What to wear when you just feel different.There are some days when I wake up,think about what to wear and really long to put on something really different. It happens a lot on Fridays which is partly why I started designing Slouchy Friday dresses, but it also happens at the weekend. In fact, Slouchy Fridays are an answer to what to wear at the end of a week when you are tired but still have one more working day to wring out of the week, but you can’t or shouldn’t turn up at the office in your pyjamas.
What is a zany dress?
The zany dress idea is more of a feeling of wanting to wear something fun, something to mark a transition in the brain, maybe more than in our circumstances, where we say, “Let’s have some fun”, “Let’s be a family”, “Let’s be a couple”, “Let’s see what I can choose to do”. It’s the feeling of thinking, ‘Life is made for living’ and catching a glimpse, a scent, of how life can be, in fact how life is, but how we sometimes choose to ignore how amazing life is in favour of getting things done or ticking everything off our todo list. It’s translating those feelings of this is how I feel into a concrete decision of what to wear.
The zany dress is an antidote to the humdrum of dull, tedious and sometimes stressful routine. Routine is great and lives run better, or at least more efficiently with it. Sometimes, though, when we pop our heads out of the manhole and remember that our lives aren’t built to conform to routine, but that routine should help drive our lives I think we experience some form of dissatisfaction. We’ve finally had enough of that carpet and rip it up over a weekend, we take a sicky and allow our children to do the same, we have our hair cut or coloured quite dramatically.
Change of pace, change of routine, change of dress
Quite often this feeling, of wanting to take a different path than the road I have travelled all week, happens to me on a Friday or a Saturday morning. I wake up and just don’t want to wear black or jeans, or a shift dress, or anything that I’ve worn all week. When I think of what to wear I find myself wanting out of the ordinary fabrics, sumptuous silks, velvets. When I see young girls in tulle skirts, jumpers and wellies I know exactly how they feel and want to do the same. I think as adults we need this fun in our lives, this easy form of self expression.
Sometimes I accidentally go the other way: I want to wear something different but don’t know what to wear, so I default to comfortable clothes, clothes that are like comfort blankets: jogging outfits with no intention of going for a jog, an old, slightly marked, fraying at the wrists zip up top, leggings, trainers. Sometimes I do this because I’m rejecting routine, but don’t have anything prepared to wear and I think I’m really missing an opportunity. And if I’m missing an opportunity then you may be too.
What shall we do? Helpful tips for what to wear on a zany dress day
It’s very simple, find, buy or allocate one outfit to be your zany dress go to outfit. Top tips for deciding what it should be:
- It could be something already in your wardrobe that you don’t wear daily but love. Probably it should be something easy to wear ie not something that you need to feel particularly on top of your game/5lbs lighter to feel good in.
- It is probably in a colour that you love or that you would love to wear but generally don’t
- It could be dressed up with some fun costume jewellery (or real jewellery for that matter but the more fun and carefree the better).
- It need to have shoes/boots/sandals that go with the outfit or you won’t wear it.
- It needs to make you smile, either a real smile or an inner smile
- you should feel comfortable. There’s no point in wearing it if you feel so self conscious it ruins your day.
An example of what my zany dress will look like
To help you create your own, and decide what to wear, maybe it would help if I told you what my zany dress is going to look like. At the moment the plan is for it to be a gold shift dress with some embellishment, probably sequins, that I will wear with dark tights and an oversized necklace.
Ok, over to you, what’s your zany dress like, or going to be like and when are you planning on wearing it?
Have a great day.
Sarah
