What do we say with what we wear?

So (a few weeks back now), after Toorak I went to the airport, and due at first to my mistakes and then to mechanical repair issues, found myself there for a while.

Thinking Toorak, and thinking of image and prestige, of belonging, I found myself looking at the people in the airport through this lens. Women in particular. Who, I thought to myself, are the monied here, and how is it from what they wear that I draw that conclusion?

It is so obvious to me, or at least the distinction I make so unconsciously but frequently (if somewhat unconsciously) it seems ludicrous to talk about. But sometimes the obvious questions are worth asking, so in that vein, I will answer.

I think the appearance of being wealthy (in that material, I could shop in Toorak way) presents as follows:
- immaculate, professionally done toe nails, fingers too. Wealthy ladies just don’t have unfortunate, half done, last week’s colour chipping off
- shiny hair or perky ponytail hair or bouffant hair but never frizzy ungainly ‘I just couldn’t do anything with it hair’. Bobs – lets face it the standard thick ear length grey bob is distributed unevenly by postcode.
- if older, then sometimes zany, asymmetrical flowing garments, layers, giant statement necklaces
- handbags which are big and stylish and fit everything in. They are rarely scrabbling around trying to get the zip to do up properly, or finding crackers for a child in there, or with things half hanging out because they didn’t plan what they would take today.
- facial expressions – can be fresh, nicely made up, and innocent looking. If sour or hard done by looking there is a whiff of ‘disappointed’ based on the expectation that things could have been better, service could have been better, stocks, shares, the deal could have gone better. It is a distasteful, ‘you just can’t get good service’ face. Or long suffering, ‘my husband is a bore but I put up with him because divorce is distasteful, and the homewares make the marriage worthwhile’ face. Constrast this with the faces of the less monied, especially those with frizzy hair, chipped nail polish and the ill fitting handbag – these people have faces of disappointment that says ‘the big things in life have disappointed me, the goodness of people, the reliability of life to turn out well, but I don’t know that things could have gone better’. This disappointment is accompanied here by a despair, a grief, underlined, circled in lines, which is absent from the annoyed or impatient faces of the monied.

I confess also my own personal hook into all this as just a few weeks ago had my (down my back long and red wavy) hair cut – just under the ears at the front and higher up at the back, and have started straightening it (because otherwise I get an uneven semi-fro). Meanwhile my old glasses became so worn I’ve reverted to a spare pair. These two unrelated acts have changed my visage somewhat, my rambling curly hippy/student/rock chick/ flake hairdo and my sexy librarian/ nerd grrrl/ gay boy fashion designer style glasses replaced with sensible, tidy, power dressing hair and neat, bronzy don’t mess with me business style glasses that a slightly funky but fierce 50 year old seamstress might wear. So, sometimes I get a creeping dread that I have wanna be Victoria Beckham hair, combined with wanna be business woman glasses. I am aware that I present differently with just these two things about my appearance changed, and I wonder how these little changes affect how people see us or people we don’t know read us.

So you can see, my trips to university have really been helping my academic development, as I muse on all the *big* things in life.