Style Ode to a Tyrannical Muse (or Why I Love and Hate Fashion)

By Johanna McGeary

A passion for fashion is a dangerous thing. It can, if you're not careful, fool the eye into betraying the body. Just when you think it might be safe to go out in a thigh-high mini, the fashion oracles say it's the year of the catsuit. I'm going to wear a neck-to-toe unitard in public? No way. I have only to think ladies' room (worse: airplane lavatory) to dismiss such a pernicious garment from my wardrobe. What sensible woman wants to reveal her every -- and I do mean every -- curve and bulge? And who wants to look at them?

Let me confess: I love fashion. I study the magazines; I shop; I spend more than I should. To look chic is to feel great. No matter how we women yearn to be valued for other qualities, we invest a considerable amount of our psychic selves in our appearance. We're not all born beautiful, but we can make the most of what we've got. That's the art of style: improving on nature. Fashion helps us shape that sense of style, give it definition, freshness, sparkle, zing.

But I hate fashion too. It's a tyrannical muse, demanding time, energy, money, discomfort. There are mornings when I look at my well-stocked closets and have nothing to wear. My husband can't understand this. The only time he has nothing to wear is when all his shirts are at the laundry. There is something so enviously simple about male dressing: a suit, a shirt, a tie. Our notions of how these should look don't change much with the seasons, and barely with the generations. So how wrong can a man go? How unattractive can he feel?

Female fashion is exhausting. All that variety from which to choose the few items that will transform you into a knockout. All those racks in all those stores: it takes hours and days to find the perfect thing. Once home, the garments crowd the closet, challenging you to put together the right pieces for the right occasion -- and the right mood. There's a mutability to clothes that makes them appealing one day, appalling the next.

All that agonizing choice is made no easier by vast expense. I try to keep up with the mode, and it costs -- just ask my husband. But the skyrocketing prices are pushing fashion beyond the reach of willing buyers like me. I was leafing through a fall fashion magazine the other day, plotting my seasonal purchases. There was a charming outfit by a no-name designer in delicious shades of pink and red (this is the year of color, remember): mohair coat, $725; cropped jacket, $575; knit dress, $230. The total for the ensemble: ! $1,530. That's not including the $68 wool scarf, $15 ribbed tights or the who- knows-how-much gloves. I bought a pair of stretch velvet leggings last year for $80 -- not exactly dirt cheap but top-notch fashion for the money. When I see stretch velvet leggings in the magazines for $500, I wonder what the other $420 is for. That's not style, that's trying to sucker me.

Maybe it happens every fin de siecle, but lately fashion seems to slide further and further from reality. Most women I know have two kinds of clothes: work clothes and play clothes, in evening and weekend varieties. If women are not tending children at home, the clothes for work outnumber all the rest. So why is it that most designers of any fame produce garments intended for some weird fantasy life? I'm looking at a crotch-length strapless tweed dress topped by a blazer. Even in the permissive world of journalism, where am I going to wear this number? To interview the Secretary of State? I understand fashion's need for the new, but it gets less and less possible to find something modish I can actually wear.

Fashion is painful. Women suffer pinching, scratching, binding, twisting in the name of chic. Push-up bras give you the lush bosom of the '90s, but the underwire cuts into your rib cage. Panty hose are hot and, frankly, sweaty. High heels give your hips an alluring tilt, but after a 10-minute walk, your feet scream. Short skirts are young and kicky. But how young do you want to look when you can't sit comfortably?

I have learned from experience to say no to fashion. We're stuck with bras until a kinder form of support comes along. I liked long skirts because I could wear knee-high stockings underneath. And I simply refuse to wear hose in summer. So what if the oracles say I'm not properly dressed? I won't buy a catsuit this season, and I bet few other women will. While I refuse to trade in my pumps for Reeboks, I don't buy shoes with heels higher than an inch or two, and I still manage to have fashionable feet. (Pointy toes long ago revamped my metatarsals.)

But however hardened I've become, I succumb to fashion's lure. I swore I wouldn't wear short skirts again: I have photos from the last age of miniskirts; I remember trying to bend and sit without total exposure, and I remember how cold it was. And yet, as I dragged out my winter clothes, my hems looked downright dowdy. I'm busy shortening them again. See what a betrayer is the fashion muse? I hate it. I love it.