Style, maybe

*edit: goth photo removed because of disturbing number of daily Google Image search hits and downloads (???)

I have been thinking, lately, about what I wear. Specifically, I have been wondering when I became someone who tries on a shirt, and if it fits, buys 4-6 identical ones, in different colours. Then two identical skirts, two identical pairs of pants, and a pair of jeans and a pair of cords in the same cut. And four identical turtlenecks. It all matches. In fact, I have one belt that I wear with everything in casual settings, and three necklaces for all settings that all match with everything. Actually, absolutely everything absolutely matches everything else: it's all shades of grey, brown, off-white (winter), white (summer), chino, and black. It's all, further, machine washable.

I'll tell you, this makes packing for trips very easy.

In my defense, I did try to jazz it up by buying a giant, be-buckled mustard yellow purse, which you saw if you met me at BlogHer or if you came to my house for Mad's Bloggy Weekend, because I always use it when I want to appear less ... beige-brown-black-white-grey. Which is pretty much always.

Any-hooooooo. Mad can tell you I used to be hip. She knew me in my Louise-Brooks-bob phase, my skull-buckle boots and stretch black skinny jeans paired with a pirate shirt days. My PVC and fishnets with army boots to the office years. Blue lipstick. Special eyeliner effects achieved with a Sharpie (doesn't run ...). People used to stop me on the street and admire me. I got what my sister calls the 'nice face discount' but what was in my face more likely the 'nice freak' discount. I had a wardrobe that I would riffle through in my mind before bed, trying to pick out the best thing to wear, the coolest new combination of the gazillions of items. Then in the morning (okay, who am I kidding? in the afternoon) I would try a bunch of stuff on before settling on ... leggings under a floor length lace skirt, combat boots, bondage collar, sleek hair, and saucy 'vampire sex bar' t-shirt. Smokin' hot!*

[ photo removed ]

Now I don't really think about it at all, which is why I buy the mix and match multiples: when I went back to work, Munchkin wasn't sleeping through the night yet, and I needed clothes I could pump in, clothes the barf would wash out from, clothes I didn't have to think about.

But I miss that part of me. Still, I don't really have time or money right now to pursue my love of, as Pynchon calls them, 'shoes with accents.' Everything will be mix and match and machine washable for a while, I think, and when I find t-shirts long enough to cover my new mommy-tummy and my just generally incredibly long waist? I'm still going to buy four.

I'm engaging now in a little style by proxy. I've just been out to buy Munchkin her fall clothes at the neighbourhood Bonnie Togs (seriously, I walked there. It took about 5 minutes). Everything matches everything else. Check it out:**


I feel competent when I buy her clothes that mix and match like this. I miss being fashionable and unique, but I really really like that my baby has cute, practical, unfussy, and ... timeless clothes. It occurs to me that what I'm doing is dressing Munchkin much the way my own mom dressed me. Cute. Practical. Unfussy. Am I nostalgic for my own seemingly-simpler 1970s childhood by de-hipstering my baby? I'm sorely tempted by Bumper's AB/CD shirt and Wonderbaby's cholo 'Muthasucka' onesie still elicits a chuckle from me. I once bought a faux-leather biker jacket and a little velour tuxedo sleeper for my first nephew, way back in 1995. But I don't think I could dress Munchkin like that now--I would feel like a faker, I think. A little self-conscious. Me, who was troubled not by the idea of a bondage collar and a lace skirt to wear to work at the computer lab, but rather boggled at the choice of which collar best matched the skirt. I'm happier with my little kiddo in lavender onesies with embroidered leaves, with contrasting track pants.

Last summer, I used to really enjoy shopping for clothes for my then-Miss Baby because I was ambivalent about my new body, about the slow gradation between post-partum and back-to-self, and everything about shopping for her was simpler and more satisfying than shopping for myself. Pressed for time, I tended to go out size-by-size and just get everything at once, and usually all at one store: all the fall clothes, then the winter, then the spring. Tonight, I've bought all the 18mos-24mos clothes she'll start to wear in the fall. Everything matches everything else. Nothing fussy--cute stuff in corduroy, and jersey, and denim, and cotton, all of it machine washable.

When I went back to work I was still pressed for time and I started to shop like that for myself. Like the fashionable me was too much work. Or was maybe irrelevant. I don't know. It's not any issues I have with my body--yeah I've got a bit of a tummy (hello? I grew another human being in there!) but I'm just as thin as I was before. I'm still not sure how I feel about this change in ... my attitude.

Still, I kind of suspect that if I dress my baby like my mom dressed me, I might turn to her for tips on stylish motherhood, too.***


Have any of you noticed your sense of style changing after your kids were born? Or your practice of style? I'd love to hear about it.
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* I know! But it's totally me! At a Nine Inch Nails concert at Molson Park the day before I got my navel pierced. The flannel shirt is my friend P, who bought me my first Barbie in JK. We got married, in the same dress, within three months of each other, and gave birth within three months of each other, and were born within three weeks of each other. Our mothers went to teachers college together. Did I mention we have the same giant stroller? But she went flannel and I went Goth. We! Are! Individuals!

** Do you think I have a problem? Do other people do this?

*** BTW, she made these clothes herself. I'm 15 months old, and she's six months pregnant with my sister. Yikes.