A conversation has been sweeping through women’s spaces online and around the table, too. You know the one – it’s about how we used to dress to fit in, to be taken seriously, to please a spouse or partner, to not be “too much.” And how now, finally, we’re dressing for ourselves as an expression of individuality, creativity, and feeling more comfortable in our own skin.
On the surface, it sounds like a conversation worth having, but scratch just beneath that surface and… Are we really having it?
I’ve always been a wardrobe chameleon. Growing up, there was a school wardrobe, a church wardrobe, and a play wardrobe. Each had a dress code and a care code, both coming directly from the Nice Little Girls Rules for Good Behavior handbook. Nice Little Girls don’t get their church and school clothes dirty, so while the other girls played kickball at recess, I stood on the sidelines keeping my nice and proper clothes clean. I secretly loved those pretty clothes, but wished I were allowed to live in them instead of just put them on.
In high school, I began sneaking hippie dippy pieces into my wardrobe under the guise of fashionable school clothes. The women I was meant to emulate were always up on current fashion, though never crossing over into trendy. These additions were part of my “costume” to fit in at school, but also when sneaking into important places that represented my values – peace rallies, sit-ins, protests, women’s rights, civil rights. There was more to sneaking in than sneaking out of the house under some plausible pretext.
This was rebellion disguised as fashion on one side and hiding a secret on the other.
Classic clothes were my true love, my actual pleasure. I dreamed of dressing like Myrna Loy in The Thin Man movies or Audrey Hepburn in almost anything. But in the 1970s, not only fashion, but style, was changing rapidly. Those beautiful classic clothes stuck out like a sore thumb in the places that were so important to me. In those places, they wore labels and I don’t mean designer names – conservative, uptight, establishment. Back then it felt like the options were dressing my values to fit in vs. dressing my pleasures to be me. But both the values and the clothes preferences were me, even if they didn’t fit neatly into each other’s boxes.
The corporate season of my career was not typical. As the owner of my own training and organizational development company, most of my clients were corporate. I answered to the corner offices, but most of my work was in the manufacturing trenches of major industries. Classic Levi’s with a nicely tailored shirt became my new uniform, the bridge between the two.
The more I embraced my pleasures, the more their distinct wardrobes expanded. Eventually, there were work clothes, rally clothes, and opening night clothes. Going out with friends clothes and hiking clothes. Beach clothes and artsy clothes. Same woman, same values, same pleasures – completely different wardrobes. Too many compartments with not enough connections.
It came to a head in my forties. My house had a ginormous walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom. I still dream of that closet. One day I stood in the middle of this multi-passionate, well-organized closet and couldn’t find a thing to wear. “Why can’t I live a life that only needs one wardrobe?” It seemed like a really important question. There was no such word as “multipassionate” back then, but now there is. Because we needed it to explore our stories, make sense of them, and find what they really feel like. It didn’t matter that my closet was beautifully organized by tops, bottoms, and dresses. It didn’t matter that it was further organized by color and season. That was all a masquerade because what we now call “multipassionate” meant an inability to focus, flitting from one thing to another. Aimless. Messy. Undomesticated.
How we dress is an expression of creativity and individuality – and that’s what’s been missing from some of these posts. When you read enough of the comments celebrating this liberation, a picture starts to form of what so-called authentic dressing looks like. Flowing clothes. Bold colors. Lots of drapey fabrics. Sensible shoes. An aesthetic that’s beautiful, creative, and remarkably consistent.
This question burning its way through women’s spaces has been revealing: Can one person enjoy sit-ins and tea parties, symphonies and hikes, corporate offices and backyard gardening? Of course they can, and anything else they find meaningful. Isn’t that all of us to one degree or another?
Are my beloved classic clothes every bit as self-expressive as the flowing artistry so many are boldly claiming? Of course they are, and it’s time for them to come out of the closet.
Dressing appropriately for work or whatever wasn’t only about dressing to please others. It was also expressing respect and solidarity for communities I loved or at least chose to be in. It wasn’t their fault that I didn’t yet know how to blend all those pieces together in the wholeness of me.
What if the women doing the real work of this – making peace with their past without pretending things never happened or didn’t hurt – don’t all arrive in the same wardrobe? Isn’t that what true self-expression looks like?