Cargo Capris are for Ditch Digging

If cargo capris are, according to Veronica Webb, solely for ditch digging (but how about that parallel alliteration, folks!), then perhaps this explains why my relocation to the City of Brotherly Love has turned into a move to the City of Why-the-hell-can't-Gigi-find-gainful-employment. Clearly, I've been barking up the wrong proverbial, professional tree. With my great love of cargo capris, I should obviously be toiling away in the Philly humidity day after day, lobbing pounds of dirt from a shovel in order to create holes in the ground. Let me tell you, this is not a career to which I am well suited for various reasons. But apparently it is a career for which I am well attired. As much as I love Tim Gunn, I love my cargo capris perhaps a tad more.

This is blasphemy according to Tim and Veronica. Strangely however, after listening to a voicemail my fahsionista mother just left me, Maman (she's fashionable and French!) disagrees. She called to say she watched the first half of last night's Guide to Style episode and then fell asleep, but before drifting off, she had the wherewithal to declare her belief that capris do not make everyone look short and dumpy. Amen and hallelujah, because much like last night's fashion makeover Nicole, as someone who refuses to wear shorts (and really, no one over thirty should, at least not in public), my summer ensemble usually revolves around the capri pant. Hell, even my winter wardrobe revolves around the capri pant--a switch from kicky sneaks to kicky high-heeled boots and we are, voila, season appropriate!

So my mother and I stand opposed to the belief that the capri pant has, as Tim suggested, contributed to the "slobification of America." And according to Veronica, slobification has resulted from mothers losing all fashion sense, a trend of epidemic proportions (call the CDC!). Veronica was honest enough to unabashedly admit to having fallen victim to the sloppy mommy virus, if one can believe such a thing. Yes, she divulged that she had, for a brief period of time, joined the park mommy set, wearing all sorts of capri and track pants (my other favorite item!) while pushing around her offspring with the other reproducers loitering beside the jungle gym.

And here I digress for a moment to discuss my great and newly discovered love of Veronica Webb. I find her delightfully bitchy while simultaneously wonderfully gracious. And watching Top Model on a Wednesday and Tim Gunn's Guide to Style on a Thursday, pitting the two host super models against one another, is most intriguing. When you think about Tyra and compare Veronica, well, let's just say therein lies the difference between the CW and Bravo, shall we? Let's put it this way, could you ever see Tyra co-hosting a show with the ever poised, ever proper Tim Gunn? You know I love my Tyra, but that Veronica...

And man, that Veronica has the best clothes on this show! Not to make another Ty Ty comparison, but as we all know, Tyra has made some extremely questionable fashion choices lo these nine cycles of Top Model. Conversely, Veronica is impeccably dressed in every shot--even in a hoodie (yet another favorite clothing item of mine!). Did you see the red v-neck hoodie? If I were to want to bear children in any way, I would give my first one for that item. And that would probably be the only one since, I, like Tim, after about an hour with many toddlers, have to send them back to the kitchen. I mean, their parents (Note to family and friends with little ones: you know I love YOURS!).

And with talk of hoodies and kiddies, the gist of this week's episode was that one need not be a sloppy mommy. One can easily be a stylish mommy with the help of a professional stylist, a super model, and a former cast member of Project Runway, who has to be the most fashionable mother of all times (not including mine, bien sur!). Unfortunately however, with her new Barbara Streisand a la 1969 hair style, Laura Bennett looks a bit more tranny than she did last year. But whatever her true gender, I still adore her. Aside from creating gorgeous, although derivative clothes, I will always love her because of that one shot from the first episode of last season's Project Runway in which Laura was shown in a perfect, white, fitted shirt and lovely black dress pants, standing calm, cool, and collected in her drool-with-jealousy worthy New York apartment, staring blissfully out of a floor-to-ceiling window as her five boys beat the crap out of each other and scream like holy hell mere feet away. I don't have one child, let alone five (now six for Laura) who pummel each other on what seems like an hourly basis, and I'm never that serene. I could learn a lot from Laura Bennett.

And, as usual, one can learn a lot from Tim and Veronica. Having watched the show three times now, lessons are obviously the M.O. The narrative is interrupted by Tim's contract, closet-cleaning methods, list of essentials, etc. all meant to continually teach us the basics of fashionable dressing. This is obvious, but what I love is that the true lessons are embedded in the show. So perhaps every episode, I will cull together the best lessons. For this week:

1. A good tailor is better than surgery.
2. A little Movado watch never hurt anyone.
3. Cargo capris are for ditch digging.
4. Formal print sun dresses are for grocery shopping.

Let's discuss this 4th lesson, shall we? In America, what Veronica and Tim dubbed early in the episode as Nicole's Golden Girls sweatsuit, is what we generally wear to run to the grocery store. In France, my mother's motherland, one dresses for the grocery store and everywhere else one might travel in the country, out of respect for the people who would see you. See, here we dress for ourselves, and there, you dress for everyone else. I see the value in the latter, HOWEVER...

However, before the however, I have to tell you that I spent a large portion of my childhood schlepping from store to store with my mother, accompanying her on what seemed like daily fashionista shopping trips, as if they themselves were mere trips to the grocery store. Ironically, every time she randomly popped into a store and tried on some gorgeous cashmere sweater, delightfully dressy dress, or super strappy sandal, she'd say, and I quote, "this would just be good to run to the grocery store in." So, I'm just sayin', I see what Tim and Veronica were going for when they put Nicole in a floral dress with spaghetti straps for errand running, but honestly, folks, you know that Golden Girls sweatsuit is what's getting worn the next time the kiddies cry over their spilled milk and someone needs to run to Pathmark for a gallon of cow juice.

In any event, Nicole did learn to be a fashionable mommy and that's a mighty fine lesson (although I could have done without the weighted vest o' guilt). Maybe not an applicable, every-day lesson, but one should not live by solid t-shirts, capris, and flip flops alone.

And for the record, I didn't like one of those Doug Hannant dresses. Is anyone with me? I hate disagreeing with Tim, but if my mother can do it, well, I guess the apple can stay close to the tree!