Teen’s Dressing Room Decision Leads to Mom’s Fashion Verdict

Mom on the Run

By LIANNE WILKENS

I’m in Kohl’s. In the dressing room. Looking. Thinking. Hard.

My sneakers are on the floor and my jeans are crumpled on top of my purse on that little corner seat. I’ve got two hangered black skirts on the hook, and a third on my body. I turn here and there, back and forth, assessing the image in the mirror. Hmmm.

Maybe a longer mirror would help, if I could stand farther back? Get a different angle, with a different light? Something to help me picture the skirt as I would actually wear it, with heels, instead of with my cheerful but so-wrong striped socks. So out I go, in search of a communal mirror, one that hopefully will reflect the perfect black pencil skirt.

Except … there’s no communal mirror in this dressing room. There are four little rooms in this alcove, each with its own full-length mirror, but no hallway mirror, nowhere else to stand without going out into the actual store. And I’m not sure this skirt has that much potential, really, to warrant all that.

Just as I turn to go back a young lady enters, looking for a dressing room of her own. She’s got an armful of jeans, and she looks to be in her late teens, with her long hair and her Coach sneakers. Aha!

“Excuse me,” I say, and she freezes and looks at me.

“What do you think of this skirt?”

Because this skirt, it’s from the Juniors section. The two from my own women’s section were wrong; one was too big, and there weren’t any in my size, and the other had a big waist panel and belt loops. I’m no longer buying and keeping in my closet any clothes that don’t make me look fabulous – no more cheap, “it’ll do” stuff for me, I have moved on in life and I’m not just Mom anymore, I want to look good – so those skirts, well, they just weren’t cutting it.

This skirt might do it, though. It’s got a great, flattering cut, and trendy but not wild little angled seaming at the waist. It doesn’t puff out in the front, and it’s all stretchy and elastic and very, very comfortable. And it’s a Juniors size!

A part of me giggles with joy. But … it’s tight. Every-curve, derriere-hugging tight. Much tighter and more revealing than anything I’ve worn in, oh, 20 years. And I’m pretty sure that’s the way this skirt is supposed to look – that’s the point of spandex, after all – but I’m also thinking that this skirt probably goes too far, especially in for my office.

So. Young lady in dressing room. A junior herself, obviously, who will make a pronouncement and help me decide. “What do you think of this skirt?”

“Umm .…” She looks at me uncertainly. She seems surprised that someone her mother’s age is asking her opinion. Finally she looks down at the skirt. I lift up my t-shirt so she can see the waist. I turn, left, right, let her see the whole thing. And, “It looks great,” she says.

“Really? It’s not too tight?”

“Oh, ah, no,” she says, with heavy, obvious hesitation. “Uh, that’s the way it’s supposed to look.”

And now I know. Yes, the skirt fits. Yes, it’s a good style. And yes, oh yes, this teenager clearly expressed that I’m too old for it, and that I cannot wear it in public. I thank the girl for her help, then go back into the dressing room, peel off the skirt, put it back on the hanger.

Well – a Juniors skirt! That was fun while it lasted, anyway. And back I go to the women’s section.