Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s the time of year in New England when oak leaves sound like rain as they drop upon the metal roof here at Hermit Hollow. So much so that when actual rain does fall in the night, I dream we are being buried in Oak leaves, which we almost are anyway... I am relishing the shortened days of snuggling by a fire while applesauce and soup bubble on the stovetop. But even in the midst of looming Winter, some hearts have already turned to Summer:

An adorable woman with a glittery laugh enters the shop. She comes bearing a blouse, some patterns, and a bag of fabric under her arms. “My daughter is getting married next July,” she chirps, “and I cannot find a dress I like. I told her ‘I’ll come, but not in a dress!’” Her laughter sounds like pearls spilling all over the shop. She is unapologetic: “I HATE dresses,” she insists. “I’m just not a dress person. I guess some people are. I just seem to get swallowed up in them.” She talks as though Tom Dick & Harry’s Bridal Boutique has nothing but sea monsters hanging on the racks. “So!” she announces brightly, “I’m skipping the dress! I want you to make me an outfit instead.”

It turns out that she wants us to use her favorite blouse as a pattern for something similar in a dressier fabric. Then, we need to come up with a plan for covering her lower half—slacks maybe? A skirt, perhaps? A wooden barrel hung on suspenders? Something that looks like an “Outfit,” not a dress.

My ear keeps catching on the word “outfit.” All I can think of is the 1970’s when Sears used “Garanimals” to help muddled middle-schoolers and pre-occupied parents figure out which items of clothing “went together” by matching the animals on the tags. Is there such a thing as an “InFit?” I wonder. Is it like Tarot readings, where if the cards are upright they mean the outer world and if they are reversed, or up-side-down, they indicate the inner world of the querent? “Don’t be ridiculous,” says Prudence. “Fits are only Out. There are Mis-fits, the Un-Fit, and my least favorite, Hissy-fits, but they are all Outward manifestations.”

“Don’t forget, my least favorite is the RE-fit, which is what this little Outfit is going to require many times!” I add.

For the duration of the morning, my thoughts are snaggled on the concept of an Outfit and how it corresponds to Fitting In. Clearly, this woman is willing to go only just “so far” to fit in and look like a “Mother of the Bride” at her own daughter’s wedding. She is not going to let herself be consumed, either by a dress, or the proceedings of the day. (I like her so much!)

During my lunch break, I scan the etymology of the word Outfit. It seems like it was first used around 1769 as a verb meaning the fitting out of a ship for an expedition—which feels exactly like what we are doing now, with the navy silk fabric this woman has chosen. (Isn’t every wedding a Voyage of sorts?) Less than twenty years later, as of 1787, the verb “to outfit” had become the noun “outfit,” meaning “articles and equipment required for an expedition.” Our American-English sense of “a person’s clothes” is first recorded in 1852. By 1883, it can also mean “a group of people,” as in “I wouldn’t want to be a member of that outfit!” Merriam Webster defines the modern noun versions of outfit as “a clothing ensemble often for a special occasion or activity” and also “a group that works as a team…especially : a military unit.” I smile at the idea that our tailoring shop is really an “Outfit Outfit” assisting Misfits.

Given what I know about the history of wedding gowns (which is not much but is enough to know that they got it Dead Wrong in the Outlander series…) it always seems incongruous to me when a certain “type” of person chooses to wear a certain type of gown. I know I am on dangerously thin ice here…bear with me…no one celebrates our freedom to make eccentric wardrobe choices than a woman who roams society dressed in her own sheep’s clothing, crusty boots and all.

HOWEVER…

The FACT is that what we choose to wear on the Outside—our “Outfit”—will inevitably elicit judgment from our communities about what our Inner state might be. It just will. Prudence nods vehemently. She is thinking of bridesmaids emblazoned with Winnie The Pooh tattoos. I nudge her roughly and remind her “Every form of self-expression is Valid.” She rolls her eyes. Unfortunately, these communal judgments have a lot to do with whether or not we feel like we “belong.” Fitting in is all about our personal choices to conform; Belonging is about the community’s acceptance despite non-conformance.

So, what part does the Outfit play in Fitting In? Basically, Fitting In means trying to be like Everyone Else. Belonging means getting to be ourselves no matter what. The desire to Belong is a tremendously strong human emotional need, however, when everyone in a community experiences a sense of Belonging, there is a natural shift towards caring for and protecting one another. Brene Brown, a behavioral psychology expert focusing on courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy, finds that “Fitting in is actually the greatest barrier to belonging.” Her definition of True Belonging is that True Belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to BE who we are.

These external representations of ourselves manifest online as well—in photos, even in the very words we let Out of our mouths or keyboards. An extremely pious woman said to me recently “I just hate it when someone on Facebook posts about some tragedy in their lives and then you see at least forty people commenting afterwards ‘thoughts and prayers…thoughts and prayers…’ and you know damn well they aren’t saying REAL prayers!” My eyes widened. “What kind of prayers are acceptable to you?” I wondered. A stack of Hail Mary’s? Our Fathers? Or will anything from the Abrahamic Traditions suffice? Can we ad lib a little? Who are we to question how another PRAYS?? Or what is in his/her heart for that matter?

But we do. We look at their bodies, their clothes, their words—their OUTputs and OUTfits—and we extrapolate inward—this woman is wealthy and organized; that man hates change; this young person still has no idea where the Laundromat is and the semester is nearly over… Most of the time, we do this innocently and unconsciously. I remember when I first started doing it myself: Back in the distant past, when I was a little girl—sometime between the days of horse-drawn carriages and the invention of cordless telephones—my mother collected something called S&H Green Stamps. These were a line of trading stamps popular in the United States from the 1930s until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry & Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson. My mother would purchase items in stores that offered a few stamps with each purchase. She would save the stamps and select a “reward” from a catalogue. I would look at the catalogues that came to the house and read them to try to figure out what the “story” was. I resorted to making them up, as we all do when we look at pictures of others: The blonde model is going to choose this toaster, the brunette is going for that salad spinner, and the plastic-looking guy on page twenty-seven is lost—he belongs on a boat somewhere else in L.L.Bean-land… Catalogues teach us to judge ourselves and others—to choose, to “picture” ourselves as the models in the scene.

What could it mean if, like this mother of the bride, we get to wear the clothes that we actually feel comfortable and ourselves in? Fitting in takes a lot of energy; Belonging doesn’t. Heck, if you could wear anything you want, what would you look like? Would you be like that four-year-old who went everywhere in a Buzz Lightyear costume three months after Halloween? Or would you deck yourself out in cheetah-prints and glitter? “No doubt a significant sub-set of the population would be found roaming Wally-World in bedroom slippers and pajamas…oh…WAIT!” says Prudence snidely, “Are you saying that an Advanced sense of Belonging is responsible for that?” I point out that her slip is showing and her tights are bagging around her ankles again so she shuffles away.

Ok, so you don’t have to roll completely with all your wacky ideas, but you can compromise and try and get as close as you feel comfortable, to your Authentic, badass self.

During so many seasons of my life I have felt like I did not fit in. Often, I have thought that I just did not know which clothes to wear to make me feel less awkward—that it was about the clothing, not my Inner Being. Then, in my fifties I discovered that it is possible to go to a dance in a four-dollar dress bought that day at Salvation Army and Love the dancing and Love the music and Love the life you are living and the friends you are meeting so much that you don’t even notice when your bra cups slip around to the middle of your back. You Dance anyway, for the sheer pleasure of being where you Belong in that moment—and you find way more partners seeking your hand for the next dance than if you were decked out head to toe in Yves Saint Laurent because you are Alive and Dancing and being Authentic to who you are. (“Though one must never underestimate the allure of bra-cups on your back, as well,”notes Prudence. “All the Big Names will be going for it on the next season of Runway, no doubt!”)

My darlings, you do not need ear gauges, pierced tongues, and an assortment of ripped clothing that smells vaguely of pot and patchouli to be “Unique” in order to Belong. Trust me, if you dress like an 1850’s farm girl from the Nebraska Prairie in long woolen skirts and frumpy shawls of your own home-spinning, you will stand out! You don’t have to wear what someone else dictates. You have to wear what makes You shine.

I love how this Mother of the Bride is so clear about who she is and what she wants. People like that are often the easiest customers to please. The ones who have no idea keep moving the target until we wind up remaking things over and over until both profitability and patience go completely out the window. We begin to wish such customers would go back to Tom Dick & Harry’s Bridal Disasters and get eaten up by one of the Sea Creatures they have hanging there. The best Outfits ARE In-fits that let your Inner Light shine.

Shine on my darlings, I love you sew much!

Yours aye,

Nancy