All About My Mother

It's a little early for a Mother's Day post, but I'm a-gonna do it anyway. Why? Because I'm a rule breaker. And also because my mom is a professor, and with the end of term, she's had lots of students tell her how she's influenced their lives, and helped them learn accounting (obviously, she teaches accounting, which totally doesn't jive if you know me and how sort of loopy that I am). So, because this is a fashion blog, I'm going to recount how she's influenced my life with fashion. It's all because she's awesome and rocks the house, but also because I keep hearing ads on the radio about sending your mom flowers for Mother's Day, and well, what's better than flowers? Being posted about in a third-rate blog that no one will ever read! Totally! It's the gift that keeps on giving!

So without further adieu, I give you:

My Mom Made Me Into A Fashionista, Despite Rocking the Acid Wash More than A Few Times

The first memory I have of my mother fashion-wise, is of the smell of perm-juice. Hey, it was the 80's--everyone had a perm, and my mom was no exception. Her hair was so big that it had its own force field. But she was a single mom, and a hot one at that. She had this black and white striped button front shirt that was all kind of blousy, and she would tuck it into a pair of pleated khaki pants and snap a red braided belt over the top. I loved that belt--if I think about it, I can still remember how totally awesome the 2 lbs of braided polyester felt in my hand, and how I wanted to wear it over my own jean/tunic ensemble that I imagined I would wear when I finally got to meet the cast of the Cosby Show. Mom was HOT, and with this very outfit probably spawned the love affair I have with black, white and red now. That and my obsession with bad 80's music and the song Disco Duck. Yeah. Blaming all that on her.

My mom rocked my own style because she let me do whatever I wanted fashion-wise. When I went through a phase of matching everything to my days of the week hair ribbons which she had expertly woven through my hair, she was there with outfits that matched down to the socks. When I decided to wear Mary Janes and a magenta hat with a purple flower EVERYDAY, thus making myself look like the love child of Baby Jane and The Golden Girl's Blanche DuBois, she was right there to say that I looked lovely.

This continued through mid calf length overalls that I thought were SUPER FLATTERING, through huge sweatshirts with varied color turtlenecks, and into the period when I fancied myself some sort of grunge goddess. That's when it ended. I remember her taking me aside one day, and saying exactly this: "You are currently wearing a red polyester shirt, a pair of khaki colored pants that are huge, orange socks, and your fingernails are painted green. You. Are. A....mess. You need to get it together." The look in her eye ate through my veneer of touch chick rebellion, and I endeavored to get it together. Well, sort of. If you call a profusion of black turtlenecks and JNCO jeans "together", and well, I do, because this blog is entitled "The Cult of the Black Sweater" so obviously I'm still all about the turtlenecks.

But the number one reason that my mom is awesome? She doesn't wear Mom jeans. I think she did for a short period during the early 90's, and also (regrettably) rocked the evil, mulletted brother of the mom jeans: the mom shorts, which I believe she got on sale at Goody's and wore with a sherbet colored striped polo. But besides that short, dark period in all our lives, Mom sports mid-rise normal pants. And it was so nice to be able to visit colleges, and not have the tour guide gaze sadly at my mom's gut before deciding that I would never be cool enough to attend that school.

So thanks Mom, for not wearing Mom jeans, and for being awesome. Thanks for giving me a great sense of style, and backing me up through the newsboy hats and the ball gown skirts and the bike shorts. And Mom, just know that anytime I do anything bad, I can still hear your angry voice, calling out from the bathroom where you were layering on your 47th layer of Opium lotion, saying:

"You'll deal with it, or we'll start getting all of your clothes from the J.C. Penney catalog!"

And I of course deal with it, because, to this day, I'm scared to my very core of that prospect.