Southern Lady Code: Essays(19)

By we, he meant me.

My husband owns a tuxedo. To prepare for Nicho’s party, all he had to do was let out the waist an inch. Me, I had to commit to go and gamble that I could find something appropriate to wear. I’d given away my red dress because I’d honestly thought I’d never go to a formal event ever again.

My friend Karen said, “It’s okay, it’s not your lifestyle.”

It’s true. My lifestyle is writing, poker, puzzling, movies, dinner with friends, housework, and naps. If these were clues on The $100,000 Pyramid the answer would be “Things You Do in a Retirement Home!”

But dressing up is Karen’s lifestyle. She was born and raised in New York City and tells me her grandmother used to wear cardigan sets and Ferragamos to sit in her own living room. Karen inherited clutch purses, jewelry, and furs from her grandmother. Like ghost sightings in mine, good taste runs in her family.

Having good taste is different from being put together. You can be put together, but not have good taste. But you can’t have good taste and not be put together.

Women with good taste wear skinny headbands with a pair of animal ears for Halloween. This year, from the bangs up, Karen was a leopard. But that doesn’t mean she’s a Halloween person. Karen’s apartment is decorated like Jonathan Adler’s take on Versailles, so she is a Christmas person. When she offered to take me shopping, I jumped at the chance.

Karen said, “I’m a good friend, so I’ll tell you what doesn’t look good on you.”

I reconsidered my decision.

She asked me for a budget.

I bid high: five hundred to a thousand dollars.

She said, “I’m a good sale shopper.”

Karen led me into a cornstalk maze of markdown racks at Saks, and I wanted to flee. But shopping is fun for Karen. It’s a special skill like cup stacking or texting two hundred characters a minute. She strolled right over and plucked a Stella McCartney burgundy velvet tuxedo jacket out of a haystack.

She said, “If we can find pants to match, what would you think about wearing this instead of a dress?”

I was instantly relieved. I’d thought black tie meant an empire-waisted Kate Winslet from Titanic. Something with gloves up to my armpits. Or something with feathers. If a tuxedo was okay for my husband, it should be okay for me. But the option had never crossed my mind. When did I lose my fashion sense?

I had it in 1975 on my first day of school. As proof, I keep framed photographic evidence on top of my chest of drawers. In the picture, I’m four years old and wearing a lime-green gingham jumpsuit with a ruffled collar. I have a bowl haircut and a lick-the-bowl smile. My Mary Janes are planted on shag carpeting, and I am staring straight into the camera. I have the look of Scout Finch with the confidence of a drag queen. Maybe Mama dressed me, but I am ready to walk into kindergarten like it’s the House of LaBeija.

As a teenager in Alabama, the eighties were easy. You matched. You matched everything. You matched your shoe color to your clothes color. You matched your eye shadow to your top. Clinique’s Black Honey lipstick went with everything, so to further accessorize you dipped your arms into wooden bangles or elastic bracelets with plastic gems. Maybe you wore a headband—not a skinny one, but one as puffy as a Shrinky Dink. The headband was fabric and matched your purse, which came with reversible slip-on covers so they could match more. It was easy. Turquoise went with turquoise. Blush went with bashful. There was a book that told you if you were a Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall. You looked forward to dressing up for homecoming and prom.

But at some point after high school graduation, I lost my coordination.

Mama blames Boulder, Colorado.

I came home from college in a prairie skirt and Reeboks. I was a waifish, yet sporty Laura Ingalls Wilder. Mama pulled over the car on the way home from the airport to give me a talking-to. She said, “Helen Michelle, this is the South. We roll our hair and we wear lipstick.”

Me, I blame the nineties. It’s hard to bounce back from grunge. The grunge theory was: swimming in clothes makes you look skinny. Or: inner beauty is badass. I honestly can’t remember. All I know is that after Doc Martens and flannel shirts, it’s hard to wear stilettos and Spanx.

My parents are guilty of aiding and abetting my fashion crimes because they stopped dressing up when they retired. Papa, who wore three-piece suits to work, takes pride in the fact he hasn’t worn a tie since. When my niece was born, Mama, who’d stopped practicing law—and with it the art of modeling Claire Huxtable–worthy ensembles—wore a cream-and-brown Christopher Walken T-shirt to the maternity ward that read MORE COWBELL!

So, is losing the will to dress up an age thing?

At casinos, I see senior citizens grazing on slot machines clad in a trend that I call toddling. Toddling is dressing like a toddler: clamdiggers and a cotton top, no belt, mall-walking sneakers. It’s a look that says, I give up. Or, I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me anymore. I’m not sure which. And I’m not sure whether I’m ready to grow gracefully into either.

I said to Karen, “I would love to wear a velvet tuxedo.”

She flipped the price tag. At 40 percent off (with no matching pants) the jacket was $921. She frowned. We checked the size. For once, I was happy that something so perfect for me was two sizes too small.

We moved on. Rack by rack, floor by floor. I tried on whatever Karen pulled for me. Nothing worked, but she was kind. A zipper didn’t zip, and she said, “You have an hourglass body, not a little-boy body.”