This is me. From the waist down.
Most days you will find me in a pair of jeans with dirt smears down the sides, and boots fit for a farmer. My idea of dressing up is a t-shirt made from something other than t-shirt material. You know exactly what I mean.
I'm not a tomboy, I'm not shy or self conscious of my body at all. I own dresses, I own skirts, I even own some pretty killer heels. I used to dress up all the time, in fact one of my husbands favorite stories is about "the red skirt." It goes like this:
"Remember that red skirt? That red skirt is what got me into this mess."
So, I'm not new to this, to dressing up, to being more feminine. I really actually like it. I know exactly how a dress can make a girl feel. Pretty, beautiful, sexy, feminine, fun. A Dress is a special thing to a woman. It can be a very powerful thing. It can change a mood, create a memory. It's romantic. It can make your night. We dance in a dress, we kiss, we might fall in love in a dress. We look at our dresses and remember beautiful moments.
But somewhere a long the way, I just lost the love and lost my confidence and got really, really....really comfortable in a pair of levis and some converse hi tops. I stopped feeling like I could do anything in a dress, like a dress was debilitating. I embraced the jeans. I would slip into my hip skinnies and not brush my hair, believing that I was emulating this look:
Which I'm not. At all.
So I got this idea to sort of jump start my sense of style, a kind of firestarter that would perhaps lead me into a wider, prettier and less dirty selection of clothes. I would wear a dress a day, for thirty days. No jeans, no tights, no pants of any kind. Perhaps I might then remember what it was like to wear a dress and feel feminine and want to continue feeling that way after the 30 days were over. Perhaps it would inspire me to get out of the blacks and the greys and look towards other colors on the wheel. Perhaps it would be the only way I would stop wearing the following footwear every single day.
Come on. All three are permanently muddy.
So 30 Dresses was born and already I was screwed because I simply don't have thirty dresses. I have three. Well, four maybe that are daytime appropriate and the rest are just a little too short and a little too sparkly for the playground. So I asked my friends to help me out.
Now the best part about asking my friends is this. I have a very widely different group of friends, style-speaking... who all have a very strong sense of (their own) style. And they all have an opinion on just what I ought to be wearing. So as the dresses came in, so did my breath... almost every dress is something I would have never, ever picked for myself. They are all very lovely dresses, some of them vintage, some of them casual, some of them dressy... in fact every dress is amazing. I just wouldn't have worn them. Too colorful, too bouncy, to frilly and frocky. I like a good utilitarian dress and I certainly don't wear red.
So what I asked for is exactly what I need. I have no other choice but to wear these dresses and experience how I'm going to feel in them. Some of them I might like. Some of them I probably won't at all. But the point of it all is to experience something outside of the norm. To try something new, or get back something I've lost. The confidence in a dress.
Or to at least start wearing the rest of the shoes in my closet.
So let's lay it out here.
Each morning I can only choose from the 30 dresses that I have acquired for the next 30 days, in hopes that I will un-stick myself from the farmer girl rut I have put myself in. In hopes that I may see that color is not something to be afraid of. In hopes that I will rid myself once and for all of the fear of anything without two legs and pockets.
I will blog about my dress of the day. I will take photos. I will let you know exactly how stoked I am to wake up on a rainy May morning to take my daughter to school and to force myself into pretty leggings, petite shoes and a frilly frock. I may later in the day retract any cursing, and replace it with the thoughts I have after morning coffee regarding the dress I thought I'd never like.
At the end of the 30 days I'm going to recap my feelings and fears towards the pretty dresses, and tell you what I've learned from this ridiculous predicament I've put myself into by openly brainstorming ideas with my husband who is, by the way absolutely STOKED on the next 30 days.
Wish me luck!
