Red

On clothes, invisibility, and the dress that knew me first.

Bloomingdale's, 1987. Not on sale.

Kneeling in the inky darkness, I couldn’t see anything. I listened to the murmurs of the priest aimed at a child on the opposite side of another screen. The sound of the door sliding open, jolting me to full attention. Finally, it was my turn.

Dusty light crept in as I began the familiar prayer, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned...” I can’t remember what sin I had conjured to confess that day as I was just a child finding her way in the world.

One word is seared in my brain from that confession though, and it wasn’t from anything I said. Rather, it was the priest calling me “sonny” when he addressed me. I had recently gotten a shag haircut, and with my long, skinny body and brown-framed glasses, I could have easily been mistaken for a boy. Fire rose from deep within and burned on my cheeks. Despite the darkness, I’m sure my shame was visible to the priest and to everyone waiting outside.

How had Father picked up on my secret fear that I might be mistaken for a boy, even without seeing me?

Pretty or keep your ankles warm. I chose warm.

I didn’t like how I looked, that was for sure. Wearing glasses was non-negotiable to walk without bumping into things, and the frames were not cool back then.

I was a tender shoot that had grown too tall for itself. The nuns lined us up like soldiers in size-order. Being the tallest in my classroom meant I was at the end of the line. If it was an odd-numbered line, I was often riding the caboose solo.

The girls wore shapeless polyester box dresses with saddle shoes and knee socks. As ugly as it was, the navy plaid cardboard dress was a great unifier and equalizer among the girls, mandated at no shorter than knee length by the school. Parents didn’t always get that measurement right because we were growing kids. To save time and expense, busy moms made sure the length was on the uber-safe side so not to invoke the ire of the nuns.

The worst, for me, was how my mom hemmed my skirt an inch below my knobby and very hairy knees. Maybe she thought she was doing me a favor, but handing me a razor to shave my legs could have been a solution. Just throwing it out there.

Then, without any warning, girls started sprouting breasts, and their uniforms became 3-D trapezoids. Mine remained resolutely 2-D.

Oh, how I wanted that third dimension.

The nuns had opinions about that hem.

Outside of the uniform, my fashion sense was tragically lost. Nothing in the department store fit me. My sleeves and pants were always too short. I lived a mile from a mall with dozens of shops, but there weren’t many choices for a middle-class beanpole like me.

Sometimes we would take a drive out to Neshaminy Mall where the Sears Roebuck purported to carry tall sizes. The reward for the ride was one pair of pants that touched the top of my shoe, but in a fabric that I didn’t really like. I had to make a choice: look pretty-ish (remember the glasses?) or keep my ankles warm.

As I got into high school, I still had to wear a uniform, but I could finally find jeans that fit for my social life. Teen sizes saved the day. By the time I got to college, I had traded my heavy-rimmed glasses for contact lenses.

The girl who had been mistaken for a boy in the confessional was starting to disappear.

I wore what I could cobble together, and my roommate and I were soon swapping outfits for parties.

We were both middle-class kids at Villanova, and we blended in. It was there that I first noticed how differently some girls moved through the world. I remember a classmate, Jennifer, slowing a convertible alongside me as I walked to class. She leaned out from the passenger seat — perfect coiffed bob, stylish boyfriend at the wheel — and offered me a ride. What impressed me most was her leather gloves. Buttery, beautiful, clearly expensive. They had been chosen, not cobbled together.

I understood in that moment that some girls had been curated their whole lives. I had been making do. I was too embarrassed to get into the car. She wasn’t ashamed to be seen with me, and I’ve never forgotten that.

I was feeling better in my clothing, though. Suddenly I was getting more male attention, something that astonished this ugly duckling. When I got my first job working as a civilian at the Navy, I lived at home and the paychecks kept rolling in. I had car payments and student loans, but I had something else, too: disposable income. I need that extra dough for the wedding invitations which arrived regularly, as that was the season of life I was in.

For my friend Patty’s wedding, I found a dress at Bloomingdale’s and it wasn’t on sale. I tried it on anyway, and I knew it had to be mine, even if I had to hide the price tag from my mother when I got home. Sure, I was paying for it myself, but my mom was ready to pounce if she thought I was indulging myself and living frivolously.

It was a red Adrienne Papell peplum dress with a black suede belt.

God, I loved that dress.

I found the perfect pair of black suede pointy-toe pumps to go with it. That dress transformed me from the inside. The peplum gave me a shape I never knew I had. A row of red buttons ran down the back of the skirt — not small, but deliberate, a little bit sexy.

The red said "Look at me!" in a way that nothing in my wardrobe ever had before.

I felt powerful. I felt strong. I was a goddess.

I wore it to my friend's wedding that fall. I remember standing in the reception hall and feeling, for the first time in my life, that I had arrived somewhere. Not the wedding. Myself.

You might think this was a turning point where I became a fashion icon.

You would be wrong.

Fashion kept going for my throat. Try finding maternity clothes in 90s when you’re almost six feet tall. After walking 15 city blocks from my office to get there, I remember containing my disappointment as my last hope for maternal couture limped away. I was foolish to have pinned high expectations on the only store in downtown Philadelphia, the Pea in the Pod boutique, that carried a wardrobe for professional expectant mothers. Turning slowly in the mirror in a shapeless floral tent, I thought, even now, even as I carry this whole new life inside me, I could not find something that fit and was affordable

My mother and I eventually resorted to sewing some career girl outfits. They were functional. They covered my body. That was enough, I told myself.

Then came the years when I was just happy to have clothes without spit-up on them. Fashion be damned.

My mom, knowing my struggle with a lack of time to find functional (not fun) clothing for the office, brought me a rust-colored, ultra-suede structured jacket back from a trip to Germany. When I tried it on, wind hit my wrists and forearms, and not in a good way.

Wear it anyway, she said.

Of course, she said that. She’d been saying that to me my whole life.

I forced a smile and nodded. Little did she know that jacket would never see the light of day. Something snapped inside me — quietly, finally. I made a pact with myself to never wear something that didn’t fit again. I had spent a lifetime being handed whatever was available, whatever was close enough, whatever would do.

I was done with whatever would do.

I found my way to TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and the end-of-season sales at Bloomingdale’s. I searched out the better brands that gave me the length I needed. But money was still the ceiling, and the accessories that pulled a look together always pushed the cost out of reach.

It wasn’t until I stepped into a high-end consignment shop a few years ago — with time to kill and no particular agenda — that something opened up. Tory Burch. Veronica Beard. Anthropologie. Armani. The girl who once drove to Neshaminy Mall hoping Sears had one pair of pants in her size could now try on things that had been curated, refined, chosen with intention. At prices she could actually afford.

I was in my sixties. Was I too late for my style revolution?

Nope, I was just getting started.

I think about what a feminist Instagram creator, (here’s the link to the reel by hope_peddler) who said recently that bringing mindfulness to the way we decorate ourselves for the world is a political act. That how we compose ourselves is communication.

People will be repelled or drawn in. I believe her.

A woman who spent decades invisible — in clothes that didn’t reach her hands, in uniforms that erased her shape, in a jacket her mother said to wear anyway — has something to say when she finally walks into a room looking exactly like herself.

Curating outfits takes intention and time, and now I indulge myself in them. I think about mixing a plaid with a polka dot, pairing a vintage skirt with a t-shirt and a beaded belt. I compose myself the way a painter approaches a canvas — deliberately, joyfully, with full knowledge of what I’m doing and why.

I was always her. She just needed something red.

---

If this essay resonated with you, I'd love for you to join me on Tuesday, June 23rd at 11am EST for a Substack Live conversation with Shaun Chavis of re:dressing. Shaun is a former cookbook editor, committed secondhand shopper, and a woman deep in her own radical act of reinvention. She's recently relocated to Mexico City, having shed 140 lbs. and almost everything she owned to get there. She writes about fashion, identity, and dressing yourself intentionally at every age and size with humor, practicality, and zero apology. We're going to talk about clothes, reclamation, and what it means to finally show up looking exactly like yourself. I have a feeling it's going to be a conversation your closet needs to hear.