The End of ODP Month

Sooooo...yeah.  That's that.  One month of wearing one dress (with limited exceptions).  I regret not being able to keep better track throughout the month, but I wanted more socializing with my new neighbors and less of sitting in my room on my computer.  I would still like to mention a few things about my experience.

First, my exceptions.  I was very often wearing my hiking pants and T-shirt for garden work, woodshop work, and other jobs that were dirty or where a loose skirt would be impractical.  Sometimes this was for a few days in a row, and sometimes I changed back into my dress at the end of a shift.  I did put on a costume to be in a small marching band.  I put on colorful and flowing festival clothes for the huge community holiday.  Part of my festival attire became my contra dance attire.  And when I ripped the seat of my hiking pants during a shift, I changed them out for similar pants that I have worn in their place since that time.

Now on to explanations.  My exceptions do agree with my internal sense of fairness; that is, I don't feel I broke the spirit of the rules with them.

My "work" clothes stayed the same throughout the month, besides the tear.  Same shoes, same plain grey T-shirt.  The replacement pants felt like they occupied the same stylistic space as the hiking pants (having an "outdoorsy" feel to them).  I wore this outfit for all types of physical work and physical play.  And I'm mending the tear while creating this blog post, never fear!


I only realized I'd torn my pants when I tried to brush the dirt off my bottom.




















It was very important to me to wear festival clothes when the big holiday came.  I knew this before my ODP month started.  This was the sort of holiday where practically all work stops because everyone has taken off of work.  It is THE holiday in this community, a holiday in the old, nonreligious sense.  I wanted a sort of visual suggestion of Pagan merriment and frolic.  Perhaps braiding my hair and making a crown of flowers would have filled this need for me.  In fact, I would have loved that.  But I went the route of attire and temporary tattoos this time. 

What some of the festive people chose.
pic by Cloud




The marching band was the day of the festival.  The uniforms were cobbled-together outfits of black.  I helped make epaulets and cockades of gold rope scraps, which we then stitched to coats and hats.  The ecological angle of these band uniforms is that they came from the community's common closet, and when we were done with them, they returned again to be worn by someone else (perhaps without the rope).  Nothing was purchased; no money exchanged hands.  It's a nice arrangement.





See, I've still been wearing the One Dress!

 


















Ah, contra dance.  It eventually deserves a post of its own.  So lively.  So high-energy.  So much spinning.  If belly dancers need a little jingle-jingle, contra dancers need a little swirly-swirly.  That means that most women and some men wear skirts that flair nicely during a spin.  So I recycled my festival attire, thereby minimizing the total number of outfits I wore this month.

  

Contra dance/festival skirt on the move.


  



 I eventually stopped being nervous about what people might say about my One Dress.  In the three weeks since I moved and met new people, I only got two pieces of feedback that weren't positive (they were neutral, sort of general remarks with skeptical expressions).  By far, people told me they liked my dress, it looked good on me, they liked how I wore it, and so on.  It's hard for me to know whether all this feedback comes from the dress's style (which is not mainstream) or from the fact that I was wearing it all the time.  However, if I were to venture a guess, I'd say people were reflecting on the style.  I think they really didn't care that I was wearing it every day.  No one remarked about how often I wore it, ever.  I understand that different social groups and classes have different rules.  I understand that my social group is not mainstream.  Yet I think what I learned can apply to everyone: People don't care about your appearance as much as you are afraid they do.

Everything drying on holiday morning, skivvies too.

I wonder if I will go on a clothes-wearing binge next week.  I will surely wear something new tomorrow while I do laundry.  Laundry has been the biggest problem for me.  My residence is dorm-style, and laundry is public (in another building).  I can't do laundry naked.  All my clothes get dirty, and the least dirty (my dress) ends up being what I wear while I wash the rest.  I could have given myself a laundry outfit, I suppose, to wear a few hours a week.  But this is being legalistic, I think.  I wanted to play by the rules of the game, and "laundry outfit" was not in the rules I made up.  Still, lesson learned: My biggest problem was laundry, not what people thought of me and my dress.



Last day of ODP month!

What is more likely than a binge is that I will slowly start wearing "new" garments.  I'll wear the One Dress often.  And when I receive the box of clothes that I didn't move with me, many of those garments will likely go into community use.  I sort of dread having to go through them, remembering the memories I've attached to them, remembering the ones that I wished fit better than they did.  ODP made life pretty easy.  Yay.

I will post some reflections on ODP month in the future.  Stay tuned if you're interested.