Tailor Swift at Home
As a kid, I was dressed by my mother. She dressed me in soft pink frocks, buried me in white velvet turtlenecks where at least a quarter of my face sunk into the collar. I detested every piece of clothing I was bought. Skirt sets, Corduroy dungaree frocks, jumpsuits, flare dresses… Needless to say, at five years old, this felt like torture.
Every day I woke up, I had to surrender my free will to decide who I would be in the world of clothing, to someone who collared pleasure in seeing me buttoned up in ridiculously pink pinafore dresses. Funnily enough, going to school seemed to me the only relief. All of us looked the same in navy blue and white stripes but even then my mother looked for opportunities to make me stand out in this monotony of sameness. You see, nobody wants to stand out at 5 years old. And so there was I at five years old, a joke in monkey cropped hair which covered half my forehead.
I remember weddings to be the worst. Bangles, smeared kajal and sparkling earrings with traditional skirt and blouse in silk. This continued for a long time and with time amma’s fashion sense changed. She soon started designing! Imagine my horror as I saw her in serious focused thoughts in her bedroom pencilling something on a white paper! That evening, she handed over the rough sketch to our tailor who responded with a nod and came back with amma’s stitched dream a week later. I went through all the trials and tribulations of trying on whatever amma decided for me for a few more years. Somewhere along those years, I’m not sure when but somewhere along those years her grip over my wardrobe loosened and I gained more freedom in deciding who I would be in the world of clothes.
I resorted to greys and blacks, dressing myself down in collars, patterns and necklines that brought out the worst in me. I tried desperately to communicate through clothes. My teen angst translated into depressing mismatches of t-shirts and skirts. My wardrobe saw toxic marriages between baggy t-shirts and ill fitting pants on its shelves. It went from a chirpy summer morning to a painfully cold night quicker than I changed moods. If dressing up was a language, I stuttered. I detached farther and farther away from myself until I was truly lost. I accidentally highlighted parts of myself that I wasn’t particularly thrilled about.
I was looking at a portrait of my brother and I hung on the wall in our drawing room. I was wearing a pink velvet halter neck top and my brother was in a white T-shirt with black piping around the neckline. How simple and how right we looked!
We looked innocent and more than anything we looked like ourselves. Comparing that with the zany clothes I slipped into today, I suddenly felt out of home as if in someone else’s skin. I was almost jealous of my younger self. Flipping through my childhood pictures, I realise, I looked quite nice.
Not too much. Not too less. Just right. The balance my mother could find for me through something as simple as assembling my wardrobe amazed me.
The world we live in drives at a breakneck speed. Unless the people you meet are willing to sit down and engage in many conversations to actually understand who you really are, sadly, your clothes are going to speak for you. I want to be honest in everything I do, including the way I dress. But honesty becomes difficult if you are not sure of yourself. And I’m not sure of myself. Hence, almost always, I come out of trial rooms looking like I stepped out of an abstract Picasso painting.
Whenever, my mother picks out clothes for me, I feel like I’m home again. They are not ‘what’s in’ right now or the new hot look but I’m most myself in the simple and happy clothes she picks out for me. It’s wonderful how her expression of my style taught me that we need to dress to feel good and not to feel accepted.
