Fashion is a Two-Faced Bitch: Old Fashioned...

This is the year I am officially old.  No, it doesn't have anything to do with my actual age, wrinkles, or droopage ratio.  I feel old because I've scanned several fashion magazines this week and I have not found one fall fashion that I want to embrace.

I feel like I should be lounging, newly permed,  around my neighbor's pool with a gaggle of older gals, gossiping away in our one piece skirted bathing suits, wrinkled evidence of too much iodine and baby-oil tanning in the 70s all on display, talking about the crap that passes for fashion these days.

High waist jeans?  Gross.  Crop tops?  Nightmares.   And I don't wear pastels in summer.  Why would I wear them in winter?  Leather?  Let's not.   Bollywood?  But what?  Bolly what?  That's a trend now?  Funnel coat?  I'm not wearing anything that sounds like it might add pounds.  And I believe we covered the scrunchie comeback last week.

It's true, I've never been a fashion maven.  There was that time when I was 21 and admired another girl's way with leg warmers.  She would wear them with pointy-toed pumps.  She was a beautiful  girl with a bird-like bone structure, and could pull off the odd fashion choice. With my athletic build, I was neither beautiful nor bird-like.  It was like putting leg warmers on Rocky.  It didn't stop me from trying.  I tried again  in 1984 when I paired a baby blue cotton dress with red pumps and pink ankle socks.  I don't even think that was a trend at the time.  I think I might have been stoned.

At some more lucid point in my adulthood, I adopted a classic, simpler way of dressing; structured, clean lines in neutral colors and quality fabrics, with an occasional pop of color. This is what looks good on me.  If it weren't for the way I attract dirt, cat hair, loose threads and food stains, I might even pass for well-dressed in some circles.

But now, it would seem, a classic style no longer passes for a style.  Fashion has become diverse and complicated.  Clothing is made to layer in odd ways.  It wraps and ties and serves multiple purposes.  Is it a dress, a shirt, a skirt?  How the fuck am I supposed to figure that shit out?  I see odd combinations of fabric, styles and decades.  These new clothes, they have holes in weird places....I don't want a tan on just the middle of my back, for Christ's sake.

I can feel myself faltering. I can't compute the code that allows two fabrics with different size stripes to be worn at the same time, and even though I lived in the 80's, I couldn't pull off an 80's style if I wanted to. Not that I want to, exactly, that's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying that even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Do you understand?  I feel as though I've passed over some invisible line into the realm of the style-less.  I've become one with the masses, dressing daily for practical purposes.  Like being adequately covered in public. Like someone who wouldn't know a statement necklace if it jumped up and bit her on the nose.  Which is why I don't wear statement necklaces, incidentally, because that seems like a valid concern.

And this feeling of not relating to current fashion trends makes me feel old.  This is not to say that older people are unfashionable.  Style is ageless-we all have heard that.  I have many friends who are walking proof.  I have other friends who have transcended fashion and are simply elegant.

But as for me?  I  may as well buy some elastic-waisted jeans, a velour sweatshirt featuring kittens, and some comfortable walking shoes.  And a fanny pack.

Chicken out