Fashion Follies

You're not going to believe this story, but I have to tell you anyway. It all started with an absolutely hysterical phone call from Shop Girl one gloomy Wednesday midmorning. I expect hysterical phone calls late at night when boyfriends dump you or your cable gives out during the season finale of some Must-See TV moment. I don't expect them on Wednesday mornings. So you can understand why a wailing Shop Girl stopped me dead on my coffee break.

I could hardly understand her through the slobbery sobs and shrilling gasps for air. "Ma hoyeewoos ah gon! Ah'v lost ma hoyeewoos!" she exclaimed over and over. Baffled, I sipped on my latté and admired my reflection in the window of my coffee shop. I tell you, I think I've nailed the almost-spring look. (The trick, by the way, is to banish winter separates. Nothing says death, doom and drear-monster like dark wool in March. Instead, you must introduce the colors of spring even if you can't embrace the fabrics. The latter is key, but more on that later. When in doubt, consider denim.) My skirt, my top, and my shoes all seemed to tastefully welcome spring, and I was so pleased to be out of my black/brown/gray motif that I almost forgot the crisis at hand. I tell you, if Shop Girl wasn't such a wreck, she'd be so very proud of me. Not a stitch of navy in sight.

On the phone: more hysteric sobbing that I cannot decipher.

So, while we await understandable English, let's return to me. The reason for my newfound fashion confidence is because of a recent fashion folly of my own. You see we had a warm stretch of 3 days. And being so itchy from the wool of winter, I broke out my seersucker skirt, my cotton poplin Bermudas, and my golf skirt (that was not purchased for golfing but of general life. Why should athletes have all the fun?) Shop Girl saw me and refused to be seen with me. She said I looked like an Eskimo in resort-wear. I didn't believe her and headed out on my own.

On the phone: more hysteric sobbing that I cannot decipher.

I hit the grocery store, Target and the book store, and then ran into the video store before returning home. And who should I see but Jeb, ex-love of life and giver of New Year's Eve kiss. Fortunately, I felt extraordinarily preppy chic and was able to give him a huge smile that radiated: I am very happy with my life. He smiled back and we chatted a bit and I ignored the tingling feeling in the depths of my gut. He had Bourne Supremacy, and I explained that I was just trying to find where to return 13 Going on 30 as someone must have dropped it but did he know where Dirty Harry was? And then he said, "So it looks like you're heading off on vacation. At first I thought you didn't have any clothes on. The khaki blends in with your legs."

It is when a straight boy who is so out of fashion that he thinks 7 is a number has to remind you of style's golden rule for spring: winter in February, transition in March, spring in April, that you must take off your Bermudas, swallow deep and return to the girls who guide you well. Which brings me back to our fashionable damsel in hysterics.

On the phone: "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...."

Oh, the final screaming exhale that is the end of a sobbing fit. It is then you know that the mystery will soon be revealed. I can't go on with the story without her. It is her story to tell and I must let you hear it from her own glossy lips. (Speaking of glossy, you must ponder Lorac's Lip Duo in Freedom - we're both in love.) She says it was a defining moment in her life of retailing, which is quite a statement given her experience with a credit card.