Wear what where

I am risking a fair amount of embarrassment with this post, but what the heck.

This was towards the end of summer in Tallahassee, FL, a couple of months after I moved to the US for grad school. It was about 100F and apparently unbearably muggy for the locals. One of the professors in ChemE department hosted a pool party to beat the heat. My friend Anupa picked me up and we both arrived at the venue. Beautiful house, fancy pool, lots of food, and lots of people dressed in shorts, bathing suits or similarly appropriate clothing. Well, all but one. That one person had a pair of dress pants and a blouse on. That was me.

It was well before I owned any camera phones so no photos from that day but this was the outfit I wore to the pool party

At least in that case, I had pretty solid excuses. I was a classic FOB, never wore western clothes until I moved to the US so the fashion blunder was understandable. About five and a half years ago, we were invited to a NYE party hosted by a couple of Indian friends. I wore a shiny blue chiffon sari and matching jewelry despite the weird look my DH gave me. It was at the Portland Forestry center and as soon as we arrived, it felt like pool party part-2. Not a single traditionally-dressed soul. My friend was kind enough to tell me that there was plenty of time for me to drive home and change. I took her advice and ran home before I got any more strange looks.

There, my excuse for wearing a sari at NYE was that it was hosted by Indians. Fine. It was a near-miss and the situation was contained in a timely manner before embarrassment escalated. My take home message was- just because the event is hosted by Indians does not mean you wear Indian. I took it to heart. When we got invited to this Sweet-16 birthday party for a sweet Indian girl, I combined my real life experiences with whatever TLC channel had taught me about Sweet-16 parties and decided to wear a shiny blue cocktail dress. My little one kept saying how much she loved my outfit. The party was at a local country club. I had a good feeling about this one. There probably were about 100 people there. Assuming 50-50 M-F ratio, there were 50 females total, of all ages, and 48 of them in traditional Indian outfits. This party was well underway and my daughter and I could not run home to change. I volunteered to serve food as soon as dinner was announced, found a large pulav dish to hide myself behind. That was that.

The night of Sweet-16 party

More recently, during this past summer, I went to a kid's 2nd birthday party at a downtown Portland Ballroom wearing a sundress. Turns out my kid was the only one that gave me company with that wardrobe choice. The rest of the 100+ women in the ballroom were wearing their Indian best. This time, I did not even think about going back to change. When they dimmed the lights, turned up the music and opened the dance floor, I was glad my sweat was not going to ruin any of my precious silk possessions. 

With such illustrious history of fashion notoriety, I was amazed to find over half a dozen women that I didn't know stop me at an event recently and compliment my sari choice. Looks like I finally have it all figured out! 

After Mallika's Rangapravesam (classical dance debut)- It was the debut for this jute silk sari my sister bought me 

Somewhere between the pool party in Tallahassee and the kid birthday party in Portland, I developed thick enough skin to not worry too much about the fashion police. I wore a sari to the movies recently because I felt like wearing it- it was freezing in there and my sari kept me warm. I wore shorts to a weekly Sanskrit meeting where most people wore traditional outfits because I was going to go for a run right after.

It was not working out for me when I overthought things. Best things happened to me when I just did whatever made sense to me. I guess I am not just talking about my wardrobe choices anymore.

Adding some context to the crazies:

Weary from being wary of what to wear and where...

Last night was crazy, work-wise, and that stirred up many career-soul-searching thoughts. In the middle of the all-nighter, started putting a lot of those thoughts down on paper and it got way too serious. So to make it sound less depressing, replaced my personality traits and the resulting career ups and downs with my wardrobe choices and the various wardrobe-related embarrassments respectively.

Different situations, same underlying note for self.