Religious worship brings out the Fashion Anarchist in Me

The dress code for men at work remains simple doesn't it. No matter what the Sunday supplements say about waistcoats, chinos, rolled up sleeves or pastel polos, the dress code if you want a career remains standard issue suit and tie, by and large. I mean, if you want to work at Google it's probably all Adidas and bum jeans for boys, fluorescent socks for girls, and a pet animal in every meeting room. But otherwise you pretty much know what you are going to need each day for your commute, if you are a bloke. If you are a woman, it is much more confusing. Suits for women at work are so very last decade. These days most women are wearing shirtwaist dresses and platforms, and the variation on this statement that says, I'm serious but sexy, I'm not anally serious and I'm not threateningly sexy, is so confusing as to present a daily challenge. I work with a woman  who has decided her palette for work is a strict black and white - so that, she says, they are not distracted by the canvas and focus instead on the brain. I do dresses in jewel colours with funky but not ridiculous accessories, which is a huge mistake as it pretty much means I spend every evening having a crisis about what combination to wear the next day. Invariably I run up stairs 3 nanoseconds before I am due to leave the house the next morning to change my necklace, my boots, or sometimes the whole ensemble. On weary days I get at least one component horribly wrong. I really, really wish that for work it was all about suits. So work dressing is stressful and that generally means that even on days when I get it right, and I like to think that in a good week I will hit the mark 3 days out of 5, my first action when I come home is to take off all my work clothes and put slouch stuff on if I am not going out for the evening. It is not just about chillaxing, it is about liberation from the statement I have chosen to make with my clothes, which is about how I need to appear among my peers, superiors and reportees. Of course at home, since I live exclusively with men, nobody gives a toss what I wear so sweatpants are de rigeur, but if I walked around in moth eaten pyjamas nobody would notice, which is refreshing. Community worship, a thing I participate in more or less once a week, therefore becomes my fashion experiment opportunity. I have to dress more or less straight down the line, wherever Vogue chooses to draw the line, that is, for work. So for visits to my community I tend to come over very Vivienne Westwood. I don't mean I wear her clothes exclusively. I probably would if I could afford them but I can't so no hope of proceeding to my seat in the main hall with a bustle the size of an Intercity 225. No, I mean the anarchic fashion attitude. When I dress to visit my local community, I throw open my wardrobe and search out my most eclectic apparel. If I am going to do a mutton/lamb thing, or a punk throwback, or a seventies revival, if I am going to raid American Apparel and celebrate yoof culture, this is the time when I will showcase it. I visit my community in neon tights, funky boots, velvet mini skirts, massive costume jewellery necklaces, huge red capes and ponchos, banana yellow sweaters with electric blue denim shortie culottes; I turn up in red sweater dresses with turquoise tights and a yellow handbag, or bright blue sweaters with pink chunky drop earrings. Why do I do this? I think because all week I am a category. I am a Working Woman. A Working Mum actually. I spend all week striving to look cool and employable within that category. In my community, where I go for company, meditation, a bit of space, an opportunity to sing my heart out, catch up on local gossip or just be - and, ironically, where categories are all too apparent (the families, the singles, the young marrieds, the yoof, the toddler group, the Learned Lot, etc etc), I make it my business to defy categories and interestingly I don't much care what people think about the clothes I turn up in. I mean, this is not a place I would walk into wearing nothing but frilly underwear. A bit of respect etc. Rather, I look at my community as a place where I don't expect to be judged and where I don't plan on judging anyone else either. We are all there for a bit of space. This is how I define mine.