The opposite of dreading the school fashion parade: dreading the school fleece brigade!

[Jewelsandgems]

My little girl has just started nursery and I thought it would be nice to get to know some other mums.

I wear fashionable clothes! And because of this, the only mums who talk to me are those very few others who also wear the same kind of clothes. The majority wear bootcut jeans and fleeces. Now I have nothing against fleeces and jeans, and when the weather is rubbish you will find me in the same things!

Does anyone else have this? Honastly, I wore my rain hat the other day and I swear a few of the mums sneered at me. Should I just have turned up with sopping wet hair?!!

I am totally considereding addapting a fleecy look just to get to know some other mums I have tried smiling and saying hello, but no response.

No it doesn't make a difference to you thinking I am dreadful.

But it is a very poor reflection on our society and how a lot of women appear content to look downtrodden.

Appearing to look downtrodden does not mean they are downtrodden. Perhaps some women feel more downtrodden by a set of unspoken rules that tell them how to look.

no, poor reflection on you that you would use such offensive language IMO.

'looking downtrodden' - descriptive
'looking like shite' - just downright rude and nasty.

anyway I am not going to stick around on a thread with this kind of unpleasant rubbish.

Blimey - offensive language? Get a life.

One is entitled to an opinion on here you know.

If I see people 'making an effort' dress -wise in the playground I think they are insecure and feel sorry for them.

Here you go then to lighten the mood, have a laugh at my rain hat

here and even worse, I am thinking of getting the red and purple too with the matching coat and matching umbrella and matching bag. [Only joking]

kitty I feel sorry for you.

Laughs and points

It is very funny!

I would rather get wet

(at rain hat...sigh this moves to fast for me)

I like it

I'd look such a cock in it though

Oh don't feel sorry for me I'm not the one worried about people laughing at me rain hat after all!

I feel sorry for you to have an opinion that if people make an effort in their appearance that they are automatically insecure and to be pitied.

i like the hat, especially the zebra print one. couldn't get away with it myself though

It's WHY they make the effort and what that worry about that drives them to do it.
You are worried about whether your style of dressing and makes you acceptable to other groups of people.
You consider dressing in a different way to fit in with certain groups of people.
You do not feel confident just being who you want to be.
It bothers you that someone might be laughing at your rain hat.
I would rather be in the position of not giving a toss tbh.

I would look like a strange combo of Liam Gallagher and Miss Marple in that hat.

Think you have to have a significant amount of chutzpah to wear any hat, actually, so if you can pull it off, well done.

I have the answer to all this amped up social anxiety and fashion policing! I turn up rumpled and harrassed about 5 mins late and everyone else has gone (well mostly).

This morning in my wide leg jeans, old fitted maternity top and a droopy red cardi ... Nice.

I certainly never wear fleeces as I think they are not at all flattering but what loon would cold shoulder over an imagined fashion faux pax? These threads would induce paranoia on the most stable confident people let alone the anxious and sleep deprived! Cease and desist!!

Like the hat, you would have to be confident person to wear it.

I love hats and have a fleece one with fleece tassels on the end for the winter - think pixie but it is blue and black.

Does stop people looking at the boot cut jeans and the fleece top though

Gerroff, I agree.
For some reason I always feel really self-conscious in a hat.

I always try on the hats in accessorise though, like the child I am. Always look a fool in them.

Never mind.

As a young teen, I used to always try on the wedding hats in BHS with my friends

YES! My gran used to just leave me in BHS or Debenhams by the hat racks, go and do her shopping and collect me when she finished.

I always like trying on the vile purple Princess Di style picture hats and pretending I was Joan Collins (still do, actually).

Kitty I am worried why (not whether) my clothes make a difference to the mums at school. There clothes don't make a difference to me.

And if you read further you would see I am a fleece-wearer too, I wear the clothes I am happy with, that make me feel good.

Some days (usually weather permitting) I prefer to leave the fleece at home and wear something nicer. Other days it is just practicle to wear funcltional clothes.

For instance, if there was a new girl at my yoga class, I would welcome her, show her a good spot to take etc.

I have a friendly disposition, not one to make automatic assumptions.

Don't we ALL make an effort to dress to fit in? 'Tis, surely, why so very few of the dads at our school wear skirts when picking up their dc.

I watch my dd playing "dress up" - it's joyful. She dresses and role plays, trying on identities with the clothes, testing out ways of acting and being (if we're going to get a bit deep) along with crazy outfits.

And is nobody else on here old enough to remember "Mr. Ben" on children's television?

Somehow, along the way, we lose that. I would say that it's because a common baseline to how ALL of us adults dress is that, by and large, we are choosing clothes out of the dressing-up box marked "adult". That is, the one thing we ALL tend to want our clothes to say about us is that we are NOT children. Anything else is an optional extra.

If there is one thing I would like, it's that we felt a little of that joy-of-dressing-up a little more often. Of course, it can be stressful. Not least because we have to pay for clothes as adults, so, you know, it all costs. But still, I'd love for us to keep a bit of that sparkle and fun.

i have just been to the hairdresser..shock gasp but i wanted to answer Flamesparrow no i would not wear a tabard when i was a cleaner whats with the sceptical face? was i too low or something to be even bothering about looking and FEELING (which is the main thin imo )nice