My Love-Hate Relationship with Fashion- Clothing & Their Fit

There is something that bothered me about this blog: I’m holding back talking about topics I’m interested in. I love talking about what’s my favorite dresses for the season, what I just purchased, and what beauty item I’m loving or hating, but there are so many other topics I want to talk about but am too afraid to. So, in order to be more open about topics that interest me and my feelings on them, I’m going to start on my love-hate relationship with fashion. Specifically clothing and their fit.I love fashion. I love looking at the newest designs from my favorite designers every time a new collection is released. I love owning clothes that not only look good on me, but I also feel good wearing. And the moment I find a piece of clothing that fits me and looks good on me makes me overwhelmed with joy.

But I also hate fashion.

Fashion fluctuates with the season as well as what the “ideal beauty” is at that time. Unfortunately for me, my body was never part of the “ideal beauty” and I was mocked for it growing up.

When I was a teen, I had a longer than normal torso, but a shorter than normal pair of legs. Dresses needed to be shortened for me in the skirt and lengthened in the torso. I couldn’t wear shirts that fit me because they were too short. Shirts long enough for me always hung on me in an unflattering oversized way. My pants needed to be hemmed or else I needed to get pants for petites. And kids at school always noticed.

Now that I’m an adult, I still have a I-really-hate-you relationship with fashion. Thanks to delayed growth spurts, I’m around five or so inches taller than I was as a teen. Even though I’m taller, my legs are still short-ish, my torso is still too long for shirts and dress tops, and, to make matters worse, I suffered from an antibiotic resistant skin infection in my late teens and most of my 20’s that cause me to have skin problems. I’m cured from the infection, but due to complications I now have loose skin. In fact I have loose skin in all the right places old classmates from my high school days believed I had children. (Just FYI: I never had children. Unless you count the doggies I had since high school. Then I’ve had a few fur babies.)

I’m not going to lie, I’m indifferent about my loose skin. Sometimes I hate it, sometimes I don’t mind it because I know how many times the infection nearly took my life that loose skin that needs time to snap back into shape is a trade off I’m willing to accept. But when I go shopping for new clothes in the store, I realize how much I used to hate clothing shopping as a teen.

I know once my skin snaps back completely I will have curves. It’s just my body type. I’ve got hips and a bust. It was like this when I was a teen before my infection and that’s the way my body will be. I’m not shaped like Karlie Kloss or Gigi Hadid. (I’m ignoring the fact I’m older than they are and Karlie is 100% taller than me) If I had to compare my body’s shape to someone well known, I’d say it’s similar to Marilyn Monroe AKA an hourglass. I’m not a perfect hourglass like Marilyn (Perfect hourglasses have hip and bust measurements 1 inch or less away from each other), but my measurements are so close that I still need to dress like an hourglass body type. And that’s the problem.

Today, it is popular to be thin and without curves. And clothes are made for that body type. (I can go on and on about why clothes are made this way, but I’ll leave that for a future post.) No matter how much weight I loose, I will still have hips and a bust. When I was a size 6 teenager, I was not only shorter, but I also had the same fit problems with shirts and clothing back then as I do today, except not as extreme. So, whenever it’s time to buy new clothes, I dread it. Clothes I love are too short for my arms and torso. Clothes that fit me are unflattering on me.

To make matters worse, the styles that are popular fit the frames of Karlie Kloss and Gigi Hadid. Not me. The styles I see in store suit other’s tastes. I need to buy clothes online to find ones in the style I love and will fit me right. It’s getting very old.

The best part about not being able to fit the clothes in store without some sort of alteration is that I’m not the only one. Others may need alterations to their clothes in different ways than I do, but still. These clothes are not a one-size-fits-all clothing and it feels good to be one of many instead of the few that fits into today’s clothes.

As I’ve grown up, I realized that what is beautiful this year won’t be five or ten years. It’s more important to dress the best for your body type, even if it takes a very long time to find the clothes or style that works best for your body. I would rather look back on my old photographs and see myself dressed my best for that time, even if older me thinks I look silly. I’ll never have the perfect body, but I hope I can still dress nice enough that I will look good. And if that means I need to hunt for good quality clothes that need minimal alterations to fit my fashion-deemed unpopular curves, then so be it.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you liked me opening up and talking about something besides what I normally talk about. (A new post about beauty products and shopping are coming soon) Thank you for reading!