Style In The Days Of Doom And Gloom

When life gives you lemons, wear your clothes. (None pictured.)

I keep hearing from my fellow Finns that August is a summer month. It’s not a statement, but a desperate plea to allow the season of light to continue just a little bit longer. The sun sets at 9.30 PM, children are back at school, the fields glow in a golden tone of impending harvest, and there’s a slight chill in the air at night, even after a warm, sunny day. Summers in Finland are short and sweet. They always go too fast. 

I haven’t had the greatest of summers. My vintage shop is struggling and I haven’t been able to take any time off. I have felt tired and stressed most days, envious of carefree people who soak up the sun and sip cocktails on the beach. No amount of meditation has been sufficient. I already made the decision to quit the shop after the summer, but I find myself backtracking now, not knowing what to do with myself or my so-called career. I can only hope that eventually some kind of clarity will emerge. If the shop has to go, so be it. Something else will come along.

Because of work concerns I’ve been on edge. I get angry at people who wear too much perfume on the bus and I have zero patience with people who try to haggle at my shop. What is it that makes people think that small businesses can afford to sell their products cheaper? You don’t haggle at Target or Dior, so why would you ask your local vintage shop for discounts? The latter is probably fighting for its existence and every cent matters. While I’m on the topic, please don’t use your local vintage shop’s expertise in brands and fit, and then take your phone out and look for the clothes you’ve just tried on for a cheaper price online. That’s rude. Have the decency to go home to do your online search.

Last Saturday an insolent woman told me that a pair of rare 1970s Nokia brocade shoes (yes, it’s the same Nokia that makes mobile phones) was horribly expensive at 49 euros. I couldn’t help myself and pointed out to her that she could go to Zara and get a pair of shoes there for the same price and enjoy those shoes for two weeks before they fall apart. I know that I shouldn’t have said that, but she bought the shoes. My sharp and unprofessional response to the haggler gave me pause. I never want to be snarky or rude, but sometimes it’s tough to catch oneself before one begins to spiral, and it’s a lot tougher to stop once you’ve reached terminal velocity.

After my friend Rachel of

Hey Mrs. Solomon on Style

mentioned me in two of her recent newsletters (here and here), I read my own quotes and read them again, and recognized that I had perhaps been spiraling for some time, allowing negativity and performance in where hope and peace of mind should reside. Some of my newsletters about personal style discourse and shopping have been a little harsh this summer. I’ve been writing them from a claustrophobic, anxious place. I still stand behind their overall message, but I see now that I haven’t made much space for ease, for myself or others. I guess that’s what happens when one struggles, but I never want to make my readers feel bad about the way they live their lives. I don’t want to feel bad about the way I live mine either, but I always go there with such proficiency, and that’s on me. No wonder I’ve had a hard time finding a way out of my work situation and into something new. Very few things bloom in darkness, except, as it turns out, some peculiar flowers and my personal style.

This has been a summer without outfit pictures. I haven’t actually paid much attention to what I’ve worn since I stopped taking pictures in the spring. I don’t recall having great or bad outfit days. I don’t remember having outfit days at all, and it has felt liberating. I’ve just been wearing my clothes. Some weeks I’ve planned what to wear beforehand, but mostly I’ve been winging it without any problems. I wear what I feel like wearing and what makes sense for the weather. On the handful of days when I haven’t quite felt like myself in my clothes, I’ve just moved on. 

I keep wondering if recording our looks taps into the nit-picking perfectionist that resides inside a lot of women when it comes to our looks. We overanalyze and construct feelings about the way we look in pictures, but perhaps those feelings aren’t real at all, but imagined. Maybe if we stopped thinking, recording and analyzing, and just wore our clothes, we’d feel a whole lot better about them and about ourselves. Before anyone points it out, I am painfully aware of being an overthinker, and for an overthinker to say that we should all think less is like a shopaholic telling others to shop less… hey, hang on a minute… hey!!! The irony is most certainly not lost on me.

Instead of paying attention to my own outfits, I’ve been admiring the summer clothes that older ladies wear in Helsinki. On Thursday on my way to work I saw a lady, probably in her 80s, wearing a light, breezy black and white polka-dot blouse with a beige cotton poplin midi-skirt and low heeled pumps, her gray hair tied into a low ponytail with a black velvet bow. She looked wonderfully elegant. Another stunning woman of a similar age wore a long, flowy blue-toned Indian cotton floral and paisley print dress with canvas flats and a sharp short gray haircut. It was a simple look, but she stood out in the sea of other people wearing yoga pants, oversized t-shirts and pool slides.

I can’t pinpoint to having worn particular looks this summer, but I know that I’ve worn my two straw hats almost daily. I had a haircut in early June that didn’t work so great (I overestimated the time and effort I was willing to put into doing my hair every morning, which is about 30 seconds), so I ended up covering my head a lot. I’m so used to wearing a hat now that I feel a little naked without one. I’m hoping to buy a warm vintage wool hat for the fall and winter. I imagine wearing it with a scarf tied underneath. I wish I still had my step-grandfather’s old wool hat I sometimes wore when I was a teenager. It was probably from the 1950s and it was a beautiful shade of greenish brown. I don’t know what happened to that hat. Maybe I will find a similar one somewhere. 

I had my unfortunate haircut fixed this week. As my hairdresser gave me back my usual pixie cut, she noted that my hair is going gray fast. I’ve seen the occasional white hairs on my hairline for the past two years or so, but as my chopped locks fell onto the salon cape, I was a little startled. The change has been quick. I’ve identified as a short-haired woman for years now, but I’m tempted to grow my hair long now that it’s going gray. My husband mused that I’d look like one of the “hot Lord of The Rings elves”. I don’t know about that, but I appreciate his support.

August is a summer month, but I saw a guy wearing a beige wool overcoat the other day. I was sweating in a linen shirt and a silk skirt, and there he was, looking like it might snow any second. We’re not there yet and I don’t intend to contemplate my fall style anytime soon, except for that wool hat. I’m on the lookout for a wool hat, long elven hair, and clarity.

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