39. First impressions, and conforming to the dress code
The antithesis of a mid-life crisis.
Dear Reader,
At my age comfort is everything, especially when I’m travelling. Although I can barely remember the last time I travelled by train or by plane (thanks, Covid!), I know that dressing comfortably pays dividends for a pleasant journey.
Yet in the even dimmer, more distant, past we’d dress up to travel! As the family of a pilot we were no strangers to getting on a plane, and I remember my first-ever trip in British Airways Club Class in my little French-style pinafore, red gingham blouse and school shoes which I’d polished specially, just like I would do every Sunday before the week ahead. I enjoyed getting dressed up for the occasion, and I don’t recall that any other passengers were dressed more casually. In the 1980s we did all don our best bib and tucker to travel!
In summer 1992 I went to the airport with my best friend Jo’s family to see her off to Australia for her gap year. I was seventeen, but by then Jo was a real-life grown-up stretching her wings and embarking on what promised to be a fabulous adventure. Aged eighteen – a fully-fledged adult with a driving licence and considerable legal hangover experience already under her belt – she oozed both confidence and an early-90s scruffy teenager vibe: battered Converse boots, an unironed, oversized pale pink shirt, and the tiniest stretchy pull-on black ‘skirt’ I’d ever seen, with a pair of holey, laddered black opaque tights beneath. Jo would always be comfortable in her own skin, regardless of the unique garments she’d layer on top of it, and I envied her that.
Reader, it didn’t start well at the airport. Also a pilot’s daughter, Jo chanced her arm with the check-in staff. Ever the flirt, she opened her big brown eyes extra wide at the lady behind the desk marked ‘Staff Travel’.
‘Can I have an upgrade?’ she simpered, tossing her nearly-dreadlocks and giggling. Her mother looked horrified.
‘Absolutely not!’ came the stiff retort. ‘Dressed like that you’re not even getting on the plane. ‘You are representing our airline!’
Jo’s mother raised her eyebrows at her husband. Stunned, Jo turned to her dad, biting her lip.
‘Oh, erm,’ he ventured. ‘Staff travel dress code. I remember now.’
Jo’s mum rolled her eyes. She was furious. ‘Come on, girls. We’re going shopping!’
Heathrow Terminal 4 had a branch of every teenage girl’s favourite shop: Miss Selfridge, Next, Oasis, Dorothy Perkins, the works… With a flight to catch Jo wasted no time trying on skirts, blouses and cardigans. Her mum was torn between finding a new pair of tights and a hairbrush, obviously not both available in the same shop, and her dad had sloped off to a quiet corner of the concourse to ‘look after Jo’s rucksack’.
In due course Jo appeared from a changing room looking like quite the young business traveller, wearing a pair of black fitted shorts a thousand and fifty times longer than the skirt she’d been wearing, a new pair of black tights and a sprigged cotton blouse. She’d even found some high heels. Her mum and I collected up the bundle of tatty garments vetoed by check-in, and after we’d found her dad, stuffed them into Jo’s rucksack.
‘What am I going to do with all this new stuff when I get there?’ Jo asked. ‘I’m backpacking!’
‘Post it to us!’ Her dad caught his wife’s exasperated eye. ‘I’ll pay you back.’
The time-limited destiny of Jo’s new outfit having been established, the staff travel check-in desk was waiting.
‘That’s more like it!’ While not actually impressed, it appeared that the lady in charge was feeling at least more benevolent towards Jo now that she looked the part.
At that point I noticed a sign we’d all missed earlier.
PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR AN UPGRADE
AS REFUSAL OFTEN OFFENDS
Oops.
For better or worse, Jo had always paid great attention to her appearance, and in her late teenage years was generally out to shock with her clothing choices.
In contrast, for me it’s always been about comfort. I’m a jeans-and-a-jumper girl. As a child I’d always been dressed for the outdoors in things like corduroy trousers, handknitted jumpers and Wellington boots. Okay, for birthday parties I’d put on a pretty dress and do twirls with all the other little girls in order to establish whose skirt looked the most like a lampshade, but as I got older, occasions when we’d meet in non-school time seemed to require the adherence to a certain unpublished dress code. Reader, I didn’t get the memo.
At school we’d only ever see each other in uniform: we never needed to discuss what we were wearing, or what we looked like, because we were all dressed the same. With hindsight I must have found this liberating, because I don’t ever remember feeling dressed inappropriately at school.
Out of school was different, though. I didn’t understand what I should be wearing, although I knew I always got it wrong. With no clue – and even less care – about fashion, I’d be wearing just anything. Bumping into school friends in town would be humiliating: one day I might encounter the two prettiest girls in the class in their Top of the Pops-inspired ra-ra skirts, or in later years, an entire troupe of pint-sized supermodels in their identical too-big Burberry macs – ironically a uniform in itself.
Perhaps I did care. Certainly the next morning at school, where I would be teased mercilessly, I would really care. I cared not because I minded about my appearance – it was more complex than that – I cared because I couldn’t begin to understand why anyone would choose to make anyone else feel so small. I didn’t get it.
So, I didn’t change how I dressed. It didn’t matter. As my very wise mum would sometimes tell me: ‘Nobody’s looking at you, darling.’
In sixth form – the last two years of school, when at the ages of sixteen to eighteen we were permitted to wear our own clothes as long as we respected a strict dress code – I went through a couple of reinventions. Shopping trips were arranged and enjoyed, new looks were experimented with. But it had never been the opportunity for the right clothes that had been lacking: it had been the confidence to wear them.
And without that, the new clothes were irrelevant.
A few years ago I got married. ‘What do you want to wear? What would you be most comfortable in?’ asked my dressmaker friend.
‘Jeans and a jumper!’ was my reply. I couldn’t think of anything else.
For me, the wedding equivalent of jeans and a jumper was a pair of wide-legged heavy silk palazzo pants and a sparkly top with beaded lacy sleeves. I was comfortable and confident, and felt like the most beautiful girl in the world. Heck, on that day I was.
Later, as I spread my life’s wings, I continued to dress for comfort. Jeans and a jumper, yes, but as I began to work with my husband on an assortment of location shoots in everything from searing heat to force 8 gales, I soon found I needed to dress for those occasions too.
Top-to-bottom waterproofs? Check!
Merino long johns with fleece-lined walking trousers over the top? Check!
Short shorts? Yes, if it’s an out-and-out heatwave and I absolutely have to.
My passion for hiking calls for its own wardrobe: walking shorts or trousers, a ‘technical’ t shirt to wick away perspiration, maybe a fleece, a pair of big, clumpy walking boots and a baseball cap. I win no prizes for presentation, but do I care?
Not in the slightest.
Rolling forward to December 2022, for the first time in my adult life I have just bought the kind of outfit that I remember from those children’s party days when I’d twirl around with the other girls.
It’s the ‘d’ word. An actual dress. I’m going to be wearing it at a family wedding next year, where the members of Jim’s side of the family will see me in a fitted, knee-length dress for the first time in the decade and a half that they’ve known me.
I’m surprised that this purchase feels like much less of a big deal than I’d expected. Initially I’d been viewing the run-up to this wedding and the need to dress for the occasion as a mid-life crisis scenario: ‘What am I going to WEAR?’ and ‘It’s going to be AWFUL’ and ‘I wanna wear jeans and a jumper’ and ‘I DON’T WANNA GOOOOOOOO!’ have all rushed through my head at one point or another since the gorgeous ‘Save the Date!’ card landed on our doormat.
So does purchasing the dress – particularly the kind of dress that it is: knee-length, fitted, floral – represent a mid-life crisis, I wonder? A personality change in fashion form? Well, the fact that I’ve bought it might well be mid-life related, absolutely.
But is it a crisis? NO.
Because it’s no big deal. It’s different to what I’m used to, yes, but it feels right for the occasion, and right for me as I am now. It’s taken me until this age to care enough about myself to not care at all about how I look, and I swear that this slackening skin of mine is becoming more comfortable the longer I inhabit it.
Along with the dress I will be wearing my mid-life mettle: my strength, my confidence and my I-can-do-this attitude. I will be wearing it because I literally don’t care what anybody might think.
I’m going to look like me, feel like me and be dressed like me.
The 48-year-old me.
In a dress.
As I celebrate this unanticipated shift in my attitude towards myself and the world, it is clear to me that confidence is everything. And I’ve got some now.
Yes, I know that nobody’s looking at me, but if they do, well, here I am.
I am me, whatever I’m wearing.
And that’s what I’ll be taking into 2023 with me tomorrow. Happy new year!
Love,
Rebecca
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I always marvel at old pics and films where people are at sports events in 3-piece suits when I now see people at the coffee shop literally in their pajamas. I've never been especially fashionable either, and it's a rarity for me to put on a dress. I'm happily in jeans most days. I've also banished all traces of uncomfortable shoes, especially heels! There's a time and a place for a little formality and dress-up, but I'm with you on being practical and comfortable most of the time. But if I start wearing my pjs in public, please stage an intervention!
What a great post, Rebecca! That 70s picture brings back some memories for sure. lol!
As much as I always wish people would go back to dressing up when they go out in public (as they did in the 40s and 50s), I totally understand the need for comfort...especially as we get older. Working from home (in Florida), I can usually be found in shorts and a t-shirt. A few months ago, I decided I was going to dress as if I were going into the office on Mondays. I did it for a few weeks but then decided it was a bit silly, so I went back to just being comfortable at work.
While I don't know much about fashion, your wedding dress was truly rocking! Looks like it was a fun day :)
Best wishes and Happy New Year!!