War Bride

It should be no shocker that I loved to play dress-up as a child. I would raid my mom's dresses. One year for Christmas I got a bag of dress-up clothes which I just thought were the most wonderful gift in the world. I didn't know at the time they were just sparkly rags from the local thrift store but they seemed so fabulous to me. I had my make-up from my dance recitals that I wasn't aloud to wear but I would anyways. I didn't care much for my mother's shoe collection and always preferred my fathers police boots. I would wear some pretty insane looks and my dad always referred to me with slight disapproval that I looked like a "Polish War Bride." I thought that just about sounded like the most romantic thing I'd ever heard. I asked him what it meant and he said that during the war when women got married they didn't have any money and they would wear rag wedding dresses and didn't have money for nice shoes. I don't remember his exact words but to him it wasn't a good term. Later on when I started dressing myself more um...abstractly he started throwing this term around again. I've always been a fan of mixing high and low fashion and deconstructionism. I still like the idea of being a Polish War Bride.