Dasheen on Style Tip: Turn It Around!

“I have noth­ing to wear!”

It could be said whisper-range. In frus­tra­tion. On a Le Sigh. With a pout. How­ever these words, or forms of these words are spo­ken the sce­nario tends to mir­ror: We (women) are con­fronted by choices (what­ever they may be) and we are con­clud­ing that even faced with said choices before us we are yet unhappy or at the very least undecided.

Now, either a major­ity of women have an instinct for repeated phrase­ol­ogy or we have been indoc­tri­nated by a clever imp. What­ever the case, there will be no love, because the objec­tive eyes look­ing over our shoul­ders (in my case a cer­tain Simon Leon) are laugh­ing out loud.

“Really! Come again. Wouldn’t it be eas­ier to say I don’t know what to wear or I don’t want to wear any of the many many things in here.”

Sure, but does it mat­ter. No. Because noth­ing has changed—“I have noth­ing to wear!” SMH

As I’ve fully embraced where I am at in my life (finan­cially and then some), shifted the reign­ing pri­or­i­ties of my 20’s, and maybe even growed-up a bit (eh eh, well look at you) I’ve started look­ing at my closet as a friend and not a fren­emy, and for cer­tain I feel inge­nious with my cloth­ing. I mean absolutely fear­less! And I am enjoy­ing every minute of the bar­gain hunt and the wear. It’s to the point now, where, if I can’t see a par­tic­u­lar item in a mul­ti­plic­ity of sce­nar­ios in-store, then it’s not com­ing home.

What is wrong with the black sheath dress in the above pic. Why noth­ing of course. It’s sim­ply been turned back to front. I let the tag show a bit because with­out that tell-tell sign one would never assume what is not obvious.

Now granted this is a black dress, but I would do this with any color dress and just make it work!

The first time I went back to front, it was with this dress and it was because, while I love a cover up (be it cropped jacket, cardi­gan what have you) I don’t like that suf­fo­cat­ing feel­ing of being all but­toned up, espe­cially if I am already wear­ing some­thing under­neath. In the case of this dress, the front is a very nice scoop neck, but for a work or even church envi­ron­ment, while doable all on its own, it is is inap­pro­pri­ate for the assets it must contain.

Trust me I am sit­ting in this shot for a rea­son and I have pulled up the front! Still couldn’t just let it go (thank you to my pho­tog­ra­pher for his patience) lol

These are not experiments.

This is a shot of one of my absolute favorite tunic sweaters. It is the rich­est cobalt blue you can imag­ine, but the front for me means courage and sticky tape, or the sta­ple camisole, and some­times, just some­times, I don’t want to be both­ered with all that.

This look reminded me so much of Hilary Swank in her navy blue Oscar dress. Gor­geous!!!

The last exam­ple of turn­ing it around fea­tures a fuch­sia Old Navy tee that is almost tunic length.

I show these because they are quick, sim­ple tried and true options. I show­case them unadorned because the one thing I’ve noticed about turn­ing a cloth­ing item back to front, you get an awe­some can­vas to work with. Par­tic­u­larly, if the cloth­ing item was already a star in the fit depart­ment, then you can adorn as you like. A clus­ter of broaches would be just the right touch in the top two choices, a wide belt per­fec­tion with the last.

Then again, a blank can­vas can be appeal­ing all on its own.

Peo­ple may ques­tion the unex­pected, but if you’re already one to walk into a room with the same con­fi­dence in which you plan to leave it, you should have no prob­lem turn­ing it around.

Have you ever rocked your cloth­ing front to back? Did any­one notice the switch?

ABOUT THE WRITER

Hi there, I’m Tynisha Leon, writer, West Indian, mango-lover, founder and Editor-in-Chief of DASHEEN mag­a­zine — the online des­ti­na­tion where Cul­ture. Feeds. Imag­i­na­tion! If you seek to inno­vate, pro­mote and/or con­tribute to posi­tioning a Caribbean peo­ple and gen­er­a­tion most pos­i­tively then link me! Bless!