Tag Archives: Fashion

Highchair Fashionista

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Highchair Fashionista

Her mania for haute couture
came a little premature
when she first crawled across the floor,
wanting to see Grandma’s Dior.
When she took her first steps and fell,
it was reaching for Auntie’s Chanel.
The words she learned at Mama’s knee
were Calvin Klein and Givenchy.

Her alphabet from A to V

(from Armani up to Versace)
she learned in closets of her kin
dreaming of how she’d look in
Louis Vitton, Laurent, Bill Blass.
She’d be the best-dressed in her class
of other girls in cut-off jeans
and dresses made by mere machines.

Thus are fashionistas made.
As other children sell lemonade
or waste their days in hide-and-seek,
they are fingering La Fabrique
and looking at the fold and drape
of a model’s evening cape.
To each their own, we’re given to say,
and yet I’m prone to saying “Nay,
childhood might be better spent
in pastimes of another bent.”

I’d hope that kids from zero to twelve
might be more encouraged to delve
into comics or games or nature
with no stylish nomenclature.
Let kids be freakish, free and nerdy.
Let their clothes get torn and dirty.
Time enough for fashion cults
later, when they’re grown adults.

 

The prompt today was premature.

Personal Style

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Personal Style

I do not like to fall in line
with any style that isn’t mine.
I am the one bent to upend
each cookie-cutter styling trend.
Flaunting current fads is boring.
Predictable sets me to snoring.
The style that I most like to see
reflects one’s personality.
There’s magic in diversity.

The prompt word today was flaunt.

Fashionable

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Everything Old is New Again

To dress passé? A fashion sin,
yet everything old is new again.
So if your dress length’s out of date,
all you have to do is wait.
In twenty years, you’ll be in vogue,
in what last year marked you a rogue.

Who dictates fashion is beyond me,
as are those who wait to see
whether ankle, thigh or knee
is where a garment’s end should be
and whether cowl or boat or vee
is the right neckline for a tee

they tuck into their faded jeans—
now ripped and shredded like dumpster queens.
Following fashion’s every word?
I fear I find it most absurd.
I want the knees left in my jeans,
my butt well-covered, by all means.

What clothes you wear should be your passion,
not merely what’s okayed by fashion.
There should be no laws or rules
regarding clothes or hats or jewels
except what shows us who you are.
Each woman her own runway star.


Living up to its title, this poem is a rewrite of an earlier post. The prompt today was fashionable.

Richly Ragged

Richly Ragged

Youth today want to abolish
all the elegance and polish
that has received such veneration
from their parents’ generation.
Jeans with rips and shirts with holes
seem to be their fashion goals.
What is ironic is the tags.
They spend a fortune for these rags!

 

The prompt today is polish. Image taken from the internet.

Everything Old is New Again

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Everything Old is New Again

To dress passé? A fashion sin,
yet everything old is new again.
So if your dress length’s out of date
all you have to do is wait.
In twenty years, you’ll be in vogue,
in what last year marked you a rogue.

Who dictates fashion is beyond me.
As are those who wait to see
whether ankle, thigh or knee
is where a garment’s end should be
and whether cowl or boat or vee
is the right neckline for the tee

they tuck into their faded jeans—
now ripped and shredded like a dumpster queen’s.

Following fashion’s every word?
I fear I find it most absurd.
I want the knees left in my jeans,
my butt well-covered, by all means.

What clothes you wear should be your passion,
not merely what’s okayed by fashion.
There should be no laws or rules
regarding clothes or hats or jewels
except what shows us who you are.
Each woman her own runway star.

The prompt today is renewal.

With Style

With Style

Style has no age, gender or size.
Its best ingredient? Surprise.
A tilt of  hat or colors  bolder,
T-shirt with suit, scarf over shoulder.
Unpredictable, zany, wild
or understated, classy, mild.
Sophisticated, silly or funny,
style cannot be bought with money.

Mexico has it, and  Paree.
It can be costly, but looking’s free.
These stylistas perk up our world—
hair up in caps or amply curled.
Vampish, zany or high couturier,
Life is made brighter by their display.
If our world lasts only awhile,
we might as well spend it in style!

 

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The prompt word today is “Stylish.”

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Relax, it’s only henna! I get a Mayan tattoo on my lower leg every time I go to the beach. It fulfills all my contradictory impulses.

Change of Mind

Tattooed pierced and branded, or to be marked for life
with patterns carved into the skin with a sterile knife?
I cannot help but tell you that I find it very strange–
this trend to decorate ourselves by means that we can’t change.

When I was in my twenties, I bought a gorgeous hat
of pink and blue with colored plumes that swayed this way and that.
But what if I had had it sewn forever to my head,
so when I desired a wedding veil, I had feathers instead?

What if those chandelier earrings I found so cool in my teens
were implanted so I couldn’t take them off by any means?
So when I trekked across the jungles, weaving through the trees,
those earrings caught upon the vines and brought me to my knees?

My hair would be a helmet, and my eyes would look so queer
if worn like I did at twenty with eyeliner ear to ear.
So I cannot help but think this child with corks stretching her lobes
might regret them in her forties as she dons her judge’s robes.

Or the youngsters with the tongue studs, one day when they are men
might regret it as the shots they drink leak out onto their chin.
I’m so glad those mini skirts I wore—a poor choice even then––
are not still sewn upon my hips now that I am more Zen.

Thank God those darker outlined colors that made our lips less thin
and those psychedelic tie-dyes are not printed in our skin.
For although our taste was laughable, at least we can repent–
for the choices that we made in youth were not permanent.

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And, that hat mentioned in the poem? It really existed and still does, although no, I have not worn it in over 40 years. Here it is, a side view!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Tattoo….You?.” Do you have a tattoo? If so, what’s the story behind your ink? If you don’t have a tattoo, what might you consider getting emblazoned on you skin?

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Fitting In

I can’t remember ever wanting to look like anyone else.  I have always just wanted to be unique. Sure, I had a doctor blouse (remember them in the sixties–prompted by Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey?) and the later refinement of the the doctor blouse, the sissy blouse–merely a doctor blouse with ruffles added?  I also wore pedal pushers, madras and short skirts–all in their day.  But the purpose never was, as I recall, to look like everybody else.  It was because I liked the fashion, but wanted to be unique within that fashion.

In the past thirty years or so I haven’t really even known what the fashion was.  I just saw clothes and bought them because I liked them and they didn’t make me look fat! (Even if I was–ha.) I have friends who come to Mexico and buy the wonderful embroidered blouses, then tell me when they go home they never wear them because they just don’t seem “right” in Wyoming or even California!  This seems so weird to me.  If I like certain clothing, I wear it wherever it is climate appropriate.  Why would anyone want to wear what everyone else is wearing?

The same goes for hairstyles.  I don’t know what is “in.”  I just know when I have a hairstyle that makes me look like how I feel. Certain haircuts make me feel “right” and I am happy for the time it takes for them to grow out and for me to get a new haircut that isn’t right–such as the one I have now. I think perhaps this is why I never quite fit in anywhere until I went to a culture so foreign that I wasn’t expected to fit in and was accepted because I was different.  Somehow, the American culture has never quite evolved to the point where those who are different are accepted.  Perhaps that’s why I have always preferred to live abroad.

(The picture is from my New Years Eve poor taste party several years ago. I’ve staged these in three countries–so much fun.  In addition to dressing as tacky as possible, everyone brings a dish they are secretly embarrassed that they love, in spite of the fact that it isn’t “in style.”  Mac and cheese and homemade Twinkies and hostess cupcakes were three of the dishes.  Can’t remember the rest. If anyone pictured or who was there remembers, please comment!)

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Style Icon.” Describe your personal style, however you’d like to interpret that — your clothing style, your communication style, your hair style, your eating style, anything.

The Yellow Dress

The Prompt: Cause, Meet Effect—You can singlehandedly create a causal relation between two things that are currently unconnected — a word and an emotion, a song and an extreme weather event, wearing a certain color and winning the lottery. What cause would you link to
what effect, and why?

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The Yellow Dress

When she wears it, worlds collide.
Men collect on either side.
Women seek her company.
Children seek to grace her knee.

Potentates, senators, kings
bring her necklaces and rings.
Scholars write her name in books.
Jealous women exchange looks.

There is hardly anything
that nature does not seek to bring.
Winds blow harder, streams divert
when she wears that saffron skirt.

The very heavens note where she went.
Tsunamis curl, volcanoes vent.
Soldiers line up to parade.
Mimes begin their mute charade.

Actors emote better to
this goddess in her sunny hue.
Mourning doves just bill and coo.
Old boyfriends seek her out anew.

Yet as she stands before her glass,
surveying both her front and ass,
her mate says, “Are you wearing that?”
and she surmises she looks too fat.

As she changes into basic black,
the lava cools, the seas hold back.
Her suitors cease their clamoring press.
She does not wear the yellow dress.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/cause-meet-effect/