Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Hierophant

Dec6

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

Dec5

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

Dec4

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

Dec3

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

Dec2

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

Dec1

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.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The Major Arcana is the new black

Nov10

Unlike other Tarot decks that come with disclaimers about how this is for entertainment purposes only, Ann’s Fashion Tarot is for real. Absolutely guaranteed to improve your style and your life and the world.

Homebound Tarot Card Reading Waitress by Claudia Danielson.

There are some risks. You might get The Empress card and end up cutting off the sleeves of something that was better with sleeves. You might get The Hanging Mannequin card, and accidentally hang upside down too long and pass out before you have a chance to show off your flushed cheeks. You might take the Death card too seriously and over-purge and get rid of things you’ll miss. That’s ok.

It’s all ok.

If you love a black silk blouse, set it free. If it comes back to you on the black blouse rack at your local Goodwill, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never really looked that good on you.