What Do You Mean Our Outfits Aren’t Coordinated?

Last year I blogged about making my outfit matter by wearing a “Gay? Fine By Me” t-shirt as part of a campus-wide campaign.  Today, I’m writing about another–but quite different–outfit choice.  Today, Melody and I decided to wear non-coordinated outfits to the office. I want to be able to tell you it was motivated by some grand sociological experiment we devised or an act of protest/solidarity–but really it was just an idea we came up with one day.

Both of us stuck to our commitment this morning, but we clearly took different approaches to our non-coordination. Melody went for the more subtle, maybe-they-will-think-I-just-made-an-error-in-judgement-and-not-say-anything approach by mixing blacks, blues, browns, and oranges, whereas I went for the no-one-will-be-able-to-mistake-the-ridiculousness-of-this-outfit-but-maybe-they-will-be-too-shocked-to-comment approach:

What do you mean this doesn’t go together?

And so far the only un-solicited comment I’ve received about my outfit today was: “You look nice.” Granted, it was while I was sitting at my desk so that only my top was fully visible, and when I rolled back the student said, “Oh!”

Other staff in the office gave us quite a few looks, but no one directly asked anything until we prodded a little, and then our Co-Director said, “Yeh, I was wondering about that, but I wasn’t going to say anything.”

One of my co-workers rightfully wondered what it says about our office that no one did make a comment and that some assumed I really thought today’s outfit was stylish. I think though, that it says a lot about how wonderful a staff we have here, that accepts and supports each other even in the craziest non-coordinated moments.