Knot Arm Candy

I was talking to someone in the store recently about clothing and style and the strange ways women learn to present themselves to the world.

Not necessarily because someone directly tells them to but rather because certain versions of themselves seem to get rewarded more easily.

This is what a successful woman looks like.
This is what a professional looks like.
This is what a wife looks like.
This is what a happy couple looks like.

The more I thought about it afterwards, the more I realized how lucky I have been in my own life.

People around me haven't always understood what I was wearing, but I have somehow moved through life surrounded by people who never seemed embarrassed by my self-expression.

Years ago, my brother-in-law had a backyard barbecue for his fortieth birthday. Dress code: backyard casual. Everyone else arrived looking sensible in jeans and t-shirts. Little zip hoodies. Someone probably brought potato salad and there were burgers on the grill.

I arrived dressed like I was attending an outdoor luncheon in honour of a minor royal.

I wore a fitted black ponte knit cotton Talbots sheath dress with white piping and a keyhole neckline, oversized Chanel sunglasses, and a giant black-and-white floppy straw hat that suggested I might, at any moment, ask someone to tell me where the yacht was docked.

I was standing beside a Coleman cooler dressed like I thought there might be valet parking.

I felt incredible.

I wasn’t trying to look better than everyone else or make some kind of statement. I just genuinely liked what I was wearing. I felt FANCY! And I loved it!

And not once did my husband make me feel ridiculous about it.

He did not gently suggest “maybe lose the hat.” He just stood beside me balancing a paper plate of barbecue food in one hand and a beer in the other. It never crossed his mind to care what anyone else thought of what I was wearing.

Which, to him, apparently seemed perfectly reasonable.

Another time, decades earlier, we had spent the day shopping in Montreal before a planned dinner with his high school friends. I was meeting them for the first time ever.  I had just bought this gloriously artsy navy rayon swing dress splashed with oversized tie dye in bright pink, yellow, and green. I wore it that night with hot pink tights and black flats because, well…why not?

I looked like a lava lamp. A funky one, but a lava lamp nonetheless.

And again, not even the slightest flicker from him.

No discomfort.
No correction.
No visible concern that his new girlfriend was the brightest feature of the room.

And I realize that I have perhaps taken this acceptance for granted.

I have watched enough women over the years to understand that not everybody gets to become themselves this freely.

Women are taught very early that their appearance reflects on other people. That they are expected to represent a family correctly. A marriage correctly. A level of professionalism correctly.

And once that starts happening, clothing stops being playful and starts becoming the uniform for who you are expected to be.

I think that is part of why I love what happens inside sariKNOTsari so much.

So often I watch women arrive cautiously trying on something colourful or oversized and you can almost see them waiting for permission to love it openly.

And more often than not, the people beside them give it.

A husband smiling when his wife walks out in chartreuse silk. A friend immediately saying, “Oh my god, that is SO you.” Someone holding handbags while another woman twirls in front of the mirror like she has temporarily forgotten to feel self-conscious.

There is something very tender about witnessing people allow each other to expand.

And honestly, I think most of us go through a multitude of costumes before we arrive at ourselves anyway.

There are the years you are trying to look successful. The years you are trying to look pulled together, like you belong. The years you are trying to disappear a little. And then, if you are lucky, the years you suddenly refuse to.

I think it is part of figuring out who we are.

Eventually there comes a point where dressing stops being about constructing a convincing character and starts becoming something truer.

You simply begin wearing what delights you.

Just what feels like you.

And maybe one of the great blessings of my life has been that the people closest to me allowed that evolution to happen without trying to edit me along the way.

They watched every strange phase, every overdressed moment, every questionable outfit decision, every dramatic silhouette.

And somehow, through all of it, nobody ever asked me to become smaller beside them.