Blog

Sep 01, 2023

In Style

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she looks at what’s coming in

There comes a time in every woman's life when she looks at what's coming in style that year and says, "To hell with it."

Which means she has reached a certain age. She leaves her hemlines wherever they already are, puts on stretch pants tight or baggy, just so they feel good. And she wears whatever hairdo she now has for the rest of her life, sprayed up like a Carnival float on top her head, or cut real short, or maybe in some kind of a bun, but not no cutesy "messy bun" neither. Nope. She is DONE.

All them let's-make-our-faces-look-sweaty or cut-holes-in-our-pants styles wave past her gently as a breeze. She powders her nose and keeps her blue jeans intact, unless they rip at the seam when she bends over.

If bell bottoms are in her closet when she quits, she’ll wear her bell bottoms forever. Or long skirts. Or short skirts. Or plaid. Or the color mauve.

My own mamere, way after most ladies stopped wearing hats, or even bothering with them little round lace veils they used to bobby pin on their heads when they went to church, she still used to slap on a little round red hat with a net veil on top and a hat pin. And when she did that, it meant she was going somewhere important, like D.H. Holmes's.

Of course, Holmes's and church hats were long gone before my-mother-in-law Ms. Larda called it quits.

It was in the ‘90s, I think, when everybody was wearing long skirts and droopy tops, and either clogs or fancy Crocs. And she had a good black lace dress she wore for weddings and funerals and probably planned to be buried in.

She said that was all she needed.

Until the day she ran out in a hurry to babysit her daughter Gloriosa's kids for half-a-day and happened to slam her closet door on the way out.

Unfortunately, her chihuahua, Chopsley, and her cat, Charmer, were both in that closet investigating a mouse sighting. Very unfortunate.

A LOT of drama went on in that closet while she was gone, and when she opened it again that night, three hysterical animals rushed out (somehow the mouse had survived) and everything in the closet was shredded or had been used as a emergency bathroom. Also, hairballs had been coughed up.

Most of her clothes were untouchable after that. Unsmellable. She put on a COVID mask, wrenched out the clothes-hanging bar and tilted it into the outside garbage can.

But even with the clothes gone, the closet itself smelled like a portable potty during Carnival season. Worse even.

She had to wash down the walls in there, and then spray them with about five bottles of Febreze.

But now she is going to have to replace her wardrobe, such as it was.

She can't find nothing she likes at regular stores, because they are unfortunately selling fashionable stuff, which don't look comfortable.

Lucky for her, Gloriosa has been feeling guilty about this whole thing.

So, when Anna Skute, who lives two doors down from Gloriosa, drops over unexpectedly dead, Gloriosa knows just what to do. Anna is about the same size and shape as Ms. Larda. So Gloriosa kindly offers to take care of getting rid of her wardrobe, which the family is glad of, since THEY don't want no 30-year-old stretch pants. She washes everything and brings it to Ms. Larda.

Would you believe, Ms. Larda KNEW this lady. Gloriosa had thought she was safe, because Anna lived Uptown and Larda been in Chalmette most her life, but you know how it is around New Orleans. It's like a web. Everybody is connected one way or the other.

It turns out them two competed in a bridge tournament a long time ago. Anna's side won, and Ms. Larda had some reason to believe she had cheated. She was so mad, she gave up bridge and took up sewing.

Gloriosa thought she would be horrified about the clothes. She wasn't. She said, "what goes around comes around," and she strutted off in her fine new second-hand clothes.

There's a moral to this, but I can't figure it out.

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