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When it comes to fashion my mother and sister have always been close in size and share similar tastes, so shopping for each other has never been an issue. They both love designer labels and always look like they’re ready to board a yacht party or check into an Aspen ski lodge depending on the weather. Meanwhile, I’m more of a combat boots and graphic tee kind of girl, so my mom’s fashion advice is often limited to, “You’re wearing black AGAIN?” Turns out I’m not alone when it comes to getting routine fashion critiques from my mother as a grown woman. PEOPLE recently sat down with journalist Tamron Hall and got some details on the sometimes unsolicited fashion advice she often receives from her mother until this day.
Hall shares that even while hosting on the Today Show her mom would tune in not just to find out the latest breaking world news, but to check out her baby girl’s #OOTD:
“I’d occasionally get a message from a viewer saying ‘Why do you look down at your phone?’ and I said, ‘Truthfully, waiting for my mother’s critique.’”
“‘Miss Hall, I don’t like that lipstick,’ ‘Miss Hall, that’s a great dress, ‘Miss Hall is that new?’ I [once] had a dress I thought was very cute, and I wore it one morning. I couldn’t even get off air [before] my mother says ‘Don’t you ever wear that dress again!’ And then you’re torn: Will I donate this ugly dress to someone?”
Hall reveals that most days the advice is warranted since when it comes to fashion, her mother comes from a generation when the only opportunity many women had to showcase their personal style was on Sundays:
“A lot of women in my neighborhood worked at the post office or were teachers or worked at hospitals, and often wore uniforms Monday through Friday. And the Sunday church service gave them this opportunity to show their individual fashion.”
“And for me, that’s where it all came together. That’s when I could look at my mom and say, not only was this an incredible mom Monday through Saturday, but on Sunday she was fierce.”
She also shares that when it comes to fashion, a valuable lesson passed down from her mother is that you don’t have to blow your budget to rock a killer look:
“My mom was a working mom and at one point a single working mom. So she did not have an elaborate closet by any imagination. But you know, she worked with what she had.”
“For my mom, there was no ‘high/low’ [when you mix designer items with lower-priced pieces]. There was ‘low/low,’ and you were going to make it work. My prom dress was made by hand from a pattern book that she got in the dollar store. It wasn’t [fancy], and I’m happy it wasn’t.”
And while Hall says she still isn’t able to fully appreciate some of her mom’s fashion choices from the 70’s including short-shorts and big afros, one accessory she did fall in love with were her mother’s silver hoop earrings:
“I remember taking a pair of her hoops in ninth grade, wearing those and thinking that I was super fly. And I’ve been wearing hoops ever since.”
“I wish she’d kept the crochet style dresses you would see in the ’70s, the platform shoes that she and my aunt would wear. That ’70s retro thing – I am now into without even realizing it.”
So will Hall be dropping diamonds and designer labels on her mother this year for Mother’s Day? The former host of Deadline: Crime With Tamron Hall shares her mother, like many moms, doesn’t have any special requests:
“My mom is like most mothers. She never asks for anything. She’s happy to see me be happy, that’s her gift.”
“You can look at my life now and any other celebrity and you think ‘Wow, look at the fashion’. But most of us were raised by women like my mother, who scraped and fought to get us to where we are. And the style that you see, the confidence that we can portray in photographs, that is something that’s given to us by our mothers. That’s something that’s delivered to us by them nurturing our spirit.”
And to be quite honest, like most women of a certain age, being fashionable is more about qualities that never go out of style, such as confidence and generosity, traits that Hall is quick to admit her mother has been rocking since her childhood:
“She’s 68 years old and she looks phenomenal. People come up all the time: ‘Are you sure that’s your mom?’ When I see a photograph of my mother – you can see a hat, you can see beautiful clothing and bright colors, all of these things – but I see, and I think the people who know her, see that twinkle in her eye. That loving energy that she has.”
