transretrogurl

In the long standing tradition of the internet I thought I’d start this post by nicking someone else’s quote (but not pretending it’s mine) – saw a wonderful post somewhere where a T-Girl was having a rant about being asked “why do you wear women’s clothing?’, to which her response was ‘I don’t, I wear *my* clothing’. For some reason that gave me a little thrill, partly because one of the big features of my early fetish period around dressing was the raw feeling of, when you finally button up the blouse or zip up the dress, the fact that you were wrapped in a garment specifically produced for a woman.

Wow, thats the first time I’ve managed to digress from the point of the post before I started. Almost proud of myself.

Anyway, after the last post which was a tad Eeyore-from-Pooh-bear-esque I thought I’d lighten the mood with a little splash of colour. Well, multiple colours actually, because I want to talk about Sarah’s, and most women’s, approach to the palette of fashion.

See, drab me is, and I hate to say it, a tad boring when it comes to the male clothes side. He’s stuck, stubbornly, with the colour black for thirty years, partly because, well, black, but mostly because there was an unsaid, or rather a more often said, definition that any colour other than black or grey was girlie. So, in a wonderfully ironic ‘don’t let anyone guess I have a femm side’ way he/I adopted the bland grey and black shades for all clothes in the vain hope no-one would ever think I like the fashion of women.

Fast forward thirty years and he/I still wears the same colours, but now, courtesy of the technology known as the Internet, it can be seen that Sarah is a horse of a vastly different colour.

Sarah’s choices of colour have been very much an experiment in enjoyment, a chance to dabble in the pinks, the yellows, the patterns that drab me could never wear, and it’s been a blast. However, given thirty of years of a single hue drab me doesn’t really have a clue how colours work.

So, a quick fashion show methinks to show some of the more fun colours/patterns Sarah has dabbled with, whether they work or not….

Just a quick caveat before I start to gush on the wonderful colours and patterns a girl has to choose from – thirty years of choosing black and, you know, actually being a bloke means that I have somewhat of a colourblind approach, especially around blue and green. In fact I can’t really tell the difference between blue and green so if I get it wrong, just pretend I’ve called the frock grue or bleen instead.

Pink, the stereotypical girlie-girl colour

I love pink clothing. There, I said it. There’s something deliciously wonderful about slipping on a pink dress that adds that extra touch to the feminine experience. I have bought a number of outfits purely on the fact that they were the right shade of girlie-pink, and they’ve pretty much always worked a charm.

Let’s start with a pale pink number – I love this ‘coy housewife’ look, the style of the frock is very submissive and the colour is gorgeous. Chuck in a pair of pale pink heels and it’s a serious ‘squee’ time, tempered by the need to get in the kitchen and cook my man a meal. Being serious though, the pale pink is a nice colour but it is a little restrained, which is nice for shoots where you want to soften the personality, but not in your face.

And we start with my colour-blind confusion. Is this one actually pink? I think it’s a salmon colour, some people might say orange. Either way I *love* this colour with this style, a warm and more mature look. You can tell from her face that Sarah likes this one, combined with some darker open-toed sandal style heels. I call this look my ‘banker’s wife’ look, which, combined with the first one, seems to show a tendency towards domesticated bliss.

Oooo, probably one of my favourite all time frocks. When this gorgeous hot-pink and white polkadot Kitty dress went on sale at Vivien of Holloway’s website I had been frantically refreshing the page for at least two hours, waiting for the stock to drop. When you find yourself sat at home, wearing black pyjamas of course, rabidly refreshing a page in the hope that it changes to ‘available’ I think you can start to call yourself a mildly obsessed woman when it comes to buying dresses. I’ve never had that urge before and, going to be honest, it was a bit of a thrill being one of the first ladies to snag one of these.

Anyway, enough gushing on the purchasing process, this colour is adorable. Nothing shouts ‘feminine’ more than a hot pink in my opinion, and the offsetting of the effect of the pink with white polkadots is perfect. The colour is just girlie on every level. I actually came within three minutes of wearing this very outfit, albeit with a more modern hairstyle, out to the Wayout club, but chickened out at the last moment because I was pretty sure I’d end up getting a lot of attention strutting my stuff around a London pub wearing that frock and, amusingly, deferred to a more restrained black outfit, although with a lovely floral print. Being honest, I wish I had gone out wearing this outfit, it would have been a lot of fun flirting. Hell, here’s the look I almost inflicted on the Wayout:

Check out the heels! Dribble…..

Blue is for Boys

Really? When I was growing up one of the oddest questions kids tended to get asked was ‘what is your favourite colour?’. I used to say blue because it was the stereotypical boy’s colour, and choosing blue as my favourite colour would of course bolster the facade to the outside world that I was normal. Cough.

Well, turns out there’s a lot of blue in the spectrum when it comes to women’s fashion…

See? Completely masculine. Topped off by the gorgeous silver heels, a perfect male outfit for hitting the town with the lads for some drinks.

Again, a result of my 1970s upbringing, where pink for the girls and blue for the boys. But of course, the colour blue can be very masculine as shown by the next outfit.

OK, I cheated a bit. It’s the tiara, right? That’s what makes it a feminine colour.

So blue is another colour that works gloriously in frocks. It could be down to the vibrancy of the colour – in the ‘belly dancing’ look above that blue, which IIRC is Royal Blue, is a lovely shade and in the Disney Princess look it’s a much more light and vibrant. Maybe toning the blue down would make it less feminine?

Nope. And I love this look, kind of a ‘lady at Ascot’ feel to it. OK, I’ll let girls have blue as well.

Yellow is only for cars….

Yellow is an odd one. To me yellow is a colour of summer, of hot long days waiting for the sun to go down. Drab me would never wear anything yellow – given my fifty year old complexion, the ‘I sit inside all day on a computer’ skin tones and dark black hair yellow just doesn’t work to do anything other than make me look like I’m suffering from malaria.

But the few times Sarah has tried yellow it’s been a nice change.

Again, chuck in a tiara and suddenly she’s a Disney princess. I have a soft spot for this dress, grabbed it off of Amazon and it just comes alive when you put it on. Also it’s a satiny fabric that feels so nice against the skin. Said it before and I’ll say it again, the fabrics that are used for women’s clothing are just sublime to wear compared to the sack cloth and hessian that all bloke clothes seem to be made of.

There’s not a lot of yellow in Sarah’s cupboard, in fact I think she’s only ever had two yellow frocks, the one in the picture above and a 1950s style day dress with an animal print that looked very mumsy, but yellow seems to work.

I may have said it, but I have a soft spot for that frock. Especially when Sarah does the 1950s diner-girl look….

Red is for sultry lipstick and hot nights.

Or so I’ve been told. Again, red can be somewhat of a masculine colour, but the majority of red frocks that Sarah has worn have been just gorgeously sexy. It’s odd that a colour can change the feel of an outfit entirely, but the red looks I’ve done always seem to be the ones that sizzle.

Of course, I may be simplifying it. Not all red frocks ooze sensuality and ‘take me to bed’ overtones.

Err, OK, maybe not the best example. That’s a hot outfit that wasn’t designed for any reason other than to ooze feminine sexuality. But as I said, they can’t all be like that.

Yeah, the ‘Santa’s Cummin’ hat doesn’t help with my point there really.

Hmm. So, whenever Sarah throws on a red frock it looks like she turns into a maneater. Maybe red is a sultry, sexy colour after all. Granted, every picture I’ve put up so far seems to show Sarah about to jump on a man and sexually ravage him, but that’s got to be a side effect of the way the ‘scarlet’ woman has been portrayed socially. And yes, wearing red gives a thrill in a different way to, say, wearing pink. You do feel sexually empowered.

And making the frock extra short helps when going for the attractive angle. So I’ve heard. *Cough*.

Green, a colour for the more subdued lady

Ahh, green. As I mentioned earlier I have a real problem telling green and blue apart, but interestingly the green frocks in Sarah’s extensive wardrobe all seem to bring out the subservient housewife in her. I like to think I’m a relatively clever person that doesn’t buy into many of the sexual stereotypes, but after Red i may have to rethink that. And in that spirit green seems to bring out the Stepford wife in Sarah, which I’m going to admit is one of my personal turn ons when it comes to fetishizing the dressing experience.

I’m going to be honest – this look is one of my all time favourites. There’s something vulnerable and beautifully cute about the style of dress that makes the real Sarah come out. This is the woman I would be if I’d been born a woman. The green/white polkadot dress looks very plain on a hanger but just comes alive when she wears it. I look at that picture and I see an older woman who has made the choice to settle down, maybe have a family, but has a regret that she did. You can see the girl she was in the way she dresses now. But that could just be the author in me reading way too much into her eyes.

Wow. See how different a colour can be? Chuck on a red frock and Sarah is a cougar, chuck on a green frock and she’s doing the ironing and sighing softly to herself.

Of course, Sarah has a *lot* of green retro frocks. Especially the subtle green that reeks of 1940s land girl fashion. Such as:

I love the green flower in her hair as well. I bought this dress (and a red one of the same style which looks completely different and sexualised) because I loved the style and it was called a ‘hostess’ dress, which gave me one of those odd little thrills that I seem to get a lot of when letting Sarah loose with the credit cards.

And another beautiful 1940s day dress in the same regulation green. Glorious colour. I have this dress in a number of colours including a lovely black and white polkadot and a floral pattern on dark blue, but out of all of them the clean green look just seems to symbolise 1940s fashion and that’s something Sarah loves a lot.

And just a quick last green one that shows exactly why drab me sticks with black all the time, but I like this picture a lot because of the complete difference in the attitudes and what their eyes say – he is arrogant, defensive and posturing, she is thoughtful and a little sad.

Mildly sobering….

Anyway, on that note I’ll draw this post to a close. I didn’t, other than polkadots, look at any of the gorgeous patterns that Sarah wears, I’ll leave that to another post, but looking through the United Colours of Benne-tran has lighten my January mood a lot.

And I think I’ve finally found a picture of Sarah in red where she doesn’t look like she wants to jump into bed with the next hot guy she sees.

Or maybe not 😉

Stay beautiful, stay warm, and I hope January isn’t too blue for you….