Costume

March 29, 2025

This weekend I am playing the cello at an event called Nature’s Symphony, where people connect with their environment through music, storytelling, and food. When I asked about the dress code, I was told 'natural fabrics and earthy colours'.

Natural fabrics I can do – most of my clothing is cotton or merino. However, earthy colours are a different matter. I tend towards bright, maybe more than tend towards. I downright like and prefer bright colours to olive, ochre or umber. Over a life time I have created a style integrated with my personality – the need for a different type of dress felt like an invitation to a costume party.

It's been a long time since I've enjoyed costume parties. I don't generally have time or inclination to search for the perfect (or imperfect) costume. I limit the clothes I keep to the size of my wardrobe – no spilling over into the guest room or boxes. This means I don't keep random clothing items just in case for a costume party.

In contrast, our friend Tony has a wardrobe impressively laden with costumes. There was an occasion on which Chris borrowed Tony’s gorilla suit because there wasn’t a spare bed – the gorilla suit doubles as a sleeping bag. Tony's costumes also include a safari suit with pith helmet, a Tongan suit with pictures of palm trees, beaches and cocktails, a hen suit, a horse suit for a couple (Tony went to a party with his girlfriend as the rear end of a horse - wonder why that didn't last?). Tony also has a gold sequinned suit I borrowed for Chris's Dad's 89th birthday party. Too bad the gold sequinned suit isn't natural materials or earthy.

When I looked through my wardrobe, desperately seeking earthy colours, I did unearth one costume item – a Minion outfit. My friend Terri is having a onesie-only 60th birthday party and asked what I would like to go as. When I said a Minion, she presented me with a minion onesie. I can only be stunned by her organisation as her birthday isn’t till November 2025 and she gave it to me in 2024!

The onesie is not natural nor earthy and nor were any of my other clothes. Problem...

The Nature's Symphony request left me reflecting on how clothing relates to our sense of self combined with belonging. It took me back to school days when I envied the subset of girls who dressed in an apparently effortless style everyone else wanted to emulate. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't achieve their look. Of course not. They were dressing as themselves and I was trying to be them. At the time, that wasn't something I understood.

However, Nature's Symphony wasn't asking me to change my style, it was just asking me to dress up for a day. I should be able to do this.

We went to Wanaka during the week. This opened up two possibilities – Chris's sister, whose dress style includes a lot more earthy colours than mine, has a house in Wanaka. Plus Wanaka Wastebusters is an excellent source of secondhand clothing. I could almost admit to enjoying the visit to Wastebusters. Problem solved, once combined with a genuine Chilean poncho for warmth retrieved from our drop cloth pile.