ARNDT

MOTHERS' WEEKEND OPINION COLUMN Learning from 'What Not to Wear' style gurus

by HolLY Arndt ARN02002@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

What would Stacey think?

And so as I sat down to chat with my mom and glanced in the mirror, I tried to think of my outfit from the point-of-view of Stacey London, the co-host of Lifestyle TV’s What Not to Wear.

She would definitely approve of my colored shoes that coordinated with my handbag without really matching it. But I’m sure she would prescribe some more expensive, better-fitting jeans and would have a fit over the flower on the lapel of my long, black coat. I hope she doesn’t wind up on my doorstep. See, I’m a slave to a continuing Stacey-fied wardrobe.

Fashion is one of the things my mother and I talk about.

Mom picked up the phone, and the girl talk commenced. Reminiscent of the talks we had when I was little and mom told me about the time she crashed on her bicycle, this time it was to pour over the beauty trends she held dear in high school and college.

It was all about the big hair, she told me. Big, big hair. “I got so I would just wear rollers to bed at night.” My mom graduated from high school in 1978, a year strategically positioned between Charlie’s Angels and Loveboat.

Farrah Fawcet reigned supreme as champ of the fashion world, and the only thing that made the girls feel more alive than tight jeans that puddled around wooden-soled shoes was bright blue eye shadow. Eyebrows were about to get thick and the scent of an upcoming shoulder pad craze wafting over the horizon.

On the eve of my high school graduation, I was shooting for a Jennifer Aniston look — well, an 18-year-old Jennifer Aniston, at least. I was going for a Jen who flipped her hair out at the bottom and wore platform flip-flops. (The goal was to get one last hoo-haw out of the flip-flops before being subjected to four years of wearing actual shoes here in Rexburg.) Chunky highlights glistened beneath my graduation cap. I felt quite stylish, to say the least.

I’m from the school of thinkers who believe we, as women, have only gotten cuter through the years.

Granted, there are concourses of women in history who are significantly more beautiful than I, but I really don’t think Florence Nightingale’s nurse’s pinafore dress could hold a candle to my pink stilettos. It’s just not possible. I’d venture to say that Stacey would be right there with me.

What would Stacey say to my mother at her high school graduation?

“The line of the jean is not flattering to your body shape,” she’d note, tracing my mom’s shape with her fingers. “And this hair … are you in there, honey? What we’d really like to see is a jean that sits lower on the waist and grazes your curves rather than hugging everything you’re trying to downplay.”

And Mom would cry.

But what would happen when Stacey got to me?

To the platform flip-flops, she’d inform me that rubber foam is not an acceptable medium from which to make footwear. And as for my over-texturized bob, do I want people to notice my crispy hair or my bright smile? Stacey sure drives a hard bargain.

These days, of course, my mother and I are equally Stacey-licious.

She bought a pink tweed blazer to wear to Thanksgiving dinner last year, and her new Gap jeans are amazingly trouser-like.

I have also improved, trading in the sticky hair product for a slept-in-looking bob and I wear pointy shoes as much as I can.

Stacey, if you’re out there, check me out!