The Sartorialist

A few weeks ago I was reading Post Secret and came across a secret that said something like “when I get dressed in the morning I wonder: would The Sartorialist take a picture of me today?”

I thought about this for a bit because I love scanning through The Sartorialist site – it is endlessly entertaining!  Fabulous people, dressed to impress; people for whom the world is a fashion shoot and they are the model.  Don’t get me wrong.  If I had the time and the money and if I cared enough about what people thought of me, I think that whole dressing up thing could be fun – being hip, being stylish and cool.  But it is just not me – it’s too much work and I really just don’t have that certain sense of “style” – the skill to be cool.  Ironically, my Mom and Dad were very stylish in their teens and early twenties – even without money.  They both sort of had that “certain way” with clothing.  They were cool.  My Dad looked like James Dean and my Mom, like a young Elizabeth Taylor.

Why is it that some people care so much about how they look and others just don’t?  Why are some people so good at it?  Why do I go out of the house looking great (okay…decent) some days and on others, well, I just say “screw it” and run out wearing Crocs with socks and capri pants?   Horror!  I know!  And yes, the photo above…those are my feet – that is what I wore last Saturday when I took the kids to skating lessons.  Michele was appropriately horrified – my husband didn’t even notice. 

Why did my sister feel the need to have perfect hair everyday?  Why was she an obsessive compulsive with the curling iron and an addiction to Aquanet?  Why did she always have 20 pairs of perfect jeans and short sassy jackets?  She still does.  For that matter, now that I think about it, why is my brother equally afflicted – he has the perfect hair, always smells like Polo and he dresses like a very cool, hip dude – even though he has two little kids and two jobs.  What sort of genetic hiccup resulted in my lack of style?  I have decided to assume that the affliction is genetic - that “fashion sense”, lets call that F, is a dominant allele and, assuming mendalian form of inheritance, my parents had to be heterozygous Ff in order to get FF or Ff children – my siblings.  That means I am the recessive homozygous ff.  Thank goodness it isn’t lethal.  You see, if I can blame my lack of fashion sense and coolness on genetics…it’s not MY fault and it makes me feel better.  And then I can enjoy other people’s fashion skills without shame.    

So, surf over to The Sartorialist and enjoy.  Don’t feel bad that you don’t look like those people.  Embrace the fact if you do.  But if you see me in my Crocs and socks, remember that I would really love to look like the people over at The Sartorialist…I just can’t – I’m not cool, I have no style, it may be genetic…and I would look stupid.  You would all laugh.

(my sister had hair like contestant number 5 – 2nd row middle – it was all about the bangs!)