Overdressed
Back when I was a kid, the greatest fashion crime was to turn up somewhere overdressed.
Maybe it was a small town thing and people were doing something different in the cities, but heaven help you round our way if you strolled about the annual A&P show looking fancy. I made that mistake once and still require therapy to unpack all the feelings. Happy to share in case any of this resonates with you.
I would have been eleven I guess, that tricky age between childhood and teens. There weren’t a lot of big events on our local calendar, so a day out at the showgrounds was much anticipated. There would be sheep shearing, wood chopping, prizes for pet calves and sponge cakes, plus the chance to win a frozen chook over at the spinning wheel raffle.
In time for all the excitement, I’d been gifted a dress by our fabulous neighbour. Her daughter was a little older and had grown out of this glorious thing – red lace bodice, flared skirt, neat little belt. I had new shoes, also red, and with the kind of chunky cork platform we were reliably informed people in the cities were wearing that season.
This whole ensemble was way more sophisticated than anything I’d ever had before. Store-bought clothes were a rarity – my mother, like many mothers of the time, knew her way around a Butterick pattern. Somewhere, I’m sure kids my age were wearing Levis but my mother could whip up a pair of trousers made of denim with an elastic waistband which would do just as well, and I don’t know why you’re making that face, Michele.
So this red dress was special. I knew if we hadn’t been gifted it, it was not the kind of thing we would have bought even on a shopping trip to the city. If clothes were books, my cupboard was filled with Junior Fiction and this red dress was most definitely Young Adult. Age-appropriate, but a whole different story.
I felt a million bucks. I felt tall (I was not tall), confident, chic. While my brother was off doing boy-things, and my parents were doing whatever grown-ups do at A&P shows, I floated about the showgrounds, feeling at last like the version of myself I had always hoped to be.
Until a group of girls – I knew their faces, not their names – explained to me in clear and direct terms that this outfit was not at all the thing one wore to an event like this, and who did I think I was? A model? Peals of laughter at the absurdity of this notion, and loud and lengthy commentary on how I should be feeling right now which boiled down to “shame”.
It’s weird, I think now – and thought at some level then – to feel shame for being too shiny. To be embarrassed about misreading social rules or shamed for choosing not to follow them. I would not feel that now. I’d brazen it out rather than spend the rest of show day hiding in the car. Which is the difference between being eleven and being grown up.
Though in the years between I’m aware of moments when I’ve held back, saved a really spectacular thing “for best” in case someone thinks it’s “too much”.
Really, what makes the difference now – would have made it different then, too – is to be surrounded by friends who approve of sparkle and shine, and sparkle and shine themselves.