Accessorize? That I cannot do...

Upon reading my Vox neighbor's post about Mommy fashion versus high fashion, something rather interesting dawned on me:

I really could care less about fashion.

It's not to say I don't recognize fashion. After all, when you grow up in the shadow of my sister, you can't help but pick up on a few things. But labels and designer names don't matter to me any more than tabloid news or the latest movie releases. In other words, if it doesn't fall into my general radar of things that concern me, I couldn't care less. And yet, there are those moments every day when I look at some of the women with whom I work and think, "God, I wish I could pull that off."

My dress code at work is very simple: Cover your body - but don't wear shorts or flip flops. Now, when that's your only limitation (and an unenforced limitation at that - I can't tell you how often I wore flip flops while I was pregnant), you tend to see how people can express themselves through their clothing. As I've often said of my employer and my coworkers, we're all encouraged to march to the beat of our own drum. It just so happens that our drums are in sync with each others'.

One of my coworkers, T,  has the amazing ability to make everything she wears look glamorous. Seriously. She can take a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and a pair of black boots and make it look, well, stunning. I told her in front of her cubicle mate that she's the only person I know who could literally wear a burlap sack and look great. Her cube mate said, "Oh, yeah! It just needs a wide hemp belt, maybe some funky wedge sandals... You would totally pull it off." Even more astounding to me is that T confessed that she never plans out her attire - she just grabs whatever catches her eye that morning, then accessorizes.

So the trick to the great looks I admire, I've learned, lies not in one's wardrobe, but in one's accessories. And, to paraphrase Heather MacNamara, I can't accessorize for shit.