Dedicated Follower of Fashion
Anyone who knows me would never call me fashionable, at all.
I’m so bad that I once had a friend from work, Tina (who is fashionable), make me a list of brands and styles to buy when I went shopping for new work clothes.
She was adamant about what I should buy, and what I should not buy.
(No pleats!)
My sense of fashion is so bad, I once suggested there should be Garanimals for adults, so my shirts and pants would match each morning when I went to work.
My oldest (Amanda) and youngest (Danny) would buy all their clothes at Old Navy or thrift stores and would be very happy with their decision.
My son Alexander will order three pairs of shoes from Zappos, try them on, then return the two not selected. His hair is perfect (Ah-ooh, Werewolves of London), and he is the poster child of fashion.
Not sure where that came from with him.
Then again, maybe I do (they say fashion skips a generation).
My mother graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) in the late 1940s. She was part of the first graduation class of the institution.
After she graduated, she was offered a job with a designer in France, but she declined because she wanted kids, so she never accepted.
(I know, kids ruin everything)
If she had accepted that position in France, two things might have changed:
I wouldn’t be here to tell you this story.
Or, if I were, what happened in first grade might have been different.
So what happened to me?
My mother.
Or at least, my mother’s sense of fashion.
There was an upside to having a mother with talent and a great sense of fashion.
In our brownstone in Brooklyn, at the end of the second-floor hallway, was a small sewing room, slightly bigger than a closet.
In the middle of that small space was a foot-pedal-powered black Singer sewing machine. Around that machine were bolts of different colored cloth.
Out of that room emerged the best Halloween costumes and beautiful handmade clothes for any and all special occasions and holidays.
So if there is an upside to having a mother with a great fashion sense, there had to be a downside.
And that downside was me.
Or at least how my mother dressed me up for school.
In grade school, in Brooklyn, my school, P.S. 204, was just a few blocks away.
There were no school buses, so we walked to school.
And I don’t mean my brother, my sister, and me.
I mean every grade-school kid in a four-block radius walked to school.
In a single file, both sides of the street, toward the school.
Like a little child army marching off to war. All wearing the same little uniform.
Well, all except for me, thanks to my mother.
My uniform?
Black and white saddle shoes.
Black knee-high socks.
Shorts and a button-down shirt.
A camel-haired coat.
And the last piece of this ensemble, the last piece that made me wish my mother had gone to France and gotten this out of her system.
The last piece was a red French beret.
A little kid should be dressed for school, and not a Vogue photo shoot.
The beret came off as soon as possible, but there was nothing I could do about the rest of my outfit.
This particular dress code continued until we moved to Old Bridge, New Jersey, before I started third grade.
I think if I showed up in Old Bridge wearing a beret, I never would have made it to fourth grade.
From that point on, I’ve never been complimented on my wardrobe. As I grew older, the few times I did step out of my fashion safe zone (a salmon-colored tie at work, shocking), I was right back on that Brooklyn sidewalk.
It just wasn’t me.
I’ll always be more Old Navy than Abercrombie.
Sorry, Mom.
Note: The picture for this post is my mother Rose DeLuise nee Bancale in a display case at the Fashion Institute of Technology with the caption: ‘Prize-winning design in beige, green & brown by student Rose Bancale at June 4, 1946 show’
