new dimensions in street style and workwear

 Back in the day, a neighbor bragged to me that a very very very well-known interior designer was going to re-do his living room and dining room. I was appropriately impressed, my living room still held a toy box and a doggie blanket. So a month or so later, I  followed up with him, hoping to poach an idea or two. He and his wife had dismissed the vvvwk designer because he had not made any creative suggestions or proposed any original work. All the poor man had come up with was tables, chairs, couches.

A recent email directed me to a website where I was advised that the best thing to wear to work with pants is a shirt of some kind.

I'm not in the demographic that goes to work, or indeed anywhere, topless, so I dismissed this advice as old news.

This morning an email from an unrelated source suggested I wear a shirt and possibly a sweater or jacket with jeans.

Really?

In most respects other than fashion I believe I qualify as an adult. In fact, family pictures indicate that the last time I was simultaneously vertical and topless, I was 2 years old and building a sand castle. Something about getting Vitamin D from the sun, I believe, although in the bad old days many topics, including health, were simply not discussed with toddlers.

In fashion, I'm still treated like a child, sometimes even to the point of being made to feel that I'm being offered free time with Nana's dress-up box.

So now that I'm a grownup lady and take my Vitamin D in capsules like a big girl, and remember to bring an extra layer so I won't give myself a whiplash injury from shivering in air conditioned environments, I conclude that these emails and a host of others bearing similar messages, constitute an example of demographic list-building gone hopelessly wrong.

Hence the question: who is their proper target?

A five-year-old with her own clothing allowance?

Escapees from cults who have never worn clothing made in this century?

Recently released parolees?

Or visitors from another galaxy who have mistaken an old issue of Playboy for an up-to-date guidebook?

I'm guessing our former neighbors were expecting proposals like putting a lap pool in the living room, hanging hammocks in the kitchen, and mounting a big screen television in the downstairs powder room.

When those principles are applied to fashion, we are shown silk shorts with a shearling jacket for winter, or leather shorts, high-top sneakers, and a bra top for summer. Now I don’t think fashion choices should be limited to the practical and the synthetic. If I did, I’d shop at the nearest factory outlet of a Pentagon contractor. I appreciate variety, I even appreciate imagination. I appreciate quality and workmanship. But even my Very Little Brain doesn’t like having its intelligence insulted.