Casual Chic

I have two sets of relatives. My father's side lives in Toledo, Ohio.  They are all either dead or in jail. I know because I paid some internet site $20 to let me look up their arrest records.  We haven't seen them since childhood.  My mother's side lives in Philadelphia, so we see them a little more often.  They are the wealthy side of the family.  My cousins are big-time lawyers and very important in their fields. I know because they attended a garden party in London hosted  by Her Majesty the Queen and her son. (Prince Charles and my cousin made small talk about their similar-in-age sons.) My cousins' sons are also highly educated and very successful. The younger son is CEO of his own clothing company. And he's the reason for this blog.  We were invited to a party to congratulate him and his wife-to-be, a well-known actress/singer whose first name rhymes with the Spanish word for day and who shares the second part of her name with a much beloved First Lady.  I can't wait to see the relatives again and meet my famous cousin-to-be, but there is a dress code for this event and I don't know if I can meet it.

Casual chic.  What the hell does that mean?  I know what it means for those who travel in my cousins' circle.  Expensive pants, most likely jeans. Fancy and very expensive blouse or sweater of some kind.  Maybe a very expensive jacket.  The kinds of clothes my cousin sells where one piece of casual chic costs anywhere between $200 - $1000+.  All of this is topped off by high heels, preferably the kind with bright red soles. The impression given by a casual chic outfit should be expensive, slim, fashionable, slim, carefree, slim.  Yes, that's casual chic for the Philadelphia crowd, but what about me?

I mostly shop the clearance racks.  I look at the price before I decide to try something on. Then I look above the rack to see if there's a sign indicating a further discount. I've purchased some very nice pieces that way.  In fact, I found a number of things in my closet that I considered wearing to the party. I have a beautiful gold blouse with a mandarin collar. I love it and wear it on special occasions. In fact, I've worn it for the past fifteen years of special occasions. I have it on in the picture for this blog.  I have a few other beautiful seldom worn blouses that might have fit the bill if they weren't  between ten and twenty years old. I recognized that I would need something new for this event.  But what? My clothing style is "small town teacher."  Most of you are familiar with that style; recognizing it helps you pick the teachers out of the crowd. That can be a fun game to play while people watching. But I digress; today I went shopping.

At my favorite store for finding something chichi and elegant, I was beyond disappointed.  They've gone the casual route, but not the casual chic route.  I did find some pants, and that's a major achievement for me since I am only 5' tall and probably about as round as I am tall.   I treated myself to a sweater with cardinals decorating it, and I paid full price (oh what a spendthrift desperation turns me into).  I debated a particular blouse for the evening event.  I couldn't tell if it was pretty on me or something pretty a ninety year old would wear.  It was on sale, so I bought it of course.  I'll ask my niece what she thinks of it. She's brutally honest about my ugly  clothes.

Deciding to step up my game, I went to Macy's.  I tried on all the sale items that might have worked.  They didn't.  Then I found it, a 2-piece shell and jacket the color of birch trees in the sparkling snow.  It too was on sale, $160 reduced to $xxx.  I can't remember the last time I spent that kind of money on a shirt.  So I scoured the store, determined to find something spectacular for 2/3 the cost.  I learned that spectacular doesn't come at 2/3 the cost and I was lucky to have found what I did.  For fifteen minutes, I debated buying it because not only was it too expensive, but it had shoulder pads.  (I had nixed anything in my closet with shoulder pads as giving away their time period, the days of TV's Dynasty.)  Here was something brand new and it had those damn shoulder pads.  I bought it.  I will take them out and hopefully not destroy the lines of the jacket.  And while I won't be a 2018 version of the girls from Sex in the City, I'm hoping I'll be chic enough not to look like the county bumpkin I am.

I doubt we'll be invited to the wedding.  That will be a Hollywood extravaganza filling a few pages in People magazine.  The stress to find something to wear in People magazine would probably require me to hire a stylist. And that is definitely not in my clothing budget.