Second of Two Parts: Excerpts from ‘Accounting for Myself:

An Economic Autobiography’

The Naked Truth About Why I Spent

$1,265 on a New Wardrobe

By Lyn Millner

MAKING BREAD is proud to present this sneak peek at a work in progress by a hugely talented young writer, Lyn Millner, based in Florida. An accountant turned free-lance writer, Millner writes and speaks frequently on money matters for various magazines and public radio. Here, we offer an excerpt from her memoir, “Accounting for Myself: An Economic Autobiography,” in which Millner explores such highly charged, personal territory as how her mother “conquered her money anxiety in midlife after divorcing my father . . . and how Mom’s journey freed me to overcome my own financial fears, quit my job as a CPA and follow my dream of becoming a writer.”   Below, she spares no modesty in revealing uncomfortable moments in her attempts to dress for success.

         Millner is a stylish, funny writer, with extraordinary insight into the ways in which money can control our lives—if we let it. We think she is a Bread Winner in the Making.

—The Editors

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investment (in’vestment). [f. INVEST v. + -MENT. Cf. the earlier VESTMENT.]

1.       The act of putting clothes or vestments on; concr. clothing; robes, vestments.

2.       transf.  a. An outer covering of any kind; an envelope; a coating.

3.       Comm.  The investing of money or capital.  a. In early use in the East India trade, for the employment of money in the purchase of Indian goods.

                         —From the Oxford English Dictionary

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 I am in the fitting room at Macy’s department store, buying a wardrobe for my new job.  My sales associate’s name is Merlon.  She has red hair and she is from France and her eyebrows are penciled on in dark brown, symmetrical arches that give her face a surprised look.  She traipses back and forth from the sales floor to the dressing room with worsted wool business suits and silk shirts draped over her arm and a substantial ring of keys dangling around her free wrist.  The more keys a salesperson has, the more power she seems to have.  She is forever unlocking doors for customers and resetting registers for other employees and approving voids and ringing up exchanges.  I don’t mind this, because it leaves me alone to consider my outfits.  Merlon occasionally calls over the door of my dressing room, not barging in like some clerks do who always seem to know when you’re least dressed.

 A young salesgirl stands at the door of the fitting room.  She stands on one foot, leaning against the doorjamb, her other foot resting on the wall.  She smiles sheepishly when I catch her eye.  I pivot in the three-way mirror, and she tells me I look great.  But she doesn’t sound like she believes it.  I feel as though I am wearing my mother’s clothes; even though they fit, they are somehow too big.

When I was 11, my mother had the two of us colorized at the mall, and she purchased a billfold of poplin color swatches to take on shopping trips.   This embarrassed me, having to stand there in the store while she flipped through the swatches to see if an article of clothing matched up.

My mother’s friend, Adrienne, started her own fashion-consulting business out of her house in Jackson, just a block from Eudora Welty’s house on Poplar Street in Belhaven.  My mother hired Adrienne to come to our house for a consultation.  Adrienne emptied the contents of our closets onto our beds and advised us on what outfits we could construct from the clothes we had and where we should direct our future clothing budget in order to fill the gaps in our wardrobe. 

“For instance, Nancy,” Adrienne says to my mother.  “You should buy a navy, wool pea coat.  It’s a basic, classic piece, and it won’t make you look like the Michelin man.  I can’t stand it when I see a woman who is well-dressed and she’s ruined her whole outfit by putting on a down coat.”

For me, Adrienne suggested a pair of black pants, a strand of salt-water pearls and a gored skirt – “something with lots of movement.  You want to look girlish, but not too girlish, you know what I mean?”  I had no idea what she meant.  When she left, I had a few new outfit ideas scribbled on index cards, but still no idea how to assemble outfits for myself or how to shop for clothes that would make me look good or how to prevent costly mistakes in the future.

Merlon calculates her commission in her head.  I can tell this by the way she taps her foot as she considers me. “Can you wear pants at this job?  I have beautiful cranberry pants that would work with that shirt.” She has stopped unlocking rooms and registers and has taken a renewed interest in me for the moment.

Pants.  Could I wear pants?  I am not sure.  What would Adrienne say? 

"Take them with you.  If not, you can always return them."

I have questions for Merlon, but I try to phrase them in such a way that she doesn’t suspect I’m fashion-challenged.  I don’t know why it matters to me to look good in front of her. “What belt would you put with this suit?” I ask her.

After my grandmother moved into the nursing home, my mother helped her plan her outfits.  It’s what they found to do during their visits.  Mom brought pounds of clothes she’d found at the Fire Sale Store, patterned pants with comfortable elastic waistbands like she knew Meme liked, polyester shirts and soft, unstructured blazers.  They spent an hour or two rummaging through the clothes and laying them out on Meme’s bed.

“Look, Meme, you can put these palazzo pants with your horizontal striped shirt.” 

And Meme sort of snuffled and said, “Yeah, O.K.”  Her favorite outfit was a pair of ecru pedal pushers, a loose purple sweatshirt and tennis shoes.  She wore her short, white hair permed and teased, not in that helmet style that many elderly women wear, but in a sort of loose Afro, her pink scalp peeking through in the thin places.  The only place she had to dress for was the downstairs cafeteria, where she went twice a day.

When I was in town, I accompanied my mother on these visits to Meme.  When it was over and the clothes had been hung in Meme’s closet, organized by pants, blouses and skirts, and my mother said, “Well, I guess we’d better be running along.  I have to get dinner in the oven,” we said good-bye to Meme and walked down the long hallway to the elevator, and Meme stood in her doorway and watched us go.  And when we were still in earshot, my mother would say to me, “It’s so important for them to get dressed everyday.  It makes them feel good about themselves.”

I leave Macy’s with a navy wool skirt suit ($225), a red poplin suit with a double-breasted blazer and pleated skirt ($205), three silk blouses (two @ $39 each, one at $80), a cream and navy hound’s-tooth blazer ($350), three pairs of slacks ($85 each), a thin leather belt ($28), a tank-style watch ($39) and costume pearl studs ($4.99). 

I put the total on my Visa card.  $1,265.  It will take me six years to pay the tab from this and other necessities.  But, leaving the store, I feel pulled together.  The kind of person who can afford nice things for herself.

When I dress for work the next morning, my roommate laughs at me.  Laughs. “Who are you?” she says.  “Is this a joke?” I wished that it were. 

"I mean, what are you doing?  You're just adding up a bunch of numbers, right?  Why do they want you to be so dressed up?"

I would much rather work somewhere that didn’t require a wardrobe.  Somewhere that people just recognized my inherent wonderfulness and paid me gobs of money to stay home in my favorite outfit – a pair of cotton knit boxer shorts and a Fruit of the Loom T-shirt.  It had to be possible.  Margaret was doing it.

After my parents divorced, my mother bought her own place in Madison, a suburb of Jackson.  Recently, on one of her jaunts to the Fire Sale Store, she found a flat, wooden mannequin with hinged legs and arms that could be set in different positions by tightening the wing nuts at the hips, knees, elbows and shoulders.  The mannequin now stands in Mom’s bedroom in the space between her bed and the French doors that lead out to her back patio.  It wears the clothes she doesn’t wear often, which means that it is often in formal attire. 

During my last visit home, it wore a deep green, velvet cloche with a stickpin in it and a matching velvet dress with sheer black hose and alligator pumps.  On each visit, until I am accustomed to it, the mannequin spooks me each time I walk into her bedroom.  For a split second, I think it’s an intruder, and I jump.

“That’s the idea,” my mother says.  “Did you ever see that movie, ‘Home Alone’?”

This is my mother’s protector: a smiling, wooden doll with a sequined evening bag.

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This chapter first appeared in Gulf Stream Magazine. Read more of Lyn Millner’s “Economic Autobiography”  at www.lynmillner.com , or contact her at lynmillner@mindspring.com.  To read Part 1 of this excerpt, go to Starting Out  feature department.

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