Denise Duellman

When I was a little girl, I loved my mother’s hands. They weren’t what fashion would call ideal. They weren’t long and pale. They were sturdy, with slightly square palms, dusted with freckles and sun spots she could never quite fade. She hated that about them. I didn’t. To me, they were beautiful because of what they could do. They were capable hands, moving across a keyboard, a typewriter, a piano. They were creative hands, guiding fabric through a sewing machine or sketching something from...

What happens when you start paying attention to the colors you wear I think color is the most important part of getting dressed. Not the only important one. Fit matters. Proportion matters. Personal style matters. But color is the one you see immediately. You can wear something that fits well and feels like you, and still sense that something is off. Then you change the color, and without doing anything else, your face looks clearer. Your eyes look brighter. Your features look more defined....

Everything about the outfit was right, and it still didn’t work. It fit my style, it fit my life, and heck, it even fit the weather. It was exactly the kind of thing I like to wear when I want to be really comfortable. And then I looked in the mirror and thought, “No. Just no.” It wasn’t terrible. It just wasn’t right. I looked at it and immediately saw what was wrong. Besides being slightly too baggy on me, the real problem was where the outfit was hitting me. It was cutting me straight...