I can just sense when someone wants my fashion opinion

L

ike the Hope Diamond, I am a rarity.

I’m unusual in that I can just sense when someone wants my fashion opinion without her saying a single word.

My kids think I’m nuts because I’ll offer unsolicited advice to the woman in the next dressing room. I know as soon as she turns this way and that in front of the communal mirror, adjusting her collar, doing that new tucked-in-the-front/untucked-in-the-back look that I personally haven’t been able to pull off (yet), that she’s pleading internally for the opinion of a sensible, middle-aged, fashionable-but-not-trendy, classically elegant woman. (That’s me!) So I offer my advice.

“Sweetie,” I say.

With this, my own kids turn wary. “Maaa,” they hiss. “You’re not gonna… you know what… again, are you?”

Their tone of voice borders on horrified curiosity. It’s as if they just asked, “You’re not going to eat snakes for breakfast again, are you?”