Act your age, not your shoesize...

However, Prince was probably not addressing Europeans, seeing as my shoesize is a respectable 39 over here.

But this whole idea of dressing my age has been on my mind a lot lately. For one, all of these insane outlet sales has me trying on a zillion different pieces as I reassess my style completely. I'm lucky to have gotten help for the past seven years from my tell-it-like-it-is-shopping-goddess Maria. She's the one who made it clear that I can wear: 1) other colors than black and dark blue 2) printed fabric 3) and not everything has to be worn with jeans.

Looking down at today's at home outfit, blue t-shirt with black combat pants, let's just say I'm still a work in progress.

Another asset that I have is my 12-year-old self-proclaimed fashionite/model-wannabe daughter. When we go to her hip teenybopper stores (I say that in a positive sense), we drool over the same colorful printed t-shirts with cute prints and juvenile sayings. She hands me a Sesame Street shirt because she knows I love the Cookie Monster, and it is adorable, but on her it just looks so right. On me, it just looks so dated.

And this is something I hadn't really considered earlier, even though I'm still not completely over having passed 40. Yesterday I was sitting outside at a sushi restaurant and noticed a mother-daughter couple similar age- and fashionwise to me & L as they were looking in a neighboring store window. The preteen daughter = cute as a button. Fresh looking mom in cool t-shirt and olive colored combat pants = so my style, and yet... The next day I spotted the same t-shirt on a teenage girl and was forced to admit that the t-shirt agreed with her at least 100% more.

Then there's Trinny & Susannah, whom I happen to enjoy watching. I like the fact that they tend to get women to wake up and smell the maturity. I don't need to wake up; all I have to do is try to put on a pair of shorts from last year to realize that the changes are not only coming - they're heeeereee... So maybe I need a pant with a higher waist that chops my trouble area in half. A looser fitting blouse with details around my bust is probably more flattering than fitted tops in stretch-material.

Maybe it's not so much about redefining who I am as it is about removing the taste goggles from a 20-30-something-girl so that I can discover the real 4o-something woman waiting to emerge.