sixty years too soon

Despite the scads of bloggers I admire, my style almost certainly has more in common with the Advanced Style ladies’ than with anyone else’s. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was “born in the wrong era”, because that statement always grates on me (please, tell me more about how you’d prefer typhoid and oppression to indoor plumbing), but I am frequently drawn to ensembles several generations too old for me. This often means that I trot about in styles and patterns identical to those of the grandmothers I pass on the street. Sometimes – yesterday in Goodwill, for example – we’re browsing the exact same racks, and often eyeing the same damn dresses.

When old ladies smile at me and my shoulder pads and garish prints, moved by recognition, and girls my age gawk and giggle, I’m always reminded of this:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

Especially the end:

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

When I am old, my dresses will be older. I will be wispy and creaky but still sharp underneath, and maybe my hair will still glow pink. I will be the garish harridan from the turreted house in the part of town that makes everyone skittish. I will sic my pet spiders on neighborhood children like a hag from Roald Dahl’s annals. I will show off my saggy tattoos.

Why not practice now?

Dress & Scarf: Handed down from Mom Sweater: The Classy Closet Ring: Battery Street Jeans Glasses: Birthday gift from Josh

Why should I wait until I’m crotchety and incontinent to stop giving a single flying fuck?