Clothes, clothes, clothes!

Good noon! 

Patricia has come, we have played the piano and had lunch, and the noontime hour is still not over, so good noon!!

I have been sorting clothes out so I think I'll write about them.  Clothes are items of endless fascination for most women, I guess, and a lot of men too.  The idea of adorning ourselves seems to be part of our hard-wiring for sure.  I saw a documentary about abused chimpanzees living their broken lives out on a rescue island somewhere under the care of some kind people. Somebody gave one of the girl chimps a string of blue beads, and she took one look and put it over her head to wear it around her neck.  Talk about hard-wiring!  Can't get much harder than that!!!

I have been reading about all the projects people are indulging in recently, slanted toward consuming less, owning less, using less, lessening one's footprint on the earth.  One popular plan consists of winnowing one's wardrobe down to a few essential pieces and getting rid of the rest.  Of course, the sane woman will only get rid of it as far as a storage box or two, for she's not going to last long on just four or five garments, my friends... not in a world of crazy excess like ours.

I have been winnowing, myself, and am unable to winnow down to any respectable sized wardrobe at all. I blame part of this on our climate.  It's mid-July, shorts weather, and I am sitting here in shorts freezing my tailfeathers off.  That means that all the lighter jackets that I should have put away in June are coming in handy to keep me warm above when I am frozen below.  Here in the San Diego area, where there are no seasons to speak of, it is impossible to pack away non-seasonal stuff for any length of time at all.  So one keeps it all on hand, the warm with the cool, the summery with the wintry, in case of need.

Let's talk about the perfect summer wardrobe.  I like shorts, tops, pants at my age.  The pants are decent and good looking. The shorts--well, unfairly, their decency depends on how good-looking one's legs are.  Mine are not too horrible for 82 year old legs (not an oxymoron! Stop laughing!)..so I do wear shorts but mostly around house and garden and sometimes to the supermarket. But if your legs are long, slim and tan, there's no better outfit for anywhere in summer than shorts and top.

Colors are important.  The best looking combo is white pants, black top.  Men and women wear this, both, and it looks great on everyone.  Then you can also wear black pants, white top, which also looks okay but doesn't approach white pants, black top.  If the pants are shorts, and sunglasses are applied to the head, you're perfect.

Then, there are the neutrals.  So many wonderful subtle colors appear all the time.  A wonderful shorts/top combo is tan shorts (not chino colored, but a real tan), and top of any one of these: dark slatey gray, dark or medium gray-green, or black.  Really good looking. I have about four tees in gray-green alone. Some are lighter and some are darker, some grayer and some greener.  They are all good.  The dark slatey gray is a kind of blue and a recent discovery as companion to tan shorts.  Looks great!

Forego blue jeans in summer. There are too many other colors and styles to wear.  When you go to church, it's easy to make up a church outfit in any of the colors above. Add a great straw hat and you're good to go.  In the evening, black and black are always good, and you can use some lightweight but large and vulgar beads to carry the color part of it.  At church and in the dressy places you'd go in evening, you can if you must put on p.a.n.t.y.h.o.s.e, but if your legs are at all tan I'd skip 'em.  Nobody likes them and they look peculiar. I have searched and searched for a good leg makeup but have not found it yet.  The natural tan skin look is what you want. After all, it's summer!!

So many words and we have not gotten beyone shorts-pants-tops, and we have not gotten as much into colors as I wanted to both today and yesterday, when I was talking about the subtle colors of Dusty Millers.  I think I'll continue on this theme tomorrow too. YAZZYBEL