Choose My Outfit for the School Reunion

& Tuesday Twirl

Is This Mutton invites readers to choose one of three colourful outfits to wear to a school reunion

Dear friends. It's a big day for me on Saturday, a school reunion! It's been organised by me and my bestie from the sixth form. We were reunited last year when I began tracking down our alumni.

I'm looking for your help to select my outfit.

We held the first ever reunion in 2024 and 23 attended. Initially, our plan was to hold another reunion in a few years' time. But momentum was growing so we decided to go for a big reunion this year.

Around 40 are expected. I haven't seen some of them for 48 years.

Tips on Finding People from School

I moved away from Plymouth, where my old school is, in the early 1980s. I lost contact with most of my school friends. The first place I looked to find them was Facebook. However, the search function is pretty useless. Once you've searched a few times they don't offer useful results.

If you try using Messenger with those who aren't FB friends, it depends on their settings whether or not they will ever see the message. Most don't.

Having found a few on FB, I looked at their friends lists and found more that way. It was a boon to ask their friends to supply contact details.

Ancestry was a Big Help

The best tool was the genealogy site Ancestry. I was already using it to research my family tree. Searching for Plymouth and by maiden name for girls born in my year and the one after, I was able to find several girls from my cohort. By using a search for possible years, I found out when they got married and then searched again on FB, LinkedIn and Google.

I found that my cohort is not very social media friendly. Some of them don’t seem to exist at all! I resorted to snail mail in some cases, thanks to Ancestry offering addresses, albeit a few years old, and found several that way. One girl I found via her daughter who was on Instagram.

I re-joined Premium on LinkedIn for the trial period, and reconnected with a couple of people who responded to an Inmail from me.

My goal when reconnecting was to get an email address so that I had a way of contacting everyone. A learning here is that by including a Facebook event page in my Gmail, many providers blocked my emails as spam. Don't include links.

Some people still haven't responded despite multiple attempts. We have to assume they aren't interested in a school reunion. Not everyone has good memories of their schooldays.

Choose my Outfit

I've short listed 3 outfits. Please vote for your favourite by end of day Wednesday. I'm travelling to Plymouth on Thursday so will need to pack the winning outfit.

The 3 outfits all highlight my love of colour and have a retro, gamine vibe (I hope) that I feel represents me.

Outfit 1

Coral retro shift dress with white Mary Janes worn by over 60s blogger Is This Mutton

Outfit 1 is a simple shift dress in coral pink. It's by Kettlewell and dates from 2016. I bought it preloved a few months ago on Vinted. I'm wearing it with a cream jacket, retro earrings from Margot, coral bag from Pom Pom London, tights from Snag and Mary Jane shoes from Jones Bootmakers. I'll make sure to brush the back of my hair!

Outfit 2

Cute gamine tartan dress with matching shoes in red plaid worn by over 60s blogger Is This Mutton

Outfit 2 also features a preloved Kettlewell dress from 2018, also via Vinted. You may think it's just too red. I could substitute the red tights for navy, as there's blue in the dress.

The shoes are from Boden, last year. Bag from Etsy.

Outfit 3

A punchy lime jacket and retro top with long navy boots worn by over 60s blogger Is This Mutton

Outfit 3 is a top from Danish brand Margot, navy cord skirt from Boden (old) and lime Kettlewell jacket (preloved from eBay). I wore it first with navy tights and knee length boots (Boden) but I substituted them for gold boots, see top pic. I normally like a solid block of colour but I think the gold boots edge it. You may disagree.

Please state your preferred outfit in the comments by end of day Wednesday 22 October. Can't wait to see which one you choose.

If you're using a phone, you'll need to sign in first with a Google ID. If you're on a tablet or PC, you'll see the Disqus comments box.

I'm also inviting votes on Instagram. Follow me there: @is_this_mutton_

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