I Don't Read It For The Articles

I might just be the least fashionable person ever.

Really.

I used to be more experimental in my sartorial choices. But then there was an unfortunate incident in which some mean kids hounded me into an untenable position under some monkey bars in the playground, at church, because I'd had the audacity to wear Bermuda shorts printed with frogs to a youth group meeting. That also pretty much ended any associations I ever wanted to have with organized religion by the age of ten.

And there was my misguided obsession with sequins and rhinestones in seventh grade.

Then there was the flirtation with grunge wear in college.

And the feather boa phase in my early twenties.

Somewhere along the line I developed the philosophy that if I couldn't wear jeans and a black t-shirt to a given location, it was probably not a location where I needed to be. I make some concessions for work and for the weather, but this is where I've settled. And I'm comfortable with that.

But I still love fashion magazines. Always have. In middle school-- despite the frog shorts incident, or maybe because of it-- I used to get positively giddy at the end of summer when the thick September issues of the teen-girl magazines arrived to showcase back-to-school wear. I'd pore over pages of plaid skirts and tweedy jackets accented with lace scarves and chunky vintage jewelry, because what I really wanted to be when I grew up was Molly Ringwald.

I don't want to be Molly Ringwald now, though maybe there's some kind of holdover in my hair dye. But I still love the magazines. I'm not talking about magazines like Cosmo, which seem to exist to sell women clear heels and lube. I'm talking about the magazines that exist to sell me an $800 handbag and matching shoes.

Not that I ever bought a $800 handbag.

Not retail, anyway. That would be nuts.

September is still the big issue of the year for these glorified catalogs. And I love to look at them and think about what life might be like if I were the kind of person who would or could get away with buying and wearing a $5000 seguined cocktail dress in my daily life.

But I don't get a lot of what I see anymore.

For instance, I saw an ad for Justin Bieber's new perfume. He's not marketing men's cologne. He's marketing perfume. And it comes in a bottle with a big carved plastic flower on top. And I've seen Georgia O'Keefe paintings that were less suggestive than this flower. And I'm wondering if this observation will result in this post appearing first in the results on the off chance someone anywhere in the world ever Googles "Justin Bieber and Georgia O'Keefe." And now I'm wondering what kind of person would enter that search string-- if you are that person, let me say welcome and feel free to drop me a note.

I'd link to the website here, because you know there is one, but I don't want to generate any more traffic for this travesty than absolutely necessary.

Then I'm looking at this spread of some art director's favorite things, and this spread includes a pair of lacy underpants priced at $90. I know it might seem incongruous for someone who looks at these magazines to fantasize about $5000 cocktail dresses and ridiculous boots to say this, but $90 for underpants? Let me say it again. $90? For underpants?

I guess if you actually did drop five grand on a dress you probably wouldn't put Hanes that come three to a pack at Target under said dress, but $90 for underpants seems excessive. For that kind of money, these underpants had better be able to serve other functions. They better be able to change my furnace filters and do my taxes.

And this is why I might be called many things, but high-maintenance probably won't be one of them.