Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Hermit

You’re allowed to sink into a groove every now and then. God knows I was like that with this one lipstick. And then, I don’t know if my teeth changed color or what, but all of a sudden one day I looked in the mirror and my lips looked awful. Like I’d sucked on a cheap marker. I threw it away right in the middle of the tube.

This is what The Hermit is about. It’s about busting out of a rut.

But what next, right? You can’t go from there to making decisions, because all you can see are the dark walls of your rut and a half-used tube of lipstick in the trash. (And it was Aveda. So this was like a capital loss.) You can’t trust women’s magazines or Clinique counter workers to figure it out for you. You just can’t. The only thing you can do in this moment is rub your mouth clean and get yourself some fresh air. Go somewhere. Look up.

Then close your eyes and remember the new things, and then come back to your makeup bag and your life, and see them how you see them now.

Name the rut. Bust up from the dark place and throw away the half-used tube, those are the important things. Do those today.

The Hermit is sponsored by The 410 Project, which at one point featured work by Joni D. Myers, including this piece titled The Abnormal Person which has the special effect of making Ann’s Fashion Tarot fans feel beautifully normal.

Tomorrow: The Wheel of Fortune.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: Strength

The Strength card is about wearing your deep dark heart on your sleeve or on your neck or in your hair, wherever, just as long as it’s visible so you can see a little flash of the fact that you’ve got some depth and some balls and you will get through this. That’s all.

My mom used to have this friend who told her about a convent where they would take casket roses and roll the crushed petals until they looked like garnets, and then set them in a silver flower pin. So my mom did that with the petals off my dad’s casket and gave one to each of my sisters and me. That was a long time ago, and I honestly don’t know where the pin is right now, but I do remember that it’s quite a thing to wear that on your lapel. Nobody says a word about it, because why would they, who would remark on a dime-sized flower pin? Who would even notice it? They wouldn’t. They don’t, but you do, because every time you look down you see a little glimmer of casket. You feel a lot of things when you wear that, including strong.

This is what you’re going for today.

If you don’t have any casket roses, just find a couple of things that remind of you of your dark and light parts, and roll them together and see how it works to wear them at the same time. It might not feel easy but  by the end of the day it should feel good.

Strength is sponsored by The St. Peter Food Co-Op & Deli, for obvious reasons, including that they sell the Vega Maca bar which is “renowned for its ability to balance, invigorate and energize…ancient native Peruvians used maca for thousands of years as both a food and a tonic, believing maca increased energy and stamina, improved fertility and enhanced libido.”

“I am eating one right now and I think it’s working,” says the Co-Op’s Emperess of Marketing Kris Higginbotham. Goodness.

 

Tomorrow: The Hermit.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Chariot

The Chariot is about yoking together forces that don’t seem like a good match, but they are. Seriously. Unlikely forces look supercute on you.

What I’m saying is that a stripe + a solid are complementary, and that’s just fine, but the combination gets you nowhere. It’s got no power. A stripe + a different stripe + a hat + a tweed + a ring + a brooch, on the other hand, a mix like that has force.

Yoke together some things you haven’t yoked before. Pull back and look at how you look. Feel how it feels. If it feels like you’re driving a chariot of hot holy style pulled by one striped horse and one tweed horse who’ve never met and might break free any second, and keeping them steady depends on your fist around a pair of braided leather glitter reins, if it feels like that, then you’re doing it right.

The Chariot is sponsored by Fusion Life and Leadership, a powerful combo of life/leadership coaching and horse-assisted learning. The head coach is damn sweet dresser Sara Sinnard.

Tomorrow: Strength.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Lovers

Wear what flatters you and wear what you love. Those might not be the same thing. So then you’ve got a choice to make.

You either break up with one, or you say, ok, look, we have to make this work. I love you both, beads and scarf.

I love you both, flat-iron and crimper.

I love a mournful purple shadow and I love a moody purple lip.

If you break up, do it clean. Stuff the loser in a bag and take it to the Salvation Army, or to a drop-box if it’s after-hours. I think there’s one up by the Hilltop HyVee. If you merge, merge hard. Commit. It’s the only way. You think a purple eyelid and a winey lip are going to work together if you’re not feeling them truly and completely? They are not.

Make a decision and wear it with all your heart.

The Lovers is sponsored by Alemar Cheese. 

Read about cheesemaker Keith Adams’ risky labor of love here. 

Tomorrow: The Chariot.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Hierophant

I don’t know how to tell you this but there’s no such thing as “no dress code.” There’s always a dress code. It’s just whether you follow the public one or the one in your head.

I got my first tattoo as protection against ending up with a boring job. I was really afraid of that. At the time, which was the mid-1990s, I was unsure about what kind of work I could get with my lit crit degree. I worried that someday I might feel desperate and apply for a soulkilling job. “Soulkilling” as in a job that would require me to wear a navy suit and nude hose. The best strategy I could come up with to insure against that was a tattoo on my ankle. I got a detail from Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. Superinsurance, right? What kind of businessy-business would hire a person who had this kind of transgression showing through her hose?

A few years later, even though I was safe in the nonprofit sector, everybody in every possible workplace in the world had a tattoo so I thought I should take it a little further. Just in case a bank presidency opened up and I forgot my values and applied for the job. I went to Cactus Tattoo and had my tiny Isis covered up with a large Jane Avril as she appeared on an 1893 poster by Toulouse-Lautrec, ecstatic, mid-sway, wearing a snake.

Jane Avril was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge. She was the only one allowed to wear red underwear instead of the standard requisite white. I don’t know if she ever wore a snake to work. If she did, I can’t imagine anyone said a word.

The Hierophant says write the code for what you want, then dress accordingly. Do that today. Do that right now.

The Hierophant is sponsored by Southern Minnesota’s reigning etiquette consultant Deenna Latus. Check out Deenna’s Etiquette and More page, and see if there’s anything you need, like a refresher course on how to eat soup during a business lunch or when it’s truly necessary to wear nude hose. 

Tomorrow: The Lovers.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Emperor

Dress for the place. That means look ready. It also means fit in, or don’t, but either way The Emperor says you should give it some thought.

For example. It’s a certain kind of pleasure to dress for the outdoors and then actually spend the day outdoors. It’s a different kind of pleasure to dress for the outdoors when you’re actually stuck inside an office all day long. For instance, you might try showing up for work with a bird’s nest in your hair. That would be a risk. Your office might now allow birds, or someone might be allergic. On the other hand, it might be a huge gift to everyone, bringing the outdoors inside that way. It’s possible that they would love to come to work with a bird’s nest in their hair, too, they just hadn’t realized that was within the bounds of the dress code. But now they do, and now it is, thanks to you.

Give this some thought today. The Emperor says dress for the place in which you want to be, and your chances of getting there will improve.

The Emperor is sponsored by Coffee Hag proprietress Jenn Melby, who looks like a rock star every damn day.

Tomorrow: The Hierophant.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Empress

Today is the day to make something. Even better to re-make something old. Strip it down, seam-rip it apart, cut off the sleeves, accidentally sew up the bottom.

You might not do it right. It doesn’t matter. A few years ago for my birthday my mom gave me a new sewing machine. It had everything. A pants-hemming presser-foot! A presser-foot for knits, so they don’t snag! I did a lesson with a teacher at Stelter Sewing. She walked me through all the tricks, including the darning foot so I could mend my family’s dish towels. I went from there to the fabric store and bought a silver satin remnant and a Hillary Duff pattern, and went home and made an A-line scoop-neck dress. It was so bad. I cut it wrong, so it was doomed from the start. In spirit, though, it was supercute.

I’m not saying you have to wear what you make. I’m just saying, your mom went to all that trouble to buy you a sewing machine. Or she taped your drawings to the refrigerator, way back when, and that felt great, and you went forth thinking your ideas might be worth something. They are. Today is the day to do something about that.

The Empress is sponsored by Salvage Sisters, center of the refurbishing universe. 

Tomorrow: The Emperor.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The High Priestess

It’s good to have an icon. Not so you can dress like her in a matchy-matchy way, but so you can work what you’ve got the way she works what she’s got.

I would suggest Madonna for this but I think the cheek implants were a mistake and we should avoid that direction. Avoid any direction that smooths one spot while everything else stays crepe-y. What kind of a life is that? It’s tense and fragmented. It’s too tight and also too loose at the same time. The High Priestess doesn’t want that for you. She wants you to feel like the queen of pop of your generation, exactly your age, with your cheeks and neck and just the way they are.

I suggest Chrissie Hynde or Lucinda Williams or Debbie Harry, or Nina Simone, or Diana Ross or Robert Plant. The High Priestess says get yourself an icon and let her show you how to dress. Do this today.

 The High Priestess is sponsored by Tune Town at Riverfront & Rock in Mankato. Here I am practicing idolatry in Tune Town’s Vinyl Vault.

Tomorrow: The Empress.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Magician

Everything you need is in your closet or your dresser or a junk drawer in the bathroom. It’s just so hard to see that on your own.

A few years ago my sister-in-law and I went through our mother-in-law’s closet and pulled out everything we hadn’t seen her wear in the past decade. Believe it or not, and I think you believe it, there were a lot of patterned sweaters and A-line button-front skirts in there. They had no business in her life or ours. We put that stuff in garbage bags and made her promise to get rid of it within a week. Then we took what was left, which was plenty, and mixed it up into outfits she hadn’t considered before.

She liked them, mostly. We liked that she let us clear away some clutter and show her that she really, actually, already had everything she needed. Once she weeded out the crap.

The Magician says you should open your closet and your drawers. Pull out everything, and I mean everything, the stuff in the back that doesn’t really fit or you never liked or whatever. Lay it out so you can see every piece. Then, start making introductions. Host a little meet-and-greet of the closet and make sure everybody makes one new friend. Forgive the velvet jacket for collecting so much lint, and just go buy a damn lint brush. Reconnect with the orange scarf your sister brought back from Israel, now that years have passed and you understand each other better and your hair is no longer that very same orange.

Get reacquainted with your stuff. Really, most likely, it’s everything you need.

The Magician is sponsored by Cynthia Bemis Abrams, who would love to do your other kind of fortune, the professional kind. The wear-your-inner-leader-like-a-hot-navy-blazer kind.

Tomorrow: The High Priestess.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Fool

Strip down. Start over. Forget what you know.

The Fool is the first card in every Tarot deck, the empty open starting point. The beginning of the journey.

The Fool in Ann’s Fashion Tarot is a well-coiffed woman who drops her nightgown to the floor in an empty bedroom in front of the mirror, and says, well, here I am.

I used to work in the fundraising office of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Those people knew how to dress. One of my coworkers had extraordinarily shiny pale hair, the kind that said, yeah, yes, I was raised in a home where conditioner was always available. She topped that off with little wire glasses and craft-show earrings. You know what I mean. A lot of wood and copper. Every day she wore a silk blouse or a superclassy thin-weave sweater. Every day she was braless. She looked the way it looks to bridge two worlds, the wealthy and the artsy, the polished and the awkward. She did that without saying a word, just by standing there. She looked a way that said, yes, your hands might get sweaty giving this gift, but they’ll stay clean. Sort of. Give it up, my man.

She did very well for the Orchestra.

Right after we started to be work-friends, she told me that the first thing she did every morning at home was walk up to her full-length mirror and pull off her nightgown and throw it on the floor. Then she took a good look. Then, I guess, she could get on with the silk blouse and the crafty beads and the day.

In that same conversation she also told me we should meet only in the office and never go to lunch because she preferred to be a colleague and not a friend. That stung. I mean I really dug her look. But, what are you going to do. You do not argue with a person who gets dressed that way.

The Fool says go find yourself a mirror. This is how we begin.

The Fool is sponsored by Yoga With Kelly, who asks that you show up dressed but think naked.

Visit Yoga With Kelly on Facebook.

Tomorrow: The Magician.