I have been feeling rather insecure about clothing lately. I think there are several factors involved:
a) It's summer. I usually hate summer fashions. They show too much skin for office wear (IMO), and I also hate the usual summer colors, which are way too "cotton candy" for my taste, which runs toward more muted colors. Never mind that I really hate current fashions, too -- way too late '70s/early '80s. I remember that stuff the first time around, and had to wear them as thrift-store buys in early high school days, so I associate those styles with penny-pinching and tight budgets, never mind that they're just plain ugly.
b) There's a contingent of young, skinny, fashionable girls in my office, and I feel like an elephant next to them, because, at 5'7" and with fairly wide shoulders/hips, I'll never be that willowy, even if I dropped 20 lbs. I've also never been that fashionable, even when I was their age. (Yes, this is really more about my state of mind than about them; so it's fixable.)
I used to get the
J. Jill catalog, but they stopped sending them to me because I couldn't bring myself to pay that much for their clothing. They make beautiful stuff, but it has always seemed too expensive to me. Another thing that put me off (which is silly) is that they seemed to be marketing to "women of a certain age". I think, however, that I'm going to start keeping an eye out for sales and shopping for their clothes on Ebay. Their styles are (relatively) timeless and graceful, and probably won't need fall out of fashion too quickly.
And, well, at 37 years old, maybe I am a "woman of a certain age." Nothing wrong with that.
