Pajama Faux Pas

What is the deal with people looking like they’ve just rolled out of bed and walked right out the door! In the 6 years I’ve been away from Canada, it’s gone from sex in the city tousled bed hair, to baggy sweats and pajama bottoms. Lulu lemon went from high-end sports wear, sport being the operative word, to casual everyday clothing. How did it end up being fashionable to walk down Spring Garden Road wearing plaid flannels and tight, tight yoga pants?

When did grooming and styling go out of fashion, only to be replaced by lackluster attempts of throwing on whatever happened to be left on the bedroom floor the night before. Are young people really so busy that they would rather forgo looking put together, for an extra 15 minutes of sleep? Or do Saturday morning brunches automatically call for baseball caps and pj’s? I must have missed that memo…

Where are the days of taking pride on one’s appearance, where it’s inappropriate to show your underwear, whether that be boys' boxers or a girls g-string. What happened to clean lines and accessories that don’t include ipods or cell phones. Have parents chosen to fight other battles and just let the ‘fashion’ one go, or has it always been this way and I’ve just gotten old.

I don’t remember being lazy when it came to my clothes. It was all about the styles and trends and fashion weeks. Sure I’m guilty of shoulder pads, and scrunches, florescent shirts, and leg warmers. I’ve had my share of bad perms and teased bangs, stone washed jeans and blue eye shadow. But hey, at least I tried. I would lay out all my clothes the night before, and make sure my ‘outfits’ were just right. I was especially good at the matchy matchy, where my earrings would match my headband, to match my shoes and belt! Oh, I miss those days.

Whatever happened to that mantra, ‘if you look good, you feel good’? That still applies to me. Even on sick days, should one really leave the house wearing checkered pants? And let’s not forget to tuck leggings and tights into those cozy, but god awful UGGS. Really, those were meant to be house shoes, hence why they’re so ugly…no one was ever supposed to see them!

Tesco, a UK supermarket chain, has banned people from shopping in their pajamas after complaints from other patrons who felt uncomfortable. While Shanghai, in preparation for the 2010 World Expo has recently launched a public campaign discouraging citizens from wearing pajamas outside the house. The city government claims that going outside wearing pajamas does not exactly conform to international etiquette. Really?! It’s no wonder North Americans are often seen as uncivilized; we’d likely not even know there was international pajama etiquette.

There is no doubt that fashion and clothing are an expression of freedom and individuality, so to ban any type of clothing infringes on those rights. But what about social consciousness? Is it really necessary to leave the house wearing lounge pants? I mean, is it even sanitary…would you really sit on a bus in your most intimates, only to come home and crawl into bed? Or, are there several pairs, ones for work, ones for play, and ones to snuggle up in, and dream the night away…

I myself feel somewhat embarrassed by our attachment to the über comfortable. If you’ve ever watched that show ‘What not to wear’ you know that most guests get nominated because they tend to dress like sloppy college students and wear ‘comfy’ doctors pants with writing on their bums.

Which brings me back to my original thought, is it really acceptable to wander amongst the public looking like we’re ready to go for a run, or just gotten back from Pilates. Is Dolce and Gabana’s Sleepwear Inspired Spring 2009 line really high fashion, because it’s created by famous designer icons? Certainly Italian women wouldn’t be caught dead wearing house or sports clothes to meet with friends for an espresso or cappuccino. Maybe we should take note, after all Rome is the fashion capital of the world.

Fly Away

I wish I could just fly away, to anywhere but here

To be somewhere else, to live something new
where filling my senses, is long overdue
To be swallowed up, by the immense high
of watching new cultures and people go by

To walk in places where no one knows me
embraced by the warmth of anonymity
To be where opinions don’t really matter
no daily grind, no mindless banter

To get on a plane is really living
while the time in between is merely existing
To faraway places I can only imagine
feeling alive, in the midst of the action

But to end up here, of all places we searched
in the hollow trenches of mother earth
To accept my fate, or greater plan still unclear
not sure I have strength to conquer a new frontier

I wish I could just fly away, to anywhere but here

Perfect Place

Where beginning and end meet, where
the smell of my grandmother lives,
as does her memory. I can fly in this
nirvana, unaware of my feet, and feast
on freedom. In this beautiful place,
I don’t need a mirror to know
I am tall, thin
and perfect. My body is graceful
and light, my hair thick and shiny.
No pain plagues me, no tears
of frustration, no rejection.
My father visits from time to time,
a strange familiar face,
asking for forgiveness.

Fantasy

She waits sitting at the bar wearing a beautifully tailored suit and gorgeous black Manolo Blahnik heels she’s picked for the occasion. A hint of her lacy bustier peeks out from behind her blazer where she’s undone the first button. She runs her finger along the rim of her wine glass and lets the back heel of her shoe dangle off, wondering whether he has arrived yet, and is observing her from a distance. She takes a quick look around and scans the room. No sign of him yet. She returns to her drink and takes a sip.

What she hadn’t noticed, however, was that he had arrived, about 10 minute before her. He sat in the darkest corner of the room, and had watched as she walked in from the cold, checked in her coat, unbuttoned her blazer, and taken her seat at the bar. He knew she would order her favourite glass of Shiraz, and nervously play with her hair all while seductively posing herself for his arrival. He had gone to the extra trouble of putting on his charcoal suit combined with the white crisp shirt he knew she loved. Even he knew he looked good for a change, as he hated to get dressed up, but she loved when he looked as if he’d just walked off the cover of GQ Magazine. In some ways she was so predictable, like a pair of comfortable old slippers that you look forward to putting on at the end of a hard day’s work. Yet, there she was, the sexiest thing he had ever seen, not sure what was going to happen next.

She wondered where he was, and whether he had changed his mind. It wasn’t like him to be late. She checks her cell phone in case she’s missed a message, noticing it’s been 20 minutes since she’s arrived. As she takes her last sip of wine thinking maybe she’d better head home, another glass appears in front of her, ‘from the gentleman in the corner’ says the bartender. She swivels around to see whom it’s from, but there’s nothing there but a shadow. Is it him she wonders? The cell phone, still in her hand suddenly beeps, startling her so she jumps back nearly falling off of her stool. Shit! Not sexy, she thinks. She hears the shadow chuckle. She’d recognize that noise anywhere. It’s him, and he’s been watching her all along.

He tries to stifle his laugh, as she scrambles to regain her composure. She reads his text, and smiles, a wave of relief washing over her. He sees her relax as she breathes out a heavy sigh, and takes a sip of her drink. She slowly crosses her legs, with a smirk on her face, and starts texting him back. She loves this game, playing seductress…taking it outside the bedroom. He looks down at his phone, to see it’s lit up. ‘Let’s play’ it says. He looks back to the bar where she was sitting, only to see an empty chair. He quickly walks over, and asks the bartender where she’s gone. The bartender says nothing, but slides over a matchbook. He knows what’s inside even before he’s opened it; he’s seen it before. He gave it to her the first night they met, all those years ago, and there right next to his old email address, she’s written: Husband, I’m waiting in room 314.

Tradition

Tradition or not?

I wasn’t really sure what I wanted for a wedding when we first started planning. Yet I knew that I never wanted a big white wedding. I never wanted 100 guests. I never wanted all the wedding stress and planning madness, and I certainly didn’t want to spend a lot of money on just one day. I was never one of those girls who dreamt of traditional princess weddings. It simply wasn’t me. But guess what, I got just that!

I had been to enough weddings to know for sure what I didn’t want. I didn’t want big, expensive, kitsch or chichi. I didn’t want really long breaks with nothing for our guests to do. And most of all I didn’t want to glue, tape, wrap, stuff or lick anything myself.

Tradition is a funny thing, it’s something we don’t necessarily believe in, but follow anyway. Some would say the same of marriage. So isn’t it ironic that weddings seem to have more traditions involved than anything else. No matter how traditional or untraditional a wedding may be there are simply some things you can’t get away from.

During my 16 months of wedding planning I found myself often clashing with traditions. I was planning a long distance wedding from Germany, where I lived at the time with my now German husband, yet the wedding was to be held in my hometown Vancouver. Germans have a very different take on weddings, they like things small, discreet, and very traditional. Canadians are more opulent, extravagant and sometimes extremely untraditional. Somewhere there had to be a happy medium, but I wasn’t sure where.

My dress was the first tradition I broke. A big white dress made me look like the Stay Puft marshmallow man. And every other shade of white, off-white, ivory and champagne still made me look like an enormous cupcake. Believe it or not, the slimmer the dress was cut, the bigger it made me look. The only colour that worked was a beautiful shade of cappuccino. So out the window went the idea of a bride all dressed in white!

When we started thinking about our ceremony, I just couldn’t imagine marrying civilly. In Germany, the civil ceremony is the only legal one, and if the couple is religious then they marry a second time in their house of worship. It wasn’t easy to figure out how to combine my traditions, his traditions and our actual wishes all into one. Not to mention my mother’s traditions, his family traditions, and that of our customs and heritages. We thought about running away and getting married on a beach somewhere tropical, but in the end it wouldn’t have made us happy.

The more we thought about what kind of wedding would make us happy, the more we realized it’s the people who participate that make the difference. I couldn’t imagine getting married without all my girlfriends being there or without at least some of our German family & friends. Unfortunately for us, not enough guests were willing and able to come see us marry in the tropics, so the guest list went up, as did the budget, and to even out cost, I sucked it up and glued, taped, wrapped, stuffed and licked everything myself.

As the wedding approached I started getting more and more excited about the little things I once thought nauseating. I wanted to give my guests favours, design my own centerpieces, create our own programs. I thought it would be funny to take dancing lessons and choreograph our first dance. Everything to make this party as enjoyable and fun not only for us, but also for our friends and family. And so I succumbed to the traditional wedding mayhem, and bought my first bridal magazine, 6 months after my engagement.

Living in Germany, it wasn’t easy to organize a traditional bridal shower. And unfortunately this was one tradition that I really missed. I especially missed hearing advice from former brides who share the wisdom they had gathered along the way. I call these ah ha moments, where a bride has a revelation that she takes with her into her new marriage. German women think it’s bad luck to give gifts and celebrate an upcoming marriage beforehand. So it was wedding magazines that I turned to for those ah ha moments. I remember wondering when my ah ha moment would be.

In the end everything about our wedding turned out to be a big mish mash of traditions. A female rabbi married us under a Huppah in a traditional Jewish ceremony intertwined with a civil one as well. The German guests read Hebrew blessings. Over the rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole replaced traditional Siman Tov & Mazol Tov as we walked back up the aisle. And my dress, although cappuccino, was very princess like.

Our reception was intimate and romantic, given 100 people all squished into a little room, however, with a phenomenal view of downtown Vancouver. We didn’t have a head table but rather a family table. We didn’t do a garter toss, but played German wedding games instead. We opted out of an over the top three tear wedding cake for a divine single layer double chocolate mousse cake and fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies. And after the parents boogied down to Hava Nagila, the rest of us Salsa danced the night away.

And as for when I had my ah ha moment, it actually occurred before the whole day even began. At the break of dawn I watched my soon to be husband sneak out of my childhood bedroom the morning of our wedding. We hadn’t wanted to follow tradition and sleep apart the night before. We knew that we would just end up stressing over how the other was doing. And as I watched him drive away, I felt so lucky to know that in spite of our differences, our love was strong enough to start our own traditions now.