Some time ago I discovered Carla Rockmore and I fell in love. She’s FAAAAABULOUS!
Here she is.
Carla is my age. 53. She’s a fashion and jewellery designer and creator. She’s been collecting clothes, shoes and jewellery over the years and has a wonderful collection that she throws on and talks about. Everything on her looks absolutely fantastic and you can tell by the way she talks and pulls pattern, textures, colours together that she knows what she’s talking about.
I’ve seen just about every single video on her channel because they’re all addictive. And fabulous.
I like that word. An explosion of colour!
During the lockdowns, I started to get more interested in clothes, makeup and hair styles.
Why?
Well, I began to see it as an expression of my creativity. I was going mad inside and needed to do something that would make me look at my clothes differently. Besides, I wasn’t going to start to lay about in track suit pants because well, I’ve never done that before. Track pants & gym gear are for the gym. ?
It was time to get to wear all my clothes.
When I was growing up, I was never interested in this stuff. I tried to hide my femininity. I went through my life basically clueless on how to dress. I don’t think I wore make up until my early thirties.
Smearing on a bit of lipstick or rouge made me feel like a clown so I never wore them. Now in hindsight, I knew it was because I really had no idea what to do so I stuck to a uniform of jeans, shirts and cardigans and always with a masculine edge. I wore tweed, paisley, velvet, denim.
Femininity wasn’t me. Too much lace,flounce and frippery for my liking.
In hindsight it was all about not being confident in my own femininity because I didn’t want any male attention as I always wanted to be left alone by the opposite sex (which didn’t always work).
During lockdowns, I started to get more interested in this stuff because as I aged, I noticed I was beginning to look washed out. What I was wearing was ageing me. Looking in the mirror, I got a shock too as I was growing out the grey hair and I looked haggard. It didn’t help looking around me and unable to see other women my age untouched by laser or surgery. Everyone looked like they’ve been frozen to 35. As I’d like to age gracefully, I figured I’d need to at least understand about colours, styles and make up as diversionary tricks rather than resorting to injecting bovin toxins into my face.
I noticed that certain colours made me look like death warmed up; while other colours made me look perkier. I changed to wear more berries, burgundies, blues and greys. I started wearing dark lipstick. The darker the better. (Apparently it’s a no no for older women but I think it makes me look far better so I’ll break that rule).
I started to also watch some YouTube channels of women in their 50s to see what they were wearing and to start to educate myself a bit more. People like Jess and her YouTube channel helped me out a lot. Pretty much every single piece she wears, I’d wear.
After a lot of viewing, experimenting, and trying out clothes – and tossing out heaps of clothes that I hang on to but never wear – I noticed that some fashion is tediously the same and it does my head in. Eg. Beige coats and loafers. Yawn.
Hence why I found Carla a bit more refreshing because she’s educating us as well about how to pull outfits together and not just buying tonnes of clothes and modelling it for us.
However, there are tons of women who look exactly the same. As everything is bought from Zara, H&M and other fast fashion places, it makes for some boring looks (and I don’t like shopping from these stores as most of my clothes are vintage, hand made or bought from Target). A lot of my clothes are more than 10 years old too.
So why look the same as everyone else by buying stuff from the same places? Even some women in Paris streets are looking painfully boring in their choice of clothes wearing a “uniform”.
At a time in a woman’s life where she is becoming invisible and she’s becoming uncertain or unconfident, our clothes must make us change our mindset. Clothes that make us feel good, look good and make us walk with a spring in the step.
We must turn heads.
(Such a change for me since my younger years where I just wanted to hide away).
I’d like clothes to be a canvas of how I feel or what I create. I want the look to be unique to me. Most of all, I want to feel like me when I wear them.
However watching these videos made me realise what I like and prefer to wear and also what colours suit me. I also made a massive realisation that it’s not WHAT you wear, it’s how CONFIDENT you feel in your own skin.
So with that, I gave away the clothes that never really made me feel good. Anything tight – OUT! Anything with the wrong colour, OUT! I also gave lots of clothes to my mum to let out and tailor for me.
This resulted in a smaller wardrobe but with things I can mix and match and make me feel confident. Thanks to Carla, I’ve added some bold jewellery – which I never had – because I always go with light, small, dainty and safe.
Stuff that! ?
From now on, I should be proud and confident what I put on and not worry that I may seem “overdressed” compared to others.
My Favourite Pieces in My Wardrobe
If I was to think about my favourite pieces I’m my wardrobe, they would be:
- My houndstooth tweed vest (UniqLo bought this year)
- My 1962 genuine tweed jacket bought from Belfast
- My extreme wide leg jeans sailor like style and WORN TO DEATH & my bell bottom jeans (hard denim non stretch, old school jeans)
- Hubby’s vests (when I first met him, he was a rocker looking bloke who wore tight jeans, white collarless shirts, skinny ties, vests and had a huge quiff)
- Hubby’s tour band t-shirts (ones that don’t have skulls and snakes through the eye sockets but the other ones that look more 70s or 90s)
- My Texan cowboy boots (bought them off a Texan lady’s feet – literally – told her I’d give her $100 cash for her boots and she took them off and handed them to me)
- Chambray shirt (staple)
- White & Bright Pink oversized shirt (staples)
- Jeans Jacket (staples)
- Leather Jacket
- Great collection of colourful scarves (love them)
- Pink boucle Chanel waist jacket (vintage)
- Three quarter overcoats (x3 which I wear ALL the time) – one bright red, navy and one made out of recycled curtains. All vintage.
- Adidas white sneakers
- Black beret
- Khaki cargo pants (I live in these)
- Black skinny jeans
- My alpaca short knitted waist length cardigans
- My knitted fair isle knitted vests & jumpers
- Cream leather non branded baseball cap (staple)
- Pair of black leather spit polished boots (were my parade boots in Navy that I use for normal shoes now)
- Silver chunky ring (gift from dad over 20 years old)
- My Disney Mickey Mouse watch (gift from hubby and about 16 years old)
Today I bought a a-skirt for $9 made out of what looks like scuba diver suit material that has a sheen on it. I LOVE IT! I also bought some jewellery that will take my casual gear into evening wear just by putting them on.
I also bought a pair of heavy rubber soled brogues with a pointy foot (I love pointy shoes like pinkle wickers) that were on sale for $60 from $220.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’d like to recustomise some of my old uniform too for normal day to day wear. I’ve been using the belts but also the cummerbund. I might start wearing the dark blue Navy Woolley pulley which is a ribbed jumper with shoulder and elbow patches for winter too. They’d look great with a pair of cargo pants.
Carla has been teaching me a thing or two!
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