Fashion faux pas happen all the time. I feel it is how we
prove we are human. If you have never had a fashion faux pas, it means that you
are either an extraterrestrial being or that you are simply a bold faced liar.
Either way, we are not friends.
The worst fashion no no’s are the ones that occur at work.
There is nothing you can do about it. If you are out at a club you can rock
almost anything, whether it was meant intentionally or not. Have toilet paper
stuck to your heel? Girl, just go and get your other heel a matching strip and
rock those mummy shoes! Forgot to wear underwear again? Just get as many
numbers as you can and keep them for a rainy day (Sometimes you just need a
little pick me up.). I have had several fashion don’ts over the years, but
nothing is worse than a fashion mishap in the work place. After many lessons
learned, I now carry a Tide to Go Pen, safety pins, and a doctor’s slip in my
bottom desk drawer.
It is usually when I have something very important going on that
the universe will attack my outfit. I shake my fist at you universe! Occasionally I spill coffee on myself. Who am
I kidding; this happens on a weekly basis. For the most part however, it just
blends right in with whatever I am wearing that day, no biggie. But on one particular
morning, when I had a big meeting to present at in less than 2 hours, I spilled
a piping hot cup of coffee all over my sheer silk white blouse. I do not mean two or three drips either; I mean I was now wearing half a venti. I abruptly stood
up, shouted “Son of a bee sting!” and mad dogged the universe like never before.
I did an old lady speed walk to the ladies room to find Abby, the cleaning lady,
wiping down the mirrors. “Move it or lose it Abby! I got an emergencia!” Abby
and I are friendly, and I too am a Latina so I can talk to her this way…it’s
cool. Abby grabbed me by the arm and forcefully pulled me into the custodian’s
closet across the way, shut the door, and told me to take off my shirt. For a brief
moment I feared that Abby had more than friendly feelings for me and was about
to confess in a physical way. Before I had the chance to give her the “it’s
not you, it’s me” speech, Abby threw a bottle of some industrial cleaning
product at me and told me to use it. She then left the room. I’m not sure what
the cleaning product was called, but I am pretty sure it was mixed with unicorn
magic. The stain was gone almost immediately, but now my blouse was almost
entirely soaked. In this moment I wished
I still carried my hair dryer around in my car (you just never know). Paper
towels wouldn’t do the trick and I couldn’t hang out in the closet forever; My gay
bestie Danny had once told that wasn’t healthy. I also couldn’t walk out with just my
undershirt on because that would just be tacky. So, I put on the
soaking wet shirt and walked back to my desk. By the time the meeting
had started most of the shirt had dried… all except for the arm pits.
On more than one occasion I have gone to work with my dress
on backward. Once I even deliberately wore my dress backward just because I
thought it looked better that way.
Regardless of how I wear my work lady dresses, I always strive to keep
it classy. Recently I attended a Diversity Leadership Conference with
participants from all over the surrounding area with my boss. Anytime I attend
a work related event, I try and step up my A-Game to an A+Game. So that morning I woke up thirty minutes earlier to
get my professional sexy on. I got up, got dressed, and the boyfriend walked me
to the door, told me I looked good, slapped my ass, and gave me a kiss goodbye.
I left the house feeling Justin Timberlake sexy and confident. You know, one of
those “damn I look good…real good” days. I could almost slap myself on the ass.
I got to the place of the conference and as I was approaching the building my boss walked up from behind me, greeted me, and we walked the rest of the way
together. As I continued to catch my
reflection in the windows I blew myself kisses and shot myself with
a finger gun and wink. Still feeling confident, I was chumming it up with
everyone around me. Some people call that networking, but I just like talking about myself. Three and half hours later, with only thirty minutes left
of the conference I felt the need to adjust my dress. –Sigh- The dress I was
wearing was royal blue, went down to just above my knees and the neckline was a
high boat neck. The dress was very conservative… in the front. The back of the dress was cut in a low V
exposing most of the back. This is why I wear a camisole under the dress. Um…yeah, about that...
On this particular day I had forgotten to put the cami on. Yes, I forgot! So after almost
a full morning of socializing and walking around in front of what felt like the entire world, I realized that my full back and bra strap had been exposed the entire
time. The ENTIRE TIME! I literally
wanted to crawl under the table and call the morgue to see if they had any
space available. At this point there was absolutely nothing I could do. I had
already sent the memo out to the conference that my mullet dress
(business in the front, party in the back) and I were there for a good time. I
do not have long hair to cover my back and I do not think it helped that the bra I was wearing
was an old grandma bra. It's nude and old. I have had it for about 7 years now (Don't act like you don't have one of those!). I was mortified,
and angry! Why didn’t my boyfriend say, “Hey babe, you look good but do you
really want to leave the house with your old lady bra showing?” Why didn’t my boss say, “Good morning hot
mess express, you’re looking a little unprofessional and extra whorey today.”? And
why didn’t the ladies in the ladies room help a sista out!? Girl Code! Oh why
oh why didn’t I do a back check before I left the house? I wonder what the back of my hair looked like? Why??? As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get
up in that moment and go to the ladies room again. Everyone who hadn’t already
noticed would be sure to notice then. Could I run out of the place and simply
text my boss that I had sudden diarrhea? No, then I would be an unprofessional
whore and a disgusto. I just sat there for
the remainder of the conference slouching in my chair as low as possible
without falling off the edge. I tried to look natural and interested while
internally I now cursed the universe once again and slowly died inside. I attempted
to moon walk out of the place when it was over, but to make matters worse my
boss is a complete gentleman. He waited for me so we could walk out together, and opened
doors for me. The nerve of this guy! This forced me to walk in front of him. He was
talking to me the entire walk back to our vehicles but I didn’t hear a thing. For all I know, he could have fired me for dressing like a slut and here I am showing up to work every day anyway.
All I could hear was my brain yelling “Oh my gawd, you’re such a slore!" and "Look
how far you parked!” The reflection I once blew kisses to was now shunning
me like an escaped Amish woman. When I finally got to my car I
frantically looked for a safety pin. Nothing! Not a safety pin in sight. I came across a small hair clip, the ones with the claws, and after
about five minutes of fidgeting in a car with non tinted windows, I figured out how to hair clip my dress shut
from the inside. I drove the twenty minutes back to work with the best posture
of my life. I couldn’t sit back in my seat because the clip would dig into my back. While
the universe and I argued in the car I contemplated stopping by the store and
picking up a cami or even stopping by my sister’s place since she lived nearby and
borrowing one. Then I thought it would be too obvious that I had changed and my boss
would be sure to know that I didn’t intend to be a bare back freak. So I went to
work as is and rocked the hair clip for the rest of the afternoon, ensuring never to
sit all the way back in my chair. When I got to my car at the end of the work day I let out a big sigh of relief and plopped into my
seat. My hair clip broke into pieces.
When I was back at my office that afternoon with the hair
clip in my dress I fought the urge to search for Abby to save my life again. Instead I told a
coworker about my tragic morning and made her cross her heart and hope to die if she said anything. She responded by telling me I did a good job
with the hair clip and then told me a story about how nude thongs sometimes
still show through white pants. Then I got on Google Chat and shared the story
with my friend in LA. After many LOLs she ended the
conversation to go to lunch. Approximately thirty minutes later she came back to
the conversation and told me she had a story that would make feel better. I don’t
usually like to be one-upped, but I was all ears. She told me that as soon as
she had typed to me “bbl” (be back later), she stood up from her desk and felt
something happening. The yoga pants she was wearing split in the crotch, from
front to back, and right in front of her boss! Please try and get passed the fact
that she was wearing yoga pants to work and realize the irony in this story.
She went on to tell me that she quickly tied a sweater around her waist and ran
to TJ Maxx to buy a new identical pair of yoga pants. Hey, not everyone has a mini hair clip in
their car.
The next day, after I had gathered my composure, I had a
phone chat with the boss. I told him that I knew that he knew, and that in the
future it was his duty to let me know that he knew I looked like a ninety-nine cent whore.
He told me he thought it was a new style and didn’t want to cramp it. Then he
asked me why I didn’t just go home and change. I told him I didn’t want him to
notice that I had changed, and he responded, “Why didn’t you just text me saying you spilled something on your dress and needed to go home and change?” I never
thought of that.
