darkemeralds | Dressing Your Truth update (Reply)

On Tuesday I had the nicest compliment: a co-worker, a well-dressed young guy from India whose graceful manners make him a constant pleasure to work with, said, "I like your colors today. You have a very good dress sense."

(I was wearing a red skirt suit, a red-and-purple striped top, and purple tights. I mean, there were only two colors, but there was a lot of each of them. The compliment was, therefore, sort of surprising and deeply gratifying. Because I meant that outfit, but I'll admit it was eye-bending.)

Over the past several months my closet has become like a box of Crayolas.

DarkEmeralds in a hair salon mirror, wearing a yellow shirt and a purple cardigan

Purple and yellow (aka fuck you, subtlety)

I've taken a "strict compliance" approach to Dressing Your Truth (because "strict" is generally a good descriptor for Type 4),

DarkEmeralds in an elevator, wearing a sulfur yellow coat with black and white accessories

Sulfur and houndstooth--one of my few available prints and patterns to break up the huge color-blocks

and once I accepted the limitations on color¹, texture², design line³, and fabrication⁴, it's been amazing how brilliantly everything works together.

Apparently I like orange now

So yeah, nice outfits and all, but it's more than that, and there's a whole community of DYT-ers (mostly on Facebook) constantly trying to figure out and express what that "more" is.

An orange cotton trench coat from Banana Republic

Trenchant

For me, it's...

bending "rules" of workplace, social milieu, city--even gender a little bit--to express something true about myself
taking bits of style inspiration from across the Type 4 spectrum, from Adam Lambert to Anne Hathaway
saying fuck you to age-based (and weight-based!) restrictions on clothes, hair and makeup
feeling like it's okay to show myself to the world
not being shocked to see a photograph of myself
telegraphing clearly to the world what it can expect of me⁵

A zebra-striped coffee mug and a leopard-print wallet on a table in a coffee shop

Accessories

Also? Packing for my next trip, whenever that might be, is going to be a breeze.

Waterproof

^{1. Black and white plus pure hues↩}

^{2. Smooth--even shiny--firm and crisp.↩}

^{3. Bold, straight, simple, clean, fitted↩}

^{4. Structured, shaped, tailored ↩}

^{5. Still, reflective, discriminating, demanding, logical, bold, and don't hug me, okay? So, basically, a Vulcan in really saturated colors.↩}

Dressing Your Truth update

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