Wednesday, October 5, 2011

playing dress up



dress - asos
hat - h&m
boots - alloy
necklace - handmade

My mom and I went to H&M last week (that's where these goodies came from) and for some reason I got this huge urge to try on the most wild things that I wouldn't normally buy. My dressing room haul included a faux leather dress, a pencil skirt, some huge faux fur collars (which ended up coming home with me) and a few other very dramatic pieces. I kept stepping out of the changing room to show my mom the ensembles, striking over-the-top poses and acting generally silly.

When we were leaving the dressing room, I still had this hat on my head and one of the faux fur collars draped over my yellow shirtdress. As I struck one last dramatic pose for my mom, she laughed and said "you're still the same Kate that you were when you were four years old." I took this as a compliment (I pretty much take all comparisons to children as a compliment) and it dawned on me why I love clothes and outfit posts and looking at other girls' outfit posts so so much... we're playing dress up.

Every once in a while when I use my ATM card at the bank I think to myself "this is a REAL bank... not one that I made out of cardboard to play Banker with my dad! It's real!" Or sometimes when I'm cooking I'll think back to my fake plastic food and imaginary restaurants that I made up as a kid. For a lot of people (too many people, I think) that's all in the past... growing up means suppressing your inner child. But for some reason it's all still very present to me. My inner child is alive and kicking, and I don't think it's a bad thing. Retaining that love of play has helped me to enjoy things that most adults consider mundane. I love -- really LOVE -- getting dressed in the morning. Because to me, I'm still playing dress up.