Today, we welcome back Sonu, better known as
slowburn online. You might remember her from the super informative post on
Caste versus Colorism, here on Hue. Sonu is a South Asian emigre who's lived in the US for twenty years. She is married to her much beloved American husband who is upfront about being fairly clueless about color and attire unless something's hideously off. Mother of two, writer for hire, and rapidly approaching 40 she's less worried these days about "what goes" - between keeping it together it's all about not scaring the kids or alarming passersby. She cleans up well and figures stylists will show up with the producers if she ever makes it to the big show.
How Old is that Color?By Sonu
You're probably familiar with Jenny Joseph's poem, “
Warning,” the one that starts:
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me
The poem is primarily about getting to a certain age and no longer giving a hoot what other people think. But I always found the idea of purple and red behind those lines kind of baffling. Because where I come from purple, as in deep rich eggplant purple, is totally an older woman color! It's a color of maturity, of someone who is no longer young, someone who runs things such as a household and budgets.
It says matriarch. It's something young'uns, they who are still in the fresh bloom of youth, do not age themselves by wearing. And red, oh red.
Fire engine red is a classic wedding color for a blushing bride,
and deeper reds, everything from vermilion to maroons, are the color of matrimony,
from sindoor in a married woman's part,
to bangles on her wrists.
The only women who don't wear red, or tone it down heavily, are widows.
Before I go any further, I should mention that although I'm still technically an Indian citizen, I've now lived outside India for the majority of my life. And my memories of India, and of Indian wardrobes are heavily informed by the fact that we usually went home for vacations, aka, wedding season!
Where no one is dressing soberly or normally. Can you say “My Big Fat Indian Wedding”? So if you're Indian and you're reading this post, you may well disagree, but you have to admit, there are young colors and there are the, um, not so young colors. But I digress....because the point is, who decides what ages should wear certain colors? It's up there with the other Indian idea of how people with certain (read: darker) complexions shouldn't wear certain colors.
Imagine my epiphany when I arrived in the U.S. to find African American women, many much darker than yours truly, wearing precisely all those colors – bright blues, hot pinks, bright reds, and yeah, pastels of every sort. And they looked great! Which goes right back to one of my firmly held beliefs, that beauty is an utterly social construct. And like humor, especially the culturally specific kind, those constructs do not always travel well. Once again, I digress....
I do understand that as we age, we should dress appropriately, or rather, in ways that do not make us look silly. I'd say that's a fairly universal idea. But in the west, where dress has changed drastically in the last 150 years, dressing appropriately – even in a society where the definition of “older” has changed drastically, (thank you baby boomers!) has meant retiring objects of clothing, not colors of clothing. It means dressing tastefully as you age in terms of how much skin you show and how the clothes are cut.
Exhibit A: Helen Mirren at the 2010 Oscars, where she looked good wearing something that was sexy and sensual. But she looked like herself, an older person who wasn't trying to look a minute younger than her age. Her clothes were not young and would have aged a younger woman. But the gorgeous Ms. Mirren was wearing a lovely steel gray,
which was also worn by Kathryn Bigelow, who is a few years younger, and Kate Winslet, who is fully 30 years younger.
The color didn't matter. The clothes weren't defined by them. And I say this because gray turns out to be another older lady color in India, and I learned that one the hard way while sari shopping. Because the sari and the salwar kameez in everyday garb hasn't changed all that very much in the last century. Blouse styles, prints, and fabrics certainly go in and out of vogue. And how you drape the sari may get finessed a bit. But it's still a five-yard long length of cloth, wrapped artfully regardless of age or figure. And what separates the maiden from the mother and the crone seems to come down a little bit to print, a bit more to fabric, and a lot to color.
I ran right into the brick wall of “aging colors” when I was not quite 30. It was my first trip back to India in a long time, and I was finally in a position (aka, making real money for a change) to build my own collection of saris. I wanted more than the two I'd married in (standard red, and an un-standard very lavish cream), the two “little black dress” work horses I'd worn over and over (both black, one plain, one very embroidered), and the random assortment of “young debutante” saris I'd been gifted over the years (apple green, creams with colorful borders, busy prints).
Certainly, approaching 30, not yet a mom but much married (whole other blogpost!), I was starting to look a bit long in the tooth in the
bandhanis and garhwals. They were perfect when I was in my early twenties what with their light weight and colors and big and pretty borders, but married and approaching 30? In weight and color both, they lacked …. gravitas.
So there I was at the sari store. And I fell head over heels for two grays. Steel grays. Sophisticated grays. I'd seen my mom wear both (which should have been my first hint), and although she's lighter in complexion, I didn't see why I couldn't pull it off. At least not in the US where no one cares about such things – here I just look Indian, know what I mean? Anyway, I had this vision of me as an Indian lady who lunched, and it would be perfect if I was ever invited to some fancy sit-down embassy dinner where they would be thoroughly appropriate (and that should have been my second hint). Then we got home and Mom, trying to be supportive, said something to the effect of, “You seem to have shopped strategically, not just for now but for later!” Huh? “Well you don't know when you'll be able to shop for saris next, so you've got a good variety, including some for when you're older. Like the grays”
Oh.
Grey, regardless of print, was apparently for the older set. And yet I'll bet that is not something you'd think here in the West – where grey, particularly in a well-cut suit at work that makes you look grown up, but not over the hill by any stretch of the imagination!
And then of course, there is black. I've already alluded to the two black saris I owned. They were my mouthiness made apparel. Even the heavily worked up one had the lush grandeur of a lacquered Chinese wall hanging. Dressed in it, I noticed that people didn't walk up to me so much as they approached, carefully. (Could just be the shock of seeing me nicely turned out for a change, but work with me....) Thing is, my black saris were not for the faint of heart, and neither was I when I wore them. Important data point: For years, at any Indian party, I was nearly always the “feminist!”, and the confusing one at that. Because I looked the part of a conservative in a sari, after all I learned to wear one from my grandmothers who saw no reason to change how they dressed, regardless of what they thought. But they were far from conservative too. And you couldn't pay any of us to be demure or soft-spoken. So not happenin'. So not in the black sari. Which is when it hit me – they were my version of rebellion.
They're what a modern Indian danseuse would wear to announce a departure from tradition before taking a single step. They're very … Martha Graham. Not that I looked scary or anything. But I wasn't a docile traditionalist in them either. Which is highly ironic because I really am rather traditional in how I wear my saris. Meaning, I love Bollywood, but for the love of God, it's entertainment. Not real life, where the pallu is meant to cover your chest, not show off your cleavelands.
I do have other colors in my sari collection, by the way. Because the two grays were part of twenty-five saris I picked up that afternoon. (No, I don't do anything by half measure.) And I have added to them since then.
So I have bottle greens, deep fuchsia pinks, mustards, saffrons, brick oranges, and many many grown-up creams, the kind with intricate borders and gold embroidery. Young women could wear these saris, and indeed I do remember wearing some like that when I was a teen, borrowed from The Store of Mom.
But I distinctly remember looking as many think Miley Cyrus did at the same 2010 Oscars. A bit nervous. Like I was trying very hard to fit in at the grown-ups table. Because while they're bright colors, they're grown-up colors. And I like to think that when I wear them now I look like I've come into my own, elegant, soignee.
I look like someone who can make witty banter at a cocktail party, someone who can go from Sandra Bullock to
Cap-and-Trade to Eyjafjallajokull without skipping a beat. Heck, I look like someone who can actually say
Eyjafjallajokull. Operative words, “look like.” But it occurs to me that even in my child-free days, when I was a newshound, I didn't wear certain colors.
I've always refused to wear lime greens, aqua blues, canary yellows, or fresh oranges, even when they were what a young person was supposed to be able to wear –
I am from a tropical country, I'm not an Actual tropical country.
And then there are beige, pastels, and soft pinks. Beige is …. beige. 'Nuff said. I was never a beige girl. I have no desire to disappear into the woodwork. There are other ways to be a quiet and dignified presence. And pastels and pinks? “For babies and good girls,” as my equally arch sister puts it. I sneered at both as a kid because I wasn't that nice or well-behaved. I'm better behaved now, but I avoid them anyway because well, I'm an adult. And it wouldn't make a difference if I wore a medium weight pastel kanjeevaram or a light weight organza pastel.
That whole section of the store always seems to me the equivalent of a …. snow cone, a cotton candy confection, a frilly A-line Easter confection. Complete with big bonnet. I'm staring at 40 and I would rather wear a paper bag over my head in public. And yet, pinky beige, and soft pinks of all sorts are precisely the color I have seen on many a mother-of-the-bride in the US. Here in the U.S. they're colors just about anyone can wear. They do not say older, or younger. They just say sweet on a good day. Innocuous in general. And no, I refuse to be put into that box because I've gotten older.
Funnily enough, it is precisely that palate – beige and pale pink – that I was gifted by my grandmother when I was married. (The same grandmother who wondered at how classically – aka boringly – all my sari blouses were cut. “Don't you want to show off any skin at all? You're not even 30! You still can!”) It's a lovely, incredibly elegant, beautifully woven, and very expensive number sari. Every time there is an important event, I take it out of my cupboard, look at it with great affection and promptly pass it up for something brighter, something hipper, something with a bit more oomph, something more me. I don't think it's an age thing. I think perhaps I'm just not mellow enough to wear it yet. Meanwhile I have yet to wear my two beloved grays and equally “old lady” aubergines – oh yes, bought a couple of them too! Because between young children, life, budgets, Eyjafjallajokull, and life in general, there just haven't been that many opportunities. But that's the upside of saris. They never go out of style and my boring cut blouses will still be just fine when I finally have some of my life back. I will even be age and color-appropriate for some of my collection, collected back in my late 20s. But I will wear what I because I want to. Just like the lady in the poem. It's a very nice thought.
