Hasn’t it been a gorgeous day today..? I’ve been too busy at work to enjoy much of it but I did nip out at lunchtime and it was glorious. Everyone I saw looked very summery and rumour has it this warm snap is going to continue over the weekend. So, on the face of it that’s awesome, and as it happens I’m away this weekend so even better. Except. Despite losing a chunk of weight I’m still not really built for a summer wardrobe.
Actually there’s no not really about it…I’m not, period. Summer wardrobes involve light fabrics and floaty little numbers which do absolutely nothing to try and fool the world at large that underneath these clothes I am in fact a size twelve.
Drawing on years of fat experience, I’ve found that black pants and a longish loose-fitting top with some sort of handkerchief hemline is the most effective ensemble when it come to disguising the worst of my lumps and bumps. My wardrobe is full of such items, and to be fair, whilst they don’t leave anyone under the illusion that there’s skinny action going on underneath, I don’t feel exposed, you know? I’m reasonably comfortable, like I’m making the best of a bad job.
So it’s not really the tops I’m worried about. It must be twenty years since I did sleeveless, and probably six or seven since any flesh above the elbow saw the light of day but lot of mine have three quarter sleeves and that’s practically arm naked in my book so I’ve sort of got summer covered for my top half.
The bottom half is a completely different story. I feel like a complete tool wearing black trousers on a hot sunny day, but it’s literally all I possess in my fat wardrobe. I mean I have a variety of them…black pinstripe for work (three pairs which have been worn in rotation for at least the last two years Monday to Friday) and plain black the rest of the time. And generally it works fine, except when it’s seventy odd degrees outside and everyone else has got their legs out for the summer…I feel completely out of place, like a proper numpty.
Skirts are not an option until I’m at least another two or three dress sizes down from here. I have horrible memories of severe chafing incidents and I’m not risking that…once it’s there even trousers don’t stop the burn, right? So it has to be pants. The warm weather has kind of caught me unawares, I thought I could give it another month before I needed to worry about a summer wardrobe. Bugger.
I seem to remember buying some elasticated navy palazzo pants with white spots on for the cruise last summer but they made me look like Coco the clown so I never wore them. Maybe I’ll try and dig them out from wherever I flung them in disgust and see whether almost seventy pounds off makes me look less like I’m missing a red nose and a hat with a flower.
On a slightly more positive note, whilst I was walking around Marks and Sparks this lunchtime I did have to keep pulling up said black pinstripe pants…I’m not filling them quite as well as I once did, and they are very stretchy so they’ve kind of flexed with my shape but pretty soon they’ll be consigned to the old life pile. Happy days.
This time next year I will be embracing every single sunny day, and telling you all about how awesome it felt to blend in…I can’t wait 🙂
