At my quilt guild's meeting yesterday I had an opportunity to sit and watch the 130 or so women chatting and finding seats before the meeting and during the break between speaker and business meeting. Here on Cape Cod we are mostly in the casual Friday every day of the week mode -- I speak not of working people, that is an area I've graduated out of. I mean, for the most part, the senior population intertwined somewhat with young mothers. Casual, of course, is heavy on denim but here in New England a lot of khaki is worn and other quiet colors, especially in the winter. I overheard a woman in a old rose colored corduroy shirt jacket say to another who was wearing dusty blue -- "mine's L.L. Bean, yours is the same, right?" Right. I also do a lot of people watching at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at the community college and have decided that by and large those in this semi [sometimes demi] intellectual atmosphere dress a bit more stylishly and brightly. They are more apt to add a nice scarf, a brighter color. This is a long, long way from the ladies I love looking at at the advanced style blog, those ladies are in NYC and would certainly be conspicuous here on Cape Cod. The woman in the photo was the only person at yesterday's meeting whose clothing was memorable - a bit of an Eloise-grows-up attitude. Good for her.
This, of course, is the place where the Pilgrims first settled and they were plain dressers, certainly. I find a bit of that attitude still pertains here. Other parts of the country have their special styles too. Florida brings out the bright colors even when they are pastels, California has its own variation of that Florida feeling. The West is a land of cowboy boots and Stetsons (sometimes on women as well as men) and the South still has a bit more formality about clothing than the rest of the country. Wherever I am, I am a dedicated people watcher. (Sometimes I deeply miss the streets of NYC)
