Saturday, April 05, 2008

The wardrobe conundrum

This post is not about Lil' General, it's about his old fat mommy. I've spent a good part of the past month every evening making trips to various tailors in the neighborhood in a desperate attempt to find someone who can stitch a piece of cloth that fits me without showing the fat at the wrong places. This cannot be blamed on motherhood in entirety, it wouldn't be fair. For years, I've never been satisfied with my wardrobe, never ever. There was always something wrong - I either wore the wrong fabric, the cuts weren't right or it was a size too big; I was infamously known to wear clothes that I fit in or rather that loosely hung over me showing no taste or even the slightest tinge of what was in fashion wearing polyester in the scorching heat and cotton when it was freezing cold - seriously, who does that? To make matters worse was the oily plaited hair - you get the image?

It's all changing now! Turning thirty has given me a sense for dressing. My wardrobe is filled with clothes and yet when I've to step out of the house, it takes a good 10 minute staring at the row of clothes in the wardrobe blankly not able to decide on one happily; so I finally take the easy route and don the pair of overused faded jeans hanging by the door and the first cotton kurta I can lay my hands on. But that's beginning to bother me now. Lil' General is well dressed every time he steps out - I don't want to be mistaken for his nanny so in an attempt to keep up my mommy image I'm slowly discarding clothes that I wouldn't ever wear making space for clothes that I would cheerfully wear. still, discarding all of them is a long way. Office clothes, casual wear, woolens, salwars - they are just eating up my space serving no purpose. To get things in perspective I realized most of the clothes have been gifted either by my parents or in-laws with just a couple of them being my choice and that's where the problem began. I've earnestly requested both of them not to get me any more.

I'm no where close to my pre-pregnancy weight. But most of my pre-pregnancy clothes fit amazingly well. Right now, I have a pair of cargos and a pair of jeans that seem to work well for all occasions. Whenever I'm on a shopping trip and eye a dressy salwar, I scratch my head to think of an occasion when I would get to wear them. Seriously - not to the grocer's or not to the park, then when? And, this is exactly how I've been putting off buying new clothes. I'm doing with getting some unstitched ones stitched to my taste for now. Motherhood makes your choices tough. You don't want to try hard to look younger than your age or wear ones that are inappropriate like a tight tee. I've seen women my age who are unmarried or married with no kid looks graceful even in those tight tees. All of that changes with a baby. See, these are things one doesn't tell you. Anyway, I hope the wardrobe conundrum will be soon over and it will be good-bye to my 5 year old jeans.

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