My daughter; my style icon

This is a picture of my 20 year old daughter. She attends art college in the East. So she has a head start on the clever creative arty thing that escapes me. Anyway, this kid shops almost exclusively in second hand shops, the sale racks and (ahem) my closet. In fact, that's my hand me down purple sweater (Marks and Spencer circa 1985) she is wearing in this picture. Here's the thing with that aspect: I get some clothes that look meh on me, I hand them to her, she put them on and transforms them into something hip and stylish and cool. And I immediately want whatever it was back. Anyway she is fearless in her mode of dress. She puts odd combos together and then wears them proudly, without a hint of self doubt. In fact I don't think she owns a long black cardigan. Anyway I wish I could pull this off but...mutton dressed as lamb. The time for that is past for me, but how I enjoy her happy, celebratory style of dress.
And check out that purse! Its slung around her waist.

Mutton dressed as lamb

The problem is that for most of my life I was lamb. Now I find myself as mutton and I have no experience dressing mutton.

The chronic problem of getting older and trying to look modern and decorous without dressing too young or too frumpy. The line is so fine that I'm not sure it exists. I'm having a hard time finding a roll model: my mom dresses ADB from Walmart, Diane Keaton is afraid of her body and Vivienne Westwood is insane. Hilary Clinton is the poster child for Frump. Vera Wang has the mutton/lamb dichotomy. Helen Mirren? No data. Not many older lady role models out there. Susan Sarandon? Her best accessory is a younger man. I can't afford one of those.

Let me know if you come up with a good role model for a middle aged woman who dresses well. I'm dying to know.

Too many purple shirts?

Won't have a lot of points in April, because I took my boy on a trip up to Squaw Valley for some spring skiing. Wore puffy polyester waterproof garb all week.  The last week of April I will be at a conference: appropriate attire necessary which is a free pass for me to wear my favorite suit a couple of times.
So today is sunny and nice here in the California Bay Area. I added 11 new shirts to the database. And yes, there are even more! I just added at random and of interest, I own a lot of purple shirts. I look like Riley Sheahan maybe? But maybe without all the underage drinking. No officers, I do not know how I ended up in this purple TeleTubby outfit.
Maybe I have all the purple shirts because of the complement I received as a postdoc from my sweet friend Sarah: "You look good in that color...for a straight woman". Yeah that's probably it. Not many notable complements in my life so that one stands out. I think I'll go dig out more purple shirts.

Christmas hipster

OK I lived in Portland and the Greater Portland Area for years while growing up and attending college. Reed College. It must have been satirized on that awful sarcastic TV show about Portland. Anyway, I guess all this gives me some sort of latter day hipster cred. I certainly hope so because today I am wearing a red sweater and green skinny cargo pants. This says "christmas" to me and I tried to tone down the merry merry effect in a number of unconvincing ways. Therefore, I decided that I am dressed as an elf in an ironic way. So being an ironic Christmas elf leads me full circle to Hipster Christmas.
The couple who lives next door to us are very nice young people. They have a combined age of, oh, 43. They bought that house from my ex-husband (the world get smaller every day) for just under 2 million American dollars a few years ago. I imagine that they both work for Google but I have no data to support that. One of their Prius' has a bumper sticker that say "my other car is Larry David's Prius". OK so you know what I'm talking about. These baby millionaires never come out of the house. They have not hung curtains in their 2 million dollar palace so on occassion when I jog by I see that they are living in the front room knee deep in hoodies scattered throught the room, hanging from the banister, etc etc. These beloved baby hipster millionaires only just this month took their fully decorated phony (how ironic!) Christmas tree down. March! Yes, March! Fully decorated with tasteful blue and silver ornaments. How ironic is that! Ha ha we will show the neighbors how square it is to take your Christmas tree down by leaving ours up until March. Because we are so much more hip than you are. Wading through ankle deep socks and hoodies. With our pet bird. That none of us has actually seen.
Alternatively, the raging old crone on their front yard, pointing at their window and gesticulating madly could have been the spark that cause the tree to go away.
 "Honey, do we still have our Christmas tree up in the next room?"
"I dunno I haven't been in that room since I unwrapped my beta-test version of Google Glasses under the tree on the 26th of December. Why do you ask? And where is my Philz hoodie?"
"There is a really old woman on the lawn and she has a shotgun. Should I take the tree down?"
Anyway.
Clothing choices getting limited. Need to dig out more shirts. Must avoid unintentional bloodshed of local hipsters.