All Grown Up

Henri Matisse

Recently, I met up with a friend, a very accomplished woman in her mid-thirties, at an academic reception honoring a mutual friend. When she entered, all eyes turned towards her as she strode confidently across the room in her cropped black pants, a silk shirt, lovely heels, and gold earrings. When she made her way to me, she whispered, "I feel so grown up!" It wasn't that her clothes were "boring" or "older" (adjectives often associated with being an adult) but that she had the confidence and poise to dress up without the irony that hints at insecurity. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson

She had arrived at that moment: The moment when we feel we have enough gravitas to not only dress beautifully, but to feel like we have "grown up." It is a wonderful feeling, yes?

Men, it seems, have been growing up as well. I commented on the dress of a younger man at a cocktail party, complimenting him on his new look. He recently had completed a Ph.D. in physics and at the urging of his wife, had dramatically changed his wardrobe, trading in his ironic tees (at least for work and occasions like this) for clothes that included the tailored Brooks Brother shirt he was wearing. He said that colleagues treated him differently, with more respect. 

I could make a comment about superficiality and repeat, "The clothes doth oft proclaim the man," as sarcastically as Shakespeare meant it, but I don't think that is the case here. 

I suspect if his colleagues treated him with more respect, it is because he thought of himself with more respect. The clothes and the care he took to present himself was but one proof of it. It is not about how others see us: it is about how we see ourselves. 

What are our "grown up" clothes? It doesn't really matter. What matters is how you feel: capable, self-possessed, and sexy in a way that only a grown woman can be sexy.

Amedeo Modigliani

For me it was vintage suits and pencil heels I began wearing to work in my mid-thirties. I felt comfortable and strong and adult. For someone who had lived most of her life in jeans, in revolt against the values of the generation before, it was a leap. It wasn't that I hadn't lived up to the responsibilities of an adult before that (I had young children, a profession, a mortgage), but that moment signaled, not my acceptance, but my embracing it, a relief spread over me that I had not expected.  "I can do this" I thought.  I hadn't "settled." Far from it, my future seemed limitless. 

 It still is!

Cate Blanchett: one of my favorite grownups!