parties. I mean, I wear cocktail dresses to the grocery store; it’s inevitable that I’ll dress up for a party. Do you ever get the feeling that people think you’re trying to show off, just because you’re dressed up?

J: Yes! That’s my main fear. I worry other people, men and women, will think that I’m trying to stand out and trying to lord my femininity over everyone else. It doesn’t bother me if I’m the only person in a nice dress at a party, but if someone were to say, “Hey, are you wearing LIPSTICK,” which has happened to me on the five separate occasions in my life when I’ve worn lipstick, then I start to worry obsessively that everyone in the room is thinking that I spent hours getting ready just so I could be the best looking person in the room.

M: Right. A secret to my sartorial life, by the way, is that I actually get dressed very quickly. But the act of looking “nice,” or “dressing up,” definitely tends to convey narcissism in some circles.

J: Same with me — I dress super quickly. I worry, too, about the implications of dressing feminine (and I so hesitate to use that word without interrogation but I will!), especially in situations where my way of femininity in dress might be interpreted wrongly, i.e., she must be pretty shallow!

M: How do you deal with that?

J: I think I deal with that by making a scatological joke right off the bat. Kidding again, I think.

M: Ah, so overdressing then equates not only narcissism and impoliteness, but shallowness, as well. Or superficiality.

J: What about you, Meggy? Do you feel like your way of dressing allows others to make imprecise or altogether wrong perceptions about you? Does it matter to you?

M: For the most part, I think people are pretty positive about the fact that I dress up more often than not. At the very least, it gives them something to look at. As far as imprecise or wrong perceptions, I think class can be easily implicated by dressing up — even if this dress or that coat was actually from Goodwill, and cost less than $20. I’m not saying that I’m poor, either; I’m just saying that clothing, and especially dressing up, is a way that people tend to judge class.

J: That’s so incredibly true.

M: I mentioned this in my last post, but this happens a lot when I wear my giant fake fur coat. It looks real, and it’s kind of ridiculous, so it appears as though I spent, like, a thousand dollars on it.

J: My mom, in the 90′s, bought a fake fur coat from Express for $8, and she got so tired of her co-workers saying, “Wow! Did you win the lottery?” that she ended up throwing it in a dumpster one night!

M: Wow. I think that this is also why people who dress up tend to minimize compliments. At least, I do.

J: I’ve been watching some old(ish) movies lately: Rosemary’s Baby, and Buster Keaton films, and right now, I’m watching The Apartment, and, like most fashion bloggers I’d guess, I’m completely enamored with the way women dress in these movies (while being somewhat aware of the fantasy of Hollywood films). I think a major reason why so many fashion bloggers and clothes-lovers have so much love for vintage and past decades is due to some nostalgic idea that back then, people dressed up for cocktails and dinner parties. But then I wonder: would I still take as much pleasure in dressing up in skirts and dresses if everyone did it? Or do I derive pleasure from feeling exceptional in a way?

M: I know what you mean (and I also wanted all of Mia Farrow’s clothes in Rosemary’s Baby). For example, if we all lived in a world like the one in “Mad Men,” would we still derive pleasure from putting curlers in our hair every night and wearing cute outfits? Part of that, maybe, is this issue of agency — the CHOICE to dress up. I think that if I had to, I’d hate it. Maybe it’s just another, post-teenaged form of rebellion.

J: I agree completely. I think rebellion is very much part of the pleasure of dressing up. And also fantasy — the fantasy of dress-up! Performing your fantasy self through your choice of dress is really lovely.

M: Right — all sorts of fantasy, not just the “princess” dress-up… which might be why I don’t particularly like Halloween. I feel like Halloween all the time — Halloween as sanctified overdressing.

J: Right, and part of what’s repulsive about Halloween to me is that you’re expected to dress up that night. And also that somehow, Halloween, like most opportunities to dress up in America, has somehow just become completely conflated with an opportunity to dress ‘sexy’ in a fairly expected, unsurprising sort of way.

M: Totally. Maybe I’ll wear a t-shirt and jeans for Halloween.

J: You touched on this in your post about how to dress for teaching, but living in a college town is exciting, deadening, and sometimes scary (all at once!) for someone who loves dressing up. It’s exciting because of that aspect of rebellion (being the only person not wearing a sweatshirt and Uggs between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm). Deadening for that same exact reason!

M: And yet there are some really creative dressers on college campuses. I have one student like that.

J: Me too! By the way, I went to my first tailgate two weekends ago. It was homecoming. Actually, I think it was Iowa versus Michigan? And I was so terrified the entire time. There were more than seventy thousand people in the street. I saw two punkers; other than that, every single person I saw was in black and gold. I thought I had dressed innocuously in my brown wool coat and my grey tights and boots, but I had never felt more conspicuous in my life! If you took away the context of the football game, it would have just been a mob scene–the glut of uniformed people, the aggression, the harassment. Definitely not a place for sartorial deviation. Or maybe, it’s exactly the place for it (if you are brave!)

So, in conclusion, dress up whenever you feel like, except not on homecoming weekend.

M: Here, here.

Black and yellow tailgate days (via the forum goazcats.com)

We’d rather have white and yellow shift dress days around the house instead.

Oh! If we owned a long sleeved blue dress with a rounded collar and tiny, tiny flowers, we’d find a way to wear it everywhere.

(screencaps of Rosemary’s Baby from thefashionspot.com)