Last night, in line at the supermarket with me was an excellent example of the "you just never know" rule of ensemble assembly.
The lady was about sixty, and enough shorter than me that she may have been under five feet tall. Now I will tell you what she had on, but let me preface it by saying that if a friend of any age, and of any size under 6 feet tall, had asked me about the proposed list of garments, it would have taken every ounce of restraint I could muster to refrain from emitting howls of derisive laughter and every ounce of decorum to come up with a polite way of saying "What the hell are you THINKING?"
This lady rocked the following:
A tweed jacket with leather or unleather accents on shoulders and cuffs
A plain pink tee/knit top against which hung a small gold or goldtone cross
Beige/light khaki colored gaucho pants
White crew socks
Short, chunky "Timberland" style hiking boots.
I will again remind you that she was very short.
She looked - fabulous. There is no other word for it. Granted, she was a very pretty lady, olive/almond-cashew skin, chin-length bob with just a bit of tuck-under wave, beautiful dark eyes - and no makeup that I could detect.
I have loudly and often asserted that gauchos are on the short list of Most Emphatic What Not to Wear for people Living with Untallness, and generally speaking, I will stand by that.
The way this lady got away with it though, surprised me, but made sense at the same time. The hem hit her leg just about a half inch above her white crew socks, which extended about an inch, maybe a bit less, above her darkest brown Timbs or NotTimbs, and the result, believe it or not, actually gave the illusion of length, from end of jacket, which was worn an inch or two below hip-bone, to end of gauchos.
I have no way of knowing whether her chosen grocery shopping outfit was the result of days, even weeks, of experimentation, careful planning and commission of arithmetic, or merely the result of throwing on a random collection of garments which just happened to perform all these impossible sartorial feats, or if the lady happened to see the same episode of the Isaac show that I did, where he said something to the effect of putting things together that are totally wrong is the True Path to a Great Look, but this lady illustrated that theorem perfectly.
I tried not to gape at her, and I did manage to hold myself back from accosting her and expressing my utter awe at her fashion masterpiece and thus probably alarming her (it was very late at night), just in case she really did just grab some clothes and throw them on, and may have considered that she looked awful and just wanted to get those Kleenex and sinus pills home and hit the couch without having complete strangers remark on her appearance, one way or another.
But she made me want gaucho pants. And some Timbs.
And she reminded me that where True Style is concerned, Rule Number One is that there are no rules.
The lady was about sixty, and enough shorter than me that she may have been under five feet tall. Now I will tell you what she had on, but let me preface it by saying that if a friend of any age, and of any size under 6 feet tall, had asked me about the proposed list of garments, it would have taken every ounce of restraint I could muster to refrain from emitting howls of derisive laughter and every ounce of decorum to come up with a polite way of saying "What the hell are you THINKING?"
This lady rocked the following:
A tweed jacket with leather or unleather accents on shoulders and cuffs
A plain pink tee/knit top against which hung a small gold or goldtone cross
Beige/light khaki colored gaucho pants
White crew socks
Short, chunky "Timberland" style hiking boots.
I will again remind you that she was very short.
She looked - fabulous. There is no other word for it. Granted, she was a very pretty lady, olive/almond-cashew skin, chin-length bob with just a bit of tuck-under wave, beautiful dark eyes - and no makeup that I could detect.
I have loudly and often asserted that gauchos are on the short list of Most Emphatic What Not to Wear for people Living with Untallness, and generally speaking, I will stand by that.
The way this lady got away with it though, surprised me, but made sense at the same time. The hem hit her leg just about a half inch above her white crew socks, which extended about an inch, maybe a bit less, above her darkest brown Timbs or NotTimbs, and the result, believe it or not, actually gave the illusion of length, from end of jacket, which was worn an inch or two below hip-bone, to end of gauchos.
I have no way of knowing whether her chosen grocery shopping outfit was the result of days, even weeks, of experimentation, careful planning and commission of arithmetic, or merely the result of throwing on a random collection of garments which just happened to perform all these impossible sartorial feats, or if the lady happened to see the same episode of the Isaac show that I did, where he said something to the effect of putting things together that are totally wrong is the True Path to a Great Look, but this lady illustrated that theorem perfectly.
I tried not to gape at her, and I did manage to hold myself back from accosting her and expressing my utter awe at her fashion masterpiece and thus probably alarming her (it was very late at night), just in case she really did just grab some clothes and throw them on, and may have considered that she looked awful and just wanted to get those Kleenex and sinus pills home and hit the couch without having complete strangers remark on her appearance, one way or another.
But she made me want gaucho pants. And some Timbs.
And she reminded me that where True Style is concerned, Rule Number One is that there are no rules.
