If you had asked me what my perfect outfit was ten years ago, I would've said something like "a 1940s dress with matching jacket, high heels, and a hat." If you had asked me this same question five years ago my answer would have been the same. Today my answer would be something like "my favorite orange pants, a t-shirt, and clogs or sneakers." So what changed?
Yesterday something small but significant changed: my instagram username. So long, @vintagerosegirl, hello @theweekendseamstress! It feels right, and big, and also very small and insignificant and, dare I say dumb, when placed against a backdrop of the shitstorm we're living through (which goes without saying, but I'm still gonna say it). But for me, it's the final step in letting go of part of my identity which hasn't been active in a long time.
I changed. Simple as that.
Complicated as that.
The vintage lifestyle chooses you, I suppose you could say. You notice that your sense of self worth increases exponentially when you're wearing a fabulous 1950s cocktail dress, that your body dysmorphia takes on a new flavor, one that you can live with, when you see yourself in a decked out suit from the 40s. You welcome the stares from strangers, the double-takes, and the "what are you so dressed up for?" comments from family, friends, and people in line at the post office. Your answer? "For life."
If we're doing an in-depth postmortem of my descent from the vintage lifestyle, I suppose the cause of death was something long and slow, rather than a sharp blow to the head. Vintage let go of me, and for a year at least I clung to it, trying to make it love me back. My life changed, my interests changed, my goals shifted, and my body grew. I found myself letting go of what vintage had become for me - a way to shield myself. When I was slathering on the lipstick and drowning myself in hairspray, you weren't seeing ME, but a version of me that I tried for years to make fit.
Add a psychologically damaging relationship with someone who fetishized my vintage-ness, a pregnancy and miscarriage that radically changed the shape of my body, and an ever-changing battle with atypical anorexia, and that was that.
Today I'm happy. I can say that with honesty and confidence. I'm sixty pounds heavier, curvy and round in places where I never have been, and the clothes in my closet fit me or out they go! I still struggle with my eating disorder, but the body dysmorphia is lessening, and the pressure to look a certain way is GONE. My vintage identity is gone. Much of my collection has been sold off to people who love it, which makes me happy. And here I am, The Weekend Seamstress. I love my partner, I love our home, I love our cats, I love my job(s), and sewing clothes for my changing body, and sewing masks for this current time in history, and reading and writing and singing in the kitchen and being more than "that woman who wears vintage."
I'm happy to know y'all.