2013-04-04-The Ladies Lounge
Seminars@Hadley
The Ladies Lounge
Presented by
Patti Jacobson
Sharon Howerton
Polly Abbott – Second Sense
Moderated by
Dawn Turco
April 4, 2013
Dawn Turco
Good morning and welcome to today’s Seminars@Hadley. Our topic today is The Ladies Lounge. It’s our first attempt to do something like this, a ladies only event, and if you are curious we are going to do a Men’s Locker Room next month so nobody is left out. But today we are talking girl talk and covering a variety of topics. We will talk hair, nails and make up but we are getting started today talking about clothing, accessories, organizing ourselves and looking good which equates to being confident in our appearances.
Joining me today on our panel is Patti Jacobson, Sharon Howerton both long time Hadley instructors, and rounding out our trio we have Polly Abbott. Polly is a Certified Vision Rehabilitation Therapist, what we call a CVRT and she works with Second Sense here in Chicago. I’ll release the microphone and they will have the opportunity to introduce themselves and we will get underway.
Patti Jacobson
Good morning everyone, my name is Patti Jacobson and I know several of you. I was born three months premature and had partial vision until I was ten, then I developed Glaucoma and lost my vision during those critical teenage years, where everyone is wanting to be popular and you do not want to be pointed out as being different, but yet I was different because of my blindness.
My mother, bless her heart, tried to dress me in very nice clothes and I was a child of the 60’s and 70’s where we were starting to wear mini skirts, jeans, and things like that. She wouldn’t let me do that and I felt different, so to me the concept of looking good is feeling your own attractiveness for yourself.
I think of it as a circle, it circles on if you look attractive and feel attractive other people are going to respond to you in a more accepting way. I have a group of coffee buddies, we meet every Saturday, they’re all sighted, and I started going without wearing dark glasses. I have one artificial eye and one eye that will turn in and moves quite a bit, and I noticed that those gals did not make any eye contact with me, they looked away. One time I wore glasses and someone said to me, you know really look good in glasses and it has given me confidence to do that.
Sharon Howerton
I’m Sharon Howerton, I have been with Hadley for ten and half years and I am in Chicago. Like Patti I was premature, but I don’t think I was as premature as my mother says I was, I have what is now called Retinopathy of Prematurity so I have never had vision. I think I must be a little older than Patti because I was able to do the shorter skirts and all when I was on my own, so that was not quite so much of an issue.
I don’t wear glasses; I have never felt comfortable with them. I figure if people don’t want to look at my eyes that don’t have too. It’s not something that really matters to me, no one has really said anything to me about that and to be honest with you, I wouldn’t know if people were or weren’t trying to make eye contact with me, it’s not something I even think about because it’s not to which I can relate. I understand it; I make every effort to turn to people when they are speaking to me, as long as they are not walking away from me and not say anything.
I was always concerned when I started to work professionally and I started to work for the State of Illinois 35 years ago yesterday, but I retired from there ten and half years ago, I always wondered if I was dressing appropriately for work. I wondered the same thing when I went to Hadley and I think I have asked people about it over the years, no one has every criticized how I dress, I am always hoping I am okay. Even though I know you guys can’t see me here I made it a point to dress better here than I would have for working at home.
Contrary to popular opinion, it was always a joke among us, that we can work in our robe but somehow I just can’t do that.
My mom showed me how to put on lipstick when I was maybe, I don’t know how old, maybe 15 or 16 but she had three other kids to take care of, so she didn’t really show me much about make up or things like that.
When I was married and had two male children, I couldn’t say that they were the ones to tell me that I was okay or not, so I don’t really wear make up. I don’t feel comfortable with that, I can’t tell if I have put too much on or too little and as far as hair is concerned I don’t color my hair. The joke was I wouldn’t know if my color was fading or not and I think I have been blessed to have nice hair and Donna would be able to attest to that if that’s the case.
Polly Abbott
Good morning everyone, I have been a Vision Rehab Therapist for over ten years now. A large part of my job is helping people to do better and feel better and of course appearance plays a huge part in that. One of the things that I feel is important is to be able to send the correct message so that your inner self is actually showing on the outside.
The other thing is to be aware of what message you’re sending so that you can, for example, in a job situation send that message that you are competent and professional and do whatever you wish to do in your personal life.
Just as a personal note, I grew up in a small town in Northern Ontario wearing completely homemade clothing made by my mother. So in addition I feel that not only can I do the vision rehab side of things, but I myself had to do a whole lot of research to learn about appearance and what is correct dress. I hope I can share some of what I have learned today.
Dawn Turco
Thank you ladies, and I will round out the conversation by reminding everyone that I too have a visual impairment, I am low vision, so the three visually impaired people today represent life long vision loss, so perhaps those in the audience during the Q & A, maybe someone who is newer to vision loss will have a different perspective because so much of what we are talking about today is individual, it’s personal preference.
Let’s get going, and we will talk a little bit about organizing your wardrobe and tips and tricks and I will self confess that on Monday of this week because I had broken my normal routine in my closet of organizing, I am color blind, so I have a certain routine that I do to keep things in order, I got to work thinking that I had a pink top on with my gray slacks and black sweater. I got into the sunlight and I am looking and I thought, this doesn’t look pink, turned out I had grabbed a yellow one. No disaster but it did remind me that I needed to go home and reorganize.
So ladies let’s talk about organizing our wardrobe and I have Patti down as the first.
Patti Jacobson
Talking about organizing wardrobes, closets, drawers I think one thing that is good is to get a clothes buddy. Someone that can help you sort through your clothes and take inventory. If you haven’t worn something for four years or longer or never appropriate for you, maybe donate it to a charity. Simply your wardrobe, you don’t want it to be sparse, but you just want to get rid of whatever you don’t wear anymore.
Learn what matches, newly blind people have the good sense of this. Those of us who have been blind all of our lives, have to learn that, and have to be told what colors go with what. One question I get asked a lot is how do you explain to a blind person what a color is? I usually try and get it them to associate it with on object, like green feels cool grass or blue is like deep water. You can’t do that with all the colors but it works to some degree.
Write down your matching system, either in Braille, large print, on a digital tape recorder, or make a note on your Victor Reader or your Book Port.
What I do is organize my closets and drawers according to a plan. I do a lot by seasonal organization. I do dress versus casual, and as you organize you must be able to identify your clothing. You can do that by their style, maybe something has a V neck versus a round neck, or something has certain buttons on the epilates, a certain feel to the fabric, or embroidery on the fabric.
Some people like to hang outfits together; some people like to use hanger cards, you take a 3 x 5 or 4 x 6 card punch a hole in it and put it over the hanger. You then use Braille or a raised marker to tell you what that is.
The problem that I have with both of those methods is not only do you need to be able to identify your clothing on a hanger, but also when it is in a pile of laundry. For that reason I think that it is better to figure out a way to mark your clothing. Some people use French knots sewn in, in the shape of Braille letters, but I hate to sew and I absolutely passionately dislike sewing, and so I use tiny safety pins placed in different places in the clothing to identify different colors. Like if something is navy I will put a safety pin in the left waist band or shoulder seam of the garment, if it is red I put it in the right waist band or shoulder seam.
There is also Braille clothing tags that you can buy and sew in or pin in, and there are color identifiers, I have one called a [Color Reno] and I think Sharon has that too, it does a pretty good job, it isn’t totally accurate but it helps a lot.
Then I wanted to tell you one other thing about socks, people have a hard time organizing socks. I see so many people that just say I just wear white socks all the time or wear black socks all the time, because I can’t match the socks. I think that it is fun to have different colors of socks. When I take my socks off at night again, I put a pin in each one in a certain location to signify the color. If it is navy I pin it at the top of the sock. If it is black I pin it midway between the top and the heel. If they’re brown I pin them at the heel, gray at the toe and white socks get no pins.
Then for tights and panty hose, if you still wear panty hose, or knee highs, you can put those in baggies, and then mark the baggies with a raised marker in some way. Sharon, do you have anything to add?
Sharon Howerton
I would say that you’re more organized than I am which I am not surprised about actually. I personally like to put outfits together, and yes I do end up with that problem of I did that yesterday when I was doing laundry. I am like am I sure that this is correct, so I have started using a color identifier, the Color Reno, just like Patti mentioned and that has been very helpful, but like you said Patti, I have done the same thing and had a friend go through and help me match up and organize things.
I do go through things myself and will say you know I haven’t worn this in a like forever and donate it because it just doesn’t make sense, or have forgotten I’ve had certain things. I tend to wear a lot of black pants, especially since I have now been traveling with a guide dog now for almost ten years. Both my current dog and my retired dog are black so I try and be mindful of two things, first is to wear a dark color skirt or pants, but also if I am going to wear a dress or skirt, I try and make sure it is a bit longer. If I am traveling on a bus or something, I am going to have them sit between my knees and I don’t want to have a short skirt. I try to be conscience of that thing.
I also like to put certain things that I know aren’t going to wrinkle and it’s an outfit that can’t be put on a hanger, put that in a zip lock bag and put a Braille card in there with what the outfit happens to be.
What is interesting about matching is a friend of mine helped with that a couple of years ago, but my son’s fiancé to confirm something and her opinion was different than my friend Ellen, and I was like who am I suppose to believe. I am mindful about textures of things, and use that as a guide when matching things.
The other things with shoes, I make every effort, and I don’t think I have anything that feels the same. I won’t get the same pair of shoes in different colors. A few years ago when I moved to a new office when I was working for the State of Illinois, I was asked to make a presentation to the staff about things that I did, one of the things I mentioned was about shoes, the same things that I am saying to you right now, and the group started to laugh, a friend of mine said, “We aren’t laughing at you but when you were talking about shoes I noticed, and they all could see that I had on two different colored shoes on”. They were the same shoe just different colors, so see sighted people can do the same thing. I think, at least for me anyways, I find it refreshing when sighted people have some of the same concerns that I have had as a person being blind.
Those are some of the things that I do. I am one of those that wear similar colored socks and try to keep them together. If I am not sure I check it with my color identifier. I am not sure why I didn’t use one for all those years, but I sure use it a lot now.
Polly Abbott
Hello everyone, I think the amount of organizing that you need to do in your closet really depend on what the state of your vision is. I work with a lot of seniors who are new to vision loss and are maybe just experiencing problems with just a couple of colors, navy blue and black are usually the first culprit. I just wanted to suggest to listeners who are maybe in that position, figure out what colors you’re really having trouble with and then work with developing strategies telling those apart first.
For example, if it’s just blue and black make sure you reorganize your closet along a system. For example, any black goes on the right hand side of your closet, of your drawers, your black shoes should go on the right and maybe keep the blue things on the left, just to keep them far apart.