Or, what has become of “girl clothes”?
I’m trying to understand a phenomenon that seems to have taken place in the last few years: the strange lack of classic feminine clothing. Or more precisely, the Skirt.
With this being the millennium age, approaching the year 2010 for heaven’s sake, and the world seeming to have an ‘anything goes’-kind of attitude, one sees the enormous range of styles and influences: in art and fashion, music and movies, books and biases. But I find a glaring absence that I resent highly. While I fully acknowledge the major focuses going to world politics and the generation Yers or Zers or whatever letter we are up to now, there seems to be a huge slice of the population ( and supposedly still the biggest) that is lost in the shuffle between the young up-and-comers and the soon-to-be-ready-for-retirement-homes.
Yes, here it is again: those ever-crying baby boomers. I claim to be one of that number, and very proud of it I am too! However large this generation, though, I feel unaccounted for. Here’s the reason I’m suddenly noticing this fashion void.
I recently changed jobs. This change was monumental for me on several levels. The biggest change has been that I am no longer a retail slave. Hooray! Anyone, anywhere can relate to this. Slave is not overstating it. I’ve been in retail in one fashion or another for over 30 years! Gag! Who knows what my mental defect has been, but suffice it to say I have awoken from the trance and have escaped! No more mean, rude customers. No more angry shoppers. No more holiday stress! (That’s a big one, by-the-way!) And lastly, no more uniform. So after years of buying a million versions of the same color shirt, and being forced to look at only one color for pants, I could wear whatever I wanted….but here was a problem: I no longer had any other clothes because what was the point? If I couldn’t wear them to work , why buy them?
So you can imagine my delight when I set out to go shopping with no restrictions (except maybe financially!). I could get what I wanted, in any color I wanted, in any style I wanted. I could go casual or dressy or GIRLY! (Can’t really wear a skirt when climbing ladders is part of your job! Nope!) I was so happy and excited and…
…what? What the heck…? Where are the grownup clothes…? Where are the classics…? Where the heck are all the skirts….?!!!!
I didn’t get it. Just a season or two ago, you couldn’t turn around without running into skirts. Poufy skirts, floral skirts, feminine skirts, pleated skirts, they were everywhere! They were adorable and fun. But I didn’t feel justified in spending money on something that I wouldn’t get much use out of. I was bummed out and blamed my job for depriving me of all these cute and girly fashions! And now…they were gone?
So I looked. Believe me! I shopped and I shopped. I went to this store and that store and another store. I looked online at this store and that store and that designer and another designer. I looked at this website and that website! Whew! I could not believe it. Even my old reliables were skirt-free or skirt-deficient; which amounted to the same thing, since the choices were laughable, at least from my point of view. I didn’t want to wear a pencil skirt, or more accurately I couldn’t. I’m a grown-up! I’m not built like a pencil anymore. I didn’t want animal prints. I didn’t want so-short-everyone-can-see-my-whatsis. I didn’t want colors and prints I wouldn’t even put on my sofa! Oh woe was me! Woe IS me, since I still can’t find anything.
But then! I saw a glimmer! I had found a store that had exactly what I was looking for: feminine skirts in classic colors and sophisticated lengths. But guess what? They’re in the UK and don’t ship to the states!
Curses!
So my search goes on…Every now and then I do a little look-see. Holding my breath while I click on the “skirt” category. Walking round and round the women’s departments. Still to no avail! I fantasize I have designed my own line of clothing and have a seamstress to make them for me. Ah, to dream!
Anyway, the Mystery remains unsolved. I’m not sure who began this horrifying trend and what made everyone else follow along. I can’t understand being satisfied with seventy-five shirt styles to coordinate with one pair of black pants! Who came up with this? That’s all I see when I go to a store: a sea, really more of an ocean of shirts and one sad rack of pants in two colors. Those poor, overworked pants. And the shirt colors, UGH! Sickly sweet pastels and bright colors like children’s toys. Groan! And don’t get me started on the patterns! I can’t look or they’ll trigger my migraines. You know the ones I mean…
Is it really too much to ask for soft, sophisticated colors like navy, grey, cream, chocolate, a green that can’t walk out on its own? If I find that designer who still believes in classic, feminine clothes and the women who want to wear them, I’ll gladly be a fashion slave.
