It occurs to me that, if I live to be one thousand years old, I will never have, in my wardrobe, the perfect outfit for any occasion that just happens to arise.
For example, recently, I had to attend my partner's son's wedding. It was a daytime wedding followed, later, by an evening through night-time reception and dinner. It wasn't quite black tie, but it was well dressed. It was also in an in-between sort of season. You know the kind, Autumn going into Spring but, potentially, also Summer. October, in Australia, is a pot luck kind of season. Although I now live in Queensland, which is north of New South Wales where I grew up in Sydney, October can be fickle, to say the least. In Sydney, just as you were warming up from a cold Winter heralding the promise of Spring, October would blast us with an early heatwave before abating and pretending to be Spring again. I'm talking in the 90 degrees Farenheit or the high 30's Celcius.
To put this in perspective, Sydney is relatively cooler, on average, than Brisbane where I live now. Brisbane, however, can also deliver October heatwaves. This is what caused my clothing conundrum for the wedding. I had saved the dress from my son's wedding eleven years earlier. His wedding was in our Australian Autumn of April. It was an expensive, long sleeved, knee length dress with a bold black and white pattern. I studied the long sleeves and decided that I would probably end up too hot if I wore the dress. I have a propensity for overheating at the drop of a hat.
I have a kind neighbour who used to attend the horse races a lot and this required dressing up. She offered me a selection from her wardrobe and I chose one dress as a standby. I had tried her dress on in Winter and it fitted, looked nice but not exciting. It would do. I wasn't the star of the show, the bride and younger women would be.
The wedding day arrived, hot and sticky so, at the last moment, I put on my neighbour's dress. Immediately, my skin could not breathe. If there is one thing I can't wear here in Brisbane, it is any fabric containing polyester. In Winter it had felt fine, so I didn't check the label. If I'd realized that the dress was a polyester blend, I would have known it would be too hot on a warm day. I stood before the mirror contemplating whether I could get through almost twelve hours in the dress. The wedding was at 1.30pm and finished at 3pm. The guests then had to find something to do until 5pm when the reception began in a ritzy nightclub in the city, some distance from where the wedding was held.
I doubted I would make it to the threatened hour of midnight, that my partner told me I was expected to remain, up until the bride and groom left. We agreed I would take off solo at 9.30pm. That, however, didn't solve the polyester blend dress problem. Standing alone in my bedroom, partner long gone to attend to his son and make whoopee at a swank hotel, I had to make a decision. I looked desperately into my wardrobe, which holds items up to thirty years old, classics too good to throw out, and grabbed a twenty-year old purple linen, sleeveless dress that I had had made by a dressmaker. I had added some gilt edging to the neck at some stage to liven it up. I had lost six kilograms since wearing it, but it looked okay.
I had also invested in patent beige shoes to go with the borrowed polyester blend dress, and I put these on but, as an afterthought, I took a very ritzy pair of high heeled sandals because I knew my feet would hurt. I also took a black bolero jacket in case I felt cold. I never did. It just became a nuisance to tote around with me.
I arrived at the church, where I met up with my partner, feeling cool but underdressed. It didn't matter. All the young women were dressed to the nines and looked gorgeous. The bride wore a very expensive gown, the material alone costing a fortune. It was her dream dress and she looked lovely. In fact, the whole wedding went off beautifully including the reception. At the end of the service, however, my feet were complaining hugely, and, in the car, I changed to the ritzy sandals which let my bunions out for air.
In spite of all my preparations for the day, I ended up in a make-do twenty-year old dress. I don't go to many events these days, but it surprised me that I had so little to choose from for this one occasion. To be honest, I really didn't want to spend money on a new dress that I would rarely wear again. You buy something for an occasion, and it ends up staring at you forlornly from your wardrobe for the next ten years.
I have tried, over the years, to accumulate a wardrobe that can cope with any occasion that arises, however, life changes and fashion changes. Even when I think I have classics in my wardrobe, I find they have begun to date. I've pulled out jackets that I think will do just fine after years of not having worn them, only to discover they have shoulder pads, are too loose or are too 'something'. Some things stand the test of time, but most do not.
That's not the worst of it. There are things that, at seventy, I do not feel right wearing any more. My body is still slim, but I don't feel right wearing a halter dress that shows a lot of my upper back. There's nothing wrong with my upper back, but I'm seventy. The really, really galling thing are my arms. The part of me I thought would never age have creases running vertically down the upper arms. I will still wear sleeveless dresses, but I just don't get how these lines happened. My mother was plumper than me and she didn't have them. I figure that my slimness is the problem. You really just can't win with age. The lines are there, not too obvious yet, but they're working on it.
When I watch television and stream movies, I see some very beautiful older actresses who have had plastic surgery. They look great through the years as they maintain their tweaks and tucks, but then, a little too much tweaking and their faces look startled and gaunt. Fat departs from the face and botox freezes features. There comes a time when too much is too much and you have to learn to be your age but, no matter what, you have to be cool, and I'm not going to hide my bad bits. I shall wear them with pride or, at least, pretend to.
END.
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