Feminine Dressing Influences

[Debbie Denier]

Before and after I started out on my dressing journey. Females I came across in my life had an influence on my dressing The first person was my female cousin. Aged 16 our families went on holiday together. My cousin dressed up for a night out ,had a profound effect on me.1st time I saw her with make up , nylons , white dress and high heels.I felt envious and wanted to be like her.5 years later a female colleague nearly old enough to be my mother used to dress so feminine and elegantly. More so than younger colleagues.She wore a pair of seamed black tights with a bow on the heel. I thought they were stockings originally and thought I must have a pair. I went to nearly every shop in town until I found a pair .bought them and wore them until they laddered.My friends sister used to wear pencil skirts. So did I after seeing her in one.Has anybody else here been influenced by other females for dressing.? Not necessarily girlfriends or partners.

[kimdl93]

Oh of course, besides my two wives (not at the same time) I picked up ideas from the women I worked with as well as fashion magazines. I also gradually developed a sense of what I thought would work with my stature, skin and hair coloring.

[Kris Burton]

My wife has always been my biggest influence, but there have been others. I can usually find something to like in just about all women, and am especially enthralled when someone's sense of style matches my own taste. I admit a part of this used to be the usual guy checking out women scenario, but now I am looking at their fashions as well, getting some new ideas. I just hope I am being subtle and don't look like some leering old guy - I'm really just looking at the shoes!

[NjJamie]

Kris, yes, imagine if they really knew why we j sometimes look just a bit too long! Today was a visit to a college and some of the outfits were definite show stoppers (tall boots, very short skirts, one was just some hand knitted panels loosely tied together) but the women closer to my age also got some longer looks!

[Kris Burton]

Here's a very specific example. My band played a series of gigs at a hotel, and I became good friends with the girl that worked the desk. She wore a lovely denim pencil dress, buttoned up the front, slit up the side, with red scarf. With her blond hair it was lovely, memorable and influencing...I was looking for a dress just like that on Amazon just the other day.

The year this happened? 1978.

[docrobbysherry]

No, never. Just a coincidence that I happen to resemble Cleopatra in my avatar!:heehee:

Seriously, I have no imagination. So, I've been copying female looks I've seen on the street, in malls, in magazines, and online, TV, and movies for over 20 years!:battingeyelashes:

[Karren H]

Since I began dressing in the late 1950s I would say that every woman I saw was an influence. Add all the women in the Sear and JC Pennys catalogues from the 1960s. No one in particular really comes to mind except my mother, grandmother and step-mother. Mainly because I had access to their wardrobes.

[AmandaM]

When I was a kid in the 60's, it was young women in their miniskirts and boots, etc. Also, Marlo Thomas, Jeannie, etc. as a teen in the 70s, it was all the cute girls who were wearing cute clothes such as Marcia Brady as a teenager. I was really envious of the short dresses and block heels they wore. Shows like Charlie's Angels fascinated me too. As an adult, it is pretty much any attractive lady with a great outfit. Not digging the yoga pants and casual clothes trend as inspiration. I prefer upscale fashion and when I see it, I want it.

[dmartin6671]

Myself the same. I had access to wardrobe and put them on many times. I love the feel it gives me. I always felt more femine maybe because mom made me do all the housework, cleaning, washing and ironing clothes, cooking..not that i believe the women should do all. But im speaking from back in the early 70?s when everything was old school?Also the ? other ? influences, being raped and molested made me think i was in the wrong gender, as a male. Today at 56 years young, i still crave the dressing up and acting, and my wife now knows i am gay and enjoy the clothes, but she does not allow me to dress. When i ask her to wear my panties at night to sleep, she says no. I do not feel i will be married too much longer because the six years we were apart, i dressed up and sat on my balcony apartment for everyone to see me if they looked up..the trees from my third floor blocked most of the view..lol..

mmmmmmmm

[Paulie Birmingham]

For me, probably the ****ty gf ive had. I dress more like them than june cleaver

[sometimes_miss]

The first of course was my older sister; the initial episode was more of a response to my mom's paying so much attention to making my slster pretty before going to school each day; while she was doing my sister's hair, I went and put on one of my sister's dresses and approached them, saying 'I'm ready to go to school too!'. Of course mom just took me and changed me back to my boy clothes, and we then walked my sister to school. When we came home, mom asked me if I really wanted to wear my sister's clothes, but of course said it in such a way as to infer that I should answer 'no', so that's what I said.
A few years later, molested by an older boy, he would dress me up in his younger sister's dresses. They fit perfectly, he used this as evidence that I was supposed to be a girl. Over time, I would come to identify with her, and whenever I'd see her, I'd picture myself in whatever she was wearing. 7 years later, having carefully observed her, and other girls in school, I would see all sorts of pretty things, and picture myself in them. Waiting patiently for god to 'fix me' and make me the girl I was supposed to be, I would plan on what I would wear after that happened. Well, I'm still waiting, still feel like an adolescent girl, waiting to become a woman. And still feel like I'm supposed to be wearing girl clothes appropriate for a young teen girl. So that's what the vast majority of my girl clothes are, stuff you'd find in the junior's section of the woman's clothing departments of stores, and associated things like that. Favorites, of course, resemble what he had dressed me up in so long ago, school girl uniforms, cheerleader uniforms, things like I saw girls wearing when I was growing up.

[Jane G]

Crums, every woman I see influences my crossdressing. I can be bitchy, in silence or with comments to my wife. I can admire, again often with comments to my wife ended with b#tch, out of pure jealousy, but I notice them all. Just as she does. :heehee:

[Stephanie47]

There is one young lady who had an influence on me, but, I do not know if she was real or a figment of my imagination. When I was young, maybe age four I started having dreams of a young woman who had been strangled to death. She ("I",?) was laying dead in the mud in a parking lot. She ("I"?) was wearing only a white slip. Sounds bizarre. I still have that image engraved in my mind. I do not understand where that image came from as our family did not have a television set yet. I did not read the newspaper. I do not recall ever overhearing anything about a crime.

Years, later my parents bought an unapproved washing machine for our apartment. Prior to buying it, my mother had to wash the family clothes at a laundromat. But, she hanged the clothes to dry on a wash line and drying rack in the apartment. I was drawn to my mother's white full slips hanging on the line. When I was older and had to attend religious instruction at my church twice a week I had to walk by two women's wear shops on Broadway in Astoria, Queens. I was always drawn to the mannequins in the windows adorned in undergarments; bras and girdles and slips.

It wasn't until decades later, when my wife started watching a program about "past lives," that I started wondering if that image engraved in my mind had sometime to do with living in the past as a woman who was strangled. To this day I do not like wearing anything tight around my neck and only wear v-neck tee shirts. If my wife and I ever would have a serious conversation about my dressing I certainly would bring this up. Maybe, that's the answer to the "Why" question, for me at least.

Second influencer? June Cleaver.

[Pumped]

No one certain woman, but like others I might see a woman with some wild or maybe just a nice outfit and immediately go shopping on the internet!

[Jessica Secret]

No one in my life specifically, for me it was seeing women on TV and definitely the internet, and always seeing them in beautiful/romantic lingerie motivated and influenced me heavily.

[Nikki Pink]

Growing up in California a lot of the malls you would have to walk through the Juniors Section to get through the Department Store to get to the main mall. I remember brushing against the fabrics and watching the cute girls holding up outfits. No one specific, but wanting what I couldn?t have?

[Davinnia]

My wife is a big influence especially as I get her cast offs & she gets mine. Also, I love many of the outfits worn by female news readers here in Australia & comment on what I would or wouldn't wear myself.

[GretchenM]

As a youngster in the late 40's and early 50's I lived in poverty. Nice clothes for boys were almost unheard of. For me a new hand-me-down shirt or pants or shoes was a treat and something new was rare and precious. Yet the girls almost always wore dresses and skirts that were so beautiful and their hair was almost always nice. In other words, boys wore a lot of worn out clothes, but girls usually did not. Many of those dresses and skirts were hand-made by mothers, aunts and grandmothers, but I drooled over how pretty those little girls looked nearly all the time. They did have some play clothes for more casual times and even those were nicer than anything that most of us boys wore.

By the time I was 4 and 5 I was already identifying as a bit of girl, but I still played boy games quite readily. However I was slowly losing interest in most of those and preferred playing with girls. One girl even let me try on one of her dresses - OH MY!

When I was 6 everything changed. My mother remarried and we moved out of the slum and lived better - not great, but better. In time it got even better. But those early days surrounded by girls in dresses and skirts and boys in almost rags at times has been an influence on me ever sense. Not glamorous, but nice and functional girl's and women's clothes.

This is probably not that unusual among people who engage in CDing or are some kind TG person. In fact it is likely quite common in kids who at a young age are forming a gender identity and it is a bit reversed from normal expectations. The science says that influence is not a cause of gender variance but, in boys, envy of how girls dress is an early expression of an identity that is probably not stereotypical or traditionally binary oriented. We don't need to be told by someone about this CDing thing or see images that influence us to lean toward the other side in gender like some people think. We go in that direction because that is who we are - period.

[Cheryl T]

I have to agree with Karren.
Throughout my life every woman has had some influence on my style and the types of fashion that I love.
At first all the catalogs and certainly Playboy magazine. Television ads and every woman on the street. I've always been someone who would look at a woman and at first analyze her outfit, does it suit her figure and does it make her look attractive. After that I would then look at it as if I were wearing it and do the same.
I've developed my own style. I wear what I enjoy wearing and no longer buy things just because they are sexy or sensual. My deciding point for the last 15 years or so has been, would I wear that in public, can I wear that in public. If the answer is no then I won't buy it.

[Beverley Sims]

All the time, seeing other women dressed has a profound influence on me.

I am always experimenting with my appearance.

I take up on about ten percent of the styles I experiment with.

Davinia some of those South Australian news readers have very little style, I think you have to look at the Eastern States newsreaders more closely. NSW girls always seem up to the mark as far as appearance goes. Adelaide has always dragged behind in the fashion stakes.

Victoria, that's another state altogether. :-)

[Veronica Lacey]

Many images from TV in the 70's and 80's created bookmarks for my imagination to return to.

My first full time job was delivering office furniture and supplies. Imagine the buffet of daily imagery to an 18 year old in the late 80's delivering to offices, each one with at least one or two long-haired women in stereotypical secretary attire. Jacquard white blouses and silk blouses with bows were very common, knee-length skirts, stockings and 3" heels, a bit of jewellery. As I was a polite, physically fit yet shy 18 year old I often drew conversation from the ladies and rather enjoyed the extra few minutes of attention they shared. So funny that I would not undress them with my eyes except to imagine wearing their outfits.

Given all of this I've often dressed much older than I am with long sleeved blouses that button to the neck, skirts at least knee-length or longer, modest heels or a 3" at most and always with stockings or a suspender belt. As difficult as that job was it offered such a wonderful benefit for a dresser in waiting.

[Christine Seale]

Oh here I go....!
Catwoman in the Batman TV series...
60s ,70s working class prostitutes i saw in town w bleach blonde hair , leopard print , heels etc !
Transexual and Transvestite contact magazines from the 70s w Sulka ,Nikko ,Candy.
Kim Christy and Jennifer Jordan publications.
Randy Taylor.
Candy Darling , Nico
I never wanted to look like the woman next door , unless she was a dominatrix !
Well ...I,m being humourous partly ....
C
I just remembered a sunday supplement magazine that had a French Travesti Revue photo article in the early 70.s with a chorus line of beautiful drag queen redheads and i remember feeling i wanted to be one of them ! I found the magazine onlind some yrs ago "Belle de Mai " saucy French Maid was one pic..

[Jeanettew]

Wow, big question, and I am sure every one of us has someone that we want to look like or drives us to the shop to find that item that we must have.

I am inspired by any female I see that looks stunning nice dress or skirt, stockings and high heels, then i search the web to find one for myself.

The influence that probably drives me more is period clothing, like the outfits in Downton Abbey or that period.

[alwayshave]

Any 40s/50s Movie stars/TV stars. I love the clothes from that era.

[Brianne_bc]

I guess for me its definitely Brittish pin up models and porn stars.

[josie_S]

My formative years will be revealed in my list, lol: Catherine Bach, Lynda Carter, Heather Locklear, Joyce DeWitt (aka Janet from Three's Company), Samantha Fox, Vanity...

I don't think I wanted to necessarily wear what they wore, but I love their essence, their femininity...that's what I want to capture today :D