Recently, I saw an online photo gallery featuring the fashion choices Britain’s Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, has made since she’s come into the royal spotlight.
Fashionistas ooh and aah over her made-to-fit coats, designer dresses, tailored jackets and diamond-studded tiaras that look quite regal atop those long, thick brunette locks. Reporters gush about how Kate has embraced looking absolutely stunning every time she steps out of the royal limousine.
Well not all of us can be a duchess or a princess, but I also dress for different occasions. The main difference is my fashion choices aren’t reported in the news. Also, I don’t think my fashion choices are on the same level as the duchess.
So here’s the Queen of Calamity – it’s just me – reporting on the fashion choices the queens of calamity and clumsiness make as we blunder and stumble through our day.
Here I am at the grocery store on a cold day. The grey sweat pants match quite nicely with the black knee socks – don’t mind the holes — that coordinate with the sweatshirt and the LSU hoodie.
The spaghetti sauce and Ivory Linen paint stains make a nice pairing with the make-up-free face and the “I Believe in Bigfoot” baseball cap.
On summer days, life for the queen is a lot easier. It’s khaki shorts with 99-cent flip flops and a white or red T-shirt. No need to overdress when it’s 98 degrees outside.
Then there’s the go-to-work look. The Queen of Calamity has a variety of beige pants in her closet. She thinks they match everything, so she either wears the khaki-colored pants with an elastic waist or the tan Capri slacks with any shirt or sweater in her closet.
Let’s not forget the going-to-the-movies look. The queen does manage to switch out the khaki pants with the sweat pants for this outing.
Not the same stain-filled sweat pants but the baggy black sweat pants. That’s because they coordinate with the black T-shirt and oversized black purse. Her purse is probably considered vintage since the queen has lugged that suitcase around since the late 1990s.
Since we mentioned the purse, let’s talk accessories. The queen favors that huge black imitation leather purse because she can haul around the essentials – three notebooks for when an interview or the need to write down a grocery list pops up, two boxes of Tic-Tacs and 15 pens. A writer always needs an extra pen, and reporters can’t resist free pens from the credit union.
Queens of calamity also need shoes to match every outfit. There’s the white tennis shoes to wear to work. Then there’s the dirty white tennis shoes to wear with the sweat pants.
There’s also the grease-stained tennis shoes to wear to the grocery store. The queen said that, in all fairness, she must admit that there’s really only one pair of tennis shoes in her closet. She just labels them differently for different occasions.
Special occasions take the fashion choices to a new level. The queen favors the minimalistic look – no fancy jewelry except for a pair of gold hoop earrings. If they were good enough in 1985, they’re good enough to wear today.
Vintage, you know.
In fact, the vintage look encompasses quite a bit of the queen’s wardrobe. There’s the 2012 T-shirt with the kitten on the front. Cotton gets pretty soft after all those years, and who wouldn’t love a soft cotton shirt with a kitten on the front?
There’s the whole selection of holiday T-shirts, from garish orange shirts for Halloween to the red and green Rudolph T-shirt that’s acceptable from Nov. 29 all the way through Dec. 31.
And, for simplicity, there’s a couple of white T-shirts, red T-shirts and black T-shirts that coordinate with every single holiday. All come with stains because the queen of calamity is quite clumsy.
So while Kate Middleton makes headlines everywhere she goes, the queen of calamity goes about her day in quiet anonymity. But if you want to find her, she’ll be the one wearing a stained white T-shirt and that Bigfoot baseball cap.
The queen’s tiara’s at the cleaners.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.