I promised my Editor my next blog would be on fashion because Cliché is, after all, a fashion magazine. But I am the ClichéMom so you know it’s not gonna be fashion as in “the next breakout Tangerine Tango color for fall 2012 is…” ok, who am I kidding? It’s not like I don’t know–burnt orange, royal blue, primrose, venetian red, cerulean… But my point is this, if you read my column/blog, you’re gonna get more “mom” than fashion.
I love fashion. I do. I shop my heart out as much as my income allows, but truth be told, it’s from a safe distance, as it is for most real-life mothers. We love the glossy pages of the fashion magazines because they represent a fantasy, just like we loved fairy tale books, but we know that, as adults, they are no longer applicable to our lives.
So yes, I will write about fashion. I know it, I love it, but it will always be more about me, my babes and being a mom. I merely wear it and watch it from a distance and never from the front row, the runway or beside Wentworth down the red carpet. It’s Fashion Fantasy and artistic expression that I love and certainly not the unrealistic airbrushed models that I know are not real women like me, my friends and moms that read my column. So before I write about fashion and a thousand girls I lectured about eating disorders look up and go “hey, wait a second” or any Women’s Studies colleagues delete my number least I never again guest lecture in their classes, let me defend my fashion-loving glass ceiling, second shift despising “self”.
Here is my lecture on fashion fairy tales: Cinderella could have only pulled off those “glass heels” until midnight! Puh-lez! Her fairy godmother knew it… duh! That’s why she said midnight in the first place. Those heels were not dance-all-night pumps… they were stand there and look hot heels! 
Ok, true Story for real moms on fashion. 
“Winter white done right” may be the ultimate dress trend for the season but trust me, it isn’t gonna work holding a four-year-old with a loose sippy cup lid on your hip when he’s being taunted by his bored older brother… the spit will hit the mom no matter how much I move!
My life is real. I love fashion because it allows me to dress up and partake in a little fantasy. I see nothing wrong with writing about that… actually, as the ClichéMom, my passion for fashion may become quite liberating!
Photographed by Nelson Neuberger
