I blame Darwin for my fashion failures

My sister believes I could turn my life around if I’d learn to properly accessorize. I think she mastered that art in the womb. While floating around for nine months she probably wrapped the umbilical cord around herself in hundreds of fashionable ways, much like the French practice tying their scarves. When she emerged tiny and pink, I know she screamed at the nurses for pinning her diaper in a manner not befitting the latest trends. If her fingers had been nimble enough, my sister would have slapped away the nurses’ administrations in order to fold, tuck and pin her own diaper in the most becoming manner, something straight out of Baby Vogue.

Beginning my search for fashion.

I, on the other hand, spent those nine months in the womb languishing in comfort and warmth, unmotivated to try my hand at any skill other than making my host quite ill. It appears I excelled at inspiring morning sickness. During the early stages of my mother’s pregnancy, she travelled throughout Europe but spent much of her trip alone on a tour bus eating stale Saltines and sipping warm club soda. This was a futile attempt to ward off the nausea I triggered. Quite possibly, I still provoke nausea when she sees me. But these days it appears to be a reaction to what I’ve chosen to wear.

For years, my mom quietly suffered as I developed a fashion sense that defied explanation. Shopping one day when I was 11, I asked her to buy “the perfect dress.” It was robin’s egg blue, ankle-length, oversized and made from yards of synthetic gauze. “That’s a lot of dress for the first day at school,” my mom noted as she stepped back to take it all in. “Where in the world did you find it?” she asked.

With youthful glee, I thought that dress was coming home. I imagined floating down the hallway of Gladden Elementary on route to the cafeteria with all that diaphanous material flowing around me, wafting in air stirred by students hungry for the day’s lunch special. But my dreams were shattered when I tugged Mom’s arm. Immediately, she started shaking her head, and I could tell by her face that this was a solid “no.” She wouldn’t even consider buying that dress when she realized it was from the maternity department. I think that was the moment Mom knew she never should have taught me to dress myself.

I’m guessing her mind flashed to the days when she carefully selected my outfits and assisted me putting them on. That was a time when my mother clung to hope. Each day would begin with her two perfectly coordinated and coiffed toddlers sitting side by side on the couch. For one of those children, however, being left alone, even for a couple of minutes, would result in fashion disaster.

When mom still dressed me.

What exactly happened when my mother left the room, I cannot recall. I most certainly have blocked out the details, and my sister retains no memories of those days, either because she was too young at the time to form words or because she is psychically scarred my fashion undoings. Unfortunately, the entire family knows the result. My dress would look like it had been pulled out of the bathroom hamper. My hair would have dislodged itself from the carefully placed clip that was holding it back. now it hung directly over my face like Cousin It in the Adams Family. My tights bunched at the knees, and my patent leather shoes suddenly were covered in scratches. My sister would point and giggle, while sitting primly on the couch next to me still looking crisp and clean. The hem of her dress lay straight; her shoulder-length hair remained pinned in place, and her tights actually seemed whiter than when she put them on. Most unnerving was the black Mary Jane’s. Months old, they looked as if they could have been sold as new.

Over the years, my sister has tried to help me. She’s provided direction – even flat-out intervention – but I’ve never been able to consistently pull “looks” together that have any polish or pizazz. I strut with pride over the fact that I’ve simply dressed at all. “Look at what I’ve accomplished with such efficiency!” I think to myself. Why would I want to complicate things by considering color, line, pattern and shape? There are too many rules, and rules never have been my bailiwick.

One of many evolutionary fashion failures.

Shouldn’t I have the tiniest instinct to be fashionable? I know of one evolutionary psychologist who says fashion has been “crucial to the emergence of the modern human.” Does this mean I am somehow not evolved? What genetically encoded phenomenon occurred during my formation that resulted in my prehistoric sense of style.

I can’t answer these questions. Neither can my mother. But this does NOT keep her awake at night. Over the years she has come to believe I was switched at birth with her biological and entirely fashionable offspring. Mom has witnessed the state of my closet for years, and there is no way she believes she and I are related.