“Naked people have little or no influence in society.”
-Mark Twain

Women of the world, raise your voices in the age old cry with me, “I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!”

And, melodramatic as it may sound, I genuinely mean it!  From the moment I got engaged, my so-called frivolous spending (Frivolous: as if looking good isn’t important.  Did none of you endure high school?  I spent mine more or less a tragic mess) was sharply curtailed.  Money was put towards a new apartment with a significant raise in rent, utilities had to be set up (which generally involved some sort of fee in varying degrees of heftiness), and I had to start putting down payments on everything.  My parents paid for the reception which was gorgeous (pictures may or may not be forthcoming, the photographer we used for it did a terrible job.  And I’m not saying that facetiously, ask Venice.  Bad), but I paid for my gown myself, plus shoes, veil, jewelry, hair, salon time for my bridesmaids and mom, bridesmaids presents, plus extra invitations when we discovered we didn’t have enough.  All that means much less money to spend on food, frolic, and fashion than a single girl might be used to.

Which leads me to my current predicament: this has been the first summer I’ve worked a legitimate post-university job.  I spent my first two university summers working in Belgium (significantly cooler than the western U.S. desert I’m currently sweltering in) and the next two either taking classes (and therefore in jean and tee shirts) or travelling/visiting my family in England.  My student jobs on campus all required me to dress up for work so my wardrobe had a couple pairs of nice trousers, pencil skirts, and nice shirts…all appropriate to an autumn and winter climate.  I also have a fair amount of jeans and teeshirts, which I can only wear on weekends now.  I have a new reason to long for my student days!

And so, now the many lovely cashmere sweaters I’ve amassed are no good.  The carefully-tended-to-make-them-last classic wool trousers are worthless in 90-100 degree weather.  Even long sleeves shirts are a heat-exhaustion risk for me because I like my weather much cooler, with more clouds in the sky, and a decent wind blowing, and not even 4+ years in this part of the world has cured me of that.  My boots, scarves, hats, dark tights, and coats, fabulous as they are, are simply useless to me until September!

Women seem to be slightly more at the whim of the vicissitudes of fashion than men.  It may just be me, but I’ve observed that our clothing seems to be made of flimsier stuff, which means that we either need to A) replace it often as it wears out, which costs us more, or B) have a large enough wardrobe to begin with so that we can rotate clothing so no one player gets too much time in the field.  This also requires not only money, but time, and planning!  And, even though I’m getting better, putting outfits together is not a skill that comes effortlessly to me.  My fabulous and talented friend Janssen over at Everyday Reading has an equally fabulous and talented sister who spent a couple of months showing her daily outfits on her blog, sadly she’s not doing it anymore because I got some really good ideas from it (along with bouts of mind mangling jealousy).  And this girl occasionally makes lots of her own amazing clothing!  Oh mother, how do I now regret those basic sewing lessons I scorned in my youth!

Of course it’s currently mid-July, so summer won’t be lasting much longer, so I should probably suck it up and just continue to rotate my two pairs of lightweight trousers for another month and a half.  We’re now starving newlyweds, trying to save enough to get to England to see my family for Christmas.  But…but…