Handbag Heaven

by Alderson, Maggie

  In other words: the end of the world is nigh because no-one wears their uniform any more.

  Previously I have written about the confusion that can be caused at work by the current trend to abandon corporate dress codes. I might not, for example, have yelled,‘And who the hell are you?’ at the man who barged rudely into a private meeting the other week had he been dressed in a suit and tie rather than shorts and combat boots. That would have been an indication that he had an important executive role within the corporate hierarchy and wasn’t the itinerant sandwich seller he resembled.

  While that might reveal dodgy values on my part (actually I have nothing against sandwich sellers), it would have saved embarrassment all round (especially for me, still blushing). But really, it was all his fault because he had irresponsibly abandoned the visual language of clothing. In all situations, clothes are a vital form of shorthand, letting us know with one glance exactly what manner of person we are dealing with. Ask any skinhead. Or a passing nun. A High Court judge. A drag queen. Krusty the Clown. The Nanny. The Dalai Lama. Hulk Hogan. John Howard. Liberace.

  If clothes weren’t such instant and subtle communicators (well, not so subtle in Liberace’s case), why would film directors go to such lengths to get the costumes right? A character’s clothes are essential indicators for the viewer. But the way the world is going, with newspaper editors, CEOs and hospital doctors all turning up for work in cargo pants, Mambo shirts and deck shoes, soon Mr Spielberg et al. will be able to dispense with the Edith Heads and Luciana Arrighis and just dress everyone in tracksuits, like one of those 1970s productions of Hamlet played in the round, with everyone sitting on cardboard boxes.

  Consider, also, the complex sartorial semiotics of the armed forces. The whole point of uniforms is (a) to instil a sense of straight-backed itchy-trousered discipline in the wearer and (b) to let everyone know just how scared to be of everyone else. And it makes good sense on a deafening battlefield, doesn’t it, to have rank clearly defined from a distance by button, stripe and epaulet? As enemy fire rains down, you can hardly be expected to find out who’s in charge by asking your mates,‘Is that bloke in the silverchair tour T-shirt the general? Or is it the one in the flowery frock?’ It must also be useful to know which side everyone is on.

  There are other ways, lost to us now, in which dress used to be a very handy signalling code. Take mourning attire. The whole notion seems creepily Victorian now – especially as so many of us wear all black as an everyday look. But wouldn’t it be helpful to know that the reason the fellow in the bank has just been so snippy with you is that a close relative has recently died (black armband)? You’d gladly give up your seat on a crowded train to that pale-faced lady who has just lost her beloved husband (head-to-toe black). And make an extra effort to smile at the one who lost hers six months ago (head-to-toe purple).

  They were called dress codes for a reason.

  Hair raising

  I’m in a daze. A bad hair daze. What happens? One day my hair is a shiny bouncy happening thing, the next – today – it’s having a total gross-out bad hair day. They seem to come from nowhere. I haven’t changed my shampoo, my conditioner, my diet, my attitude, or my hair washing and drying routine, but what created a smooth glossy head yesterday has produced a weird dry/greasy/sticky mop today. It feels like a thatched roof sitting on my head. A very old thatched roof. My scalp aches. My hair smells funny. No I haven’t got my period, but thanks for asking anyway.

  One theory I am considering is that aliens came and did a hair transplant on me in the night. Because this is not my hair. My hair is straight with a slight wave. This hair is not wavy, or kinky, or even frizzy. It’s bent. There are bends in it. Where it should fall and bounce and swish, it bends. So I’m having a bad hair day and now I’ve got an attack of the bends.

  Then there are my antennae. These are special bits of hair that stick out of the sides of my head just behind my ears. I could probably pick up Triple J on them if I tried, but nothing – nothing – will make them lie down. The first thing I always do on a bad hair day is scrape the whole lot back into a severe, yet stylish, ponytail, but the antennae always spring from their bindings like greyhounds leaving the starting boxes at Harold Park. And they’re off!

  I’ve tried cleaving them to my head with greasy stuff, but it just makes them into pointy greasy antennae. I’ve tried gluing them back with hairspray, which works for about five minutes and then they just spring out again and are so dry my head is liable to spontaneously combust. I could be my own bush fire.

  In a really dire moment, with a black tie dinner to go to in fifteen minutes, I tried cutting them shorter with nail scissors, but then they were just shorter antennae. They could only pick up AM stations. My antennae are so wilful, they even stick out from the edges of a desperation Alice band at a perfect right angle to my head. They’re the hair equivalent of a raised middle finger. Faced with my antennae, I have considered taking up Buddhism in a serious way. Not for inner peace, but to have a good excuse to shave my head.

  Maybe it’s something to do with astrology, or numerology, because on a bad hair day everything to do with hair is totally jinxed. That time I had to go to the black tie dinner with antennae as my date, I had carefully booked a blow-dry appointment to ensure Jennifer Anniston locks in any circs. But fate conspired with traffic jams and a dress I accidentally had to try on, and I was late for my appointment. Because I was out of town and using a strange salon they wouldn’t fit me in, like they would have at my regular rug joint. And forget surgery. If you go for the chop on a bad hair day you’ll come out with something even worse. A bad haircut.

  I don’t know what the answer is. I really have tried everything, including getting right back into the shower and washing the whole damned thing all over again and not leaving the towel wrapped around my head for a moment longer than the normal time – which is exactly how long it takes me to eat a bowl of cereal – before blow-drying. It didn’t work. I just ended up with bad hair that was an hour late for work.

  Only time heals a bad hair day. You just have to wait until the stars realign into a more tonsorially fortunate conjunction. Or for the traffic lights to change back to green on Mars so the aliens can bring your real hair back.

  Sitting pretty

  Fashion is a precise science. It may not seem that way with all the airy-fairy talk about divine chiffons and blissful bias cuts and darling little clutch bags and all that, but when you really analyse it, the rights and wrongs of fashion come down to millimetres.

  Take shoulders. I am currently obsessed with the exact shape of the shoulders on Helmut Lang’s women’s suits. I can spot them at fifty paces (so if you’re wearing one, this is a good time to start running, because I want your suit, I want it). I don’t know what it is about them exactly, but they sit just perfectly at the edge of the shoulder bone, not rounded like those 1980s shoulder boulders that resembled skateboarders’ knee protectors, and not too sharp and flashy, but neat and firm like a classic man’s suit jacket. To my fevered eye (I must have one, I MUST), they confer instant authority and decorum on the wearer. The shoulders make the suit stand up straight on its own.

  In my last attempt to own a Helmut Lang trouser suit, I tried on several that were perfect, except they weren’t my size (I considered liposuction). In a frustrated fashion frenzy, I then took the assistant’s advice and tried on the shop’s own label ‘version’ of the suit.

  Oh, unhappy comparison. Even apart from the nasty fabric and the funny cut around the groin (Gandhi’s loincloth), they hadn’t got the shoulders right. I really can’t define precisely what the difference was, but they weren’t the chairman-of-the-board shoulders of my dreams. I tore that jacket off and fled.

  The other unmissable shoulder is by Chanel. Once you get your eye in, you can pick the Chanel shoulder (I know this is getting repetitive, but there really isn’t another word for it) from an entire field of racegoers, no matter what manner of garment or fabric it is rendered in
. It’s a very feminine shape that just cups the, er, shoulder and somehow makes the wearer look more svelte and neatly proportioned.

  Like the Helmut Lang version, the Chanel shoulder (arm/neck conjoiner?) segues into a very tight armhole and a close-fitting sleeve that can feel like a straitjacket if you spent all of last summer in Witchery T-shirts, but boy, is it worth it. The perfect shoulder and a slender sleeve can take kilos off your middle, add several centimetres to your height and make you feel like an antipodean Bernadette Rendall. No, I know you’ve never heard of her, but she’s the head of PR for Chanel in Paris and the most elegant woman I have ever met, and you do want to feel like her, believe me.

  The other detail where millimetres can make the crucial difference between chic and shabby is trouser length. That’s why the whole crop pant thing was such a joy, because your trouser leg really could end anywhere between thigh and floor. But please note the past tense in that sentence. Now fashion and the seasons are dictating a return to real trousers.

  I’ve just ruined two beaut pairs I bought in London at the Joseph sale by having them taken up too much. I had become so used to cropping my pantaloons somewhere around the ankle bone, I didn’t think it through properly when I dropped them off to the tailor. So my beautiful grey flannel trackpant-style trews, which should be falling in careless folds and trailing the ground beneath my designer trainers, instead look ready for a smart round of golf. I’m puking. Just a few millimetres have made the difference between most favoured trouser status and… huh, those things.

  The only thing that would make me feel better about it is a Helmut Lang suit.

  Animal attraction

  Cockroaches need a makeover. They really should do something about those horrible brown outfits. I’m sure they’d have a completely different image if they weren’t always decked out in a colour so unfashionable and so strongly associated with faeces. Because I am certain it is entirely due to the unfortunate colour of their coats that I have always strongly suspected that cockroaches consider the area beneath the lavatory seat a smorgasbord of tasty delights. And that’s why I get so upset when I find them marching about in my fridge. I’m not sure if they’ve washed their feet since dinner.

  If they were an attractive shade of aqua I wouldn’t mind living with them nearly so much. I’d think they brightened the place up. Oh look, a mummy cockroach and lots of little baby cockroaches. Aren’t they sweet? Let’s give them some biscuits. Instead of – AAAAAH! Cockroaches! YUK! Where’s the spray? Exterminate. Exterminate.

  If cockroaches knew how to dress, I wouldn’t be turned into a serial killer every time I saw one. They could at least accessorise. Even dung beetles, who actually do make a living from eating poo, are more attractive than cockroaches, which seems terribly unfair.

  They should get some of the more attractive insects to give them some styling advice. They could ask yellow and black ladybirds for starters. One of those landed on my car windscreen the other day and I was thrilled. It felt like a blessing. And I adore red and black ladybirds so much I’d like to have one as a pet because they remind me of two of my favourite things of childhood: Ladybird books and Ladybird pyjamas. And they’re lucky, too. Apparently it’s good luck if one lands on you. They even have their own nursery rhyme. (It’s a bit depressing actually, but it shows how famous and popular they are.)

  I suppose there is a song about cockroaches – ‘La Cucaracha’ – but isn’t it something ghastly about only having one leg? That’s no good at all. So they need a wardrobe makeover and a new theme tune. Something cheerful and life affirming. Then perhaps someone will make a movie about them. Ants aren’t that different in shape from cockroaches really, but they aren’t yucky because they’re not that particular shade of brown. Shudder.

  But there really is no reason why cockroaches couldn’t be more attractive, because putting deadly venom aside for a moment, most insects are beautiful. That’s why they have regular fashion moments. Dolce & Gabbana went mad about butterflies one season and put them all over their clothes and Prada once had a collection that made a big feature of embroidered bugs. They gave all the top fashion editors a new accessory – a patent leather beetle – to celebrate. British designer Matthew Williamson once went silly over dragonflies and spiderwebs. But nobody ever features cockroaches. Likewise there is an ancient tradition of brooches in the shape of scarab beetles, dragonflies and bees, studded with precious gems, but to my knowledge Tiffany & Co have never made a cockroach brooch. They didn’t find any in Cleopatra’s tomb, either.

  And there are other creatures which could enormously improve their quality of life if they would only employ a fashion consultant. Hyenas have permanent bad hair days. Sharks need serious orthodentistry. Vultures would look better in little toupees (plus they would benefit from a course in the Alexander Technique to improve their posture). Even rats might not be quite so repellent if they had fluffy fur covers on their tails and nice little shoes.

  But for the time being cockroaches insist on wearing brown. They are the only living thing I deliberately kill. Just think about that next time someone tells you clothes don’t matter. Or that brown is the new black.

  A Clutterbug’s Life

  I am just about to change my whole life. I’m so excited. And it’s so easy. According to this fascinating little book I’ve just been reading, called Clear Your Clutter And Turn Into Cameron Diaz (or something like that), all I have to do is chuck out all the old crap in my home and my life will change entirely. It’s all to do with feng shui apparently, which is the ancient art of arranging your home (not a Chinese brand of shoes). Whatever it is, I can hardly wait.

  All you have to do is get rid of those teetering piles of unread old newspapers, that collection of ‘special’ carrier bags you have wedged down the side of the kitchen units and all those might-wear-them-to-a-fancy-dress-party-one-day shoes you have shoved under the bed, and the ‘energy’ will move freely again in your home – and in your Life. (There are always a lot of Capital Letters in these Books.)

  How this seems to work is that all the space that was taken up by pointless old junk will then fill up instead with rolls of used $50 bills and single heterosexual men who look like Johnny Depp, are as funny as Mikey Robbins and make George Soros feel financially insecure.

  You can see why I’m excited. According to this book, clearing the clutter without also helps to clear the clutter within. (You can nod at this point and look Wise.) This means that people who have followed the author’s advice have spontaneously lost heaps of weight without effort, as well as becoming multi-millionaires in loose change found under discarded keep-fit gadgets.

  Inspired by the thrilling case studies in the book (one woman threw out all her clothes bar five items, and a cheque for $15 000 arrived in the post almost immediately; imagine that), I’ve started de-cluttering already. I must say my bedroom does look better without a leaning tower of shoe boxes next to the bed and I found 10 cents on the street the other day – amazing! It must be working.

  The only problem is that every time I open the wardrobe door a big pile of shoe boxes falls out, which is forcing me to realise that clearing my superficial clutter is not enough. I need to get in touch with my Inner Clutter.

  Because while it looks pretty organised on the surface, peep behind any cupboard door in my place and you will find deep clutter. Every drawer is a Bermuda Triangle of tangled tat. Every closet a black hole of cack. Clearing this lot out properly – i.e. actually taking things out the front door, as opposed to just moving it round and round – could be more traumatic. I’ll actually have to part with some of it.

  And while it is all too easy to make fun of New Agey self-help books, I can see that this book has a point. One of the reasons I never have anything to wear is because I have too many clothes. I’ve got so much junk I can’t see what junk I’ve got. All my junk’s got junk on top of it. And junk on top of that.

  So when I’m frantically trying to find something to wear under a nea
t little suit, I can’t find my two strategically purchased thin cotton black suit T-shirts because they are hidden under all the other black T-shirts (of quite the wrong weights), so I think I have lost them. So then I have to take the suit off and start all over again.

  The other thing that happens is that while I’m scrabbling around looking for the T-shirts, I come across a divine little top I had completely forgotten I had. But because it was squashed on a hanger underneath two other shirts, I’ve also forgotten that it has a button missing and a mystery stain on the front. If I had fewer clothes I would be able to see them all – and I’d be able to see what was wrong with them. And I might get to work on time more often.

  So I’m going to do it, I’m going to have an enormous chuck out. And I promise to tell you what happens. (Because that means I will really have to do it.)

  The big heave-ho

  I had tears in my eyes as I said farewell forever. Looking at them one last time, as I remembered all the amazing experiences we had shared, I blew them a kiss, saying, Goodbye old friends and thank you. Then I chucked the whole lot in the charity clothing bin.

  I promised I’d do it and I have. I’ve been through my wardrobe like a bush fire, determined to throw out anything I haven’t worn in the last year. And along with irredeemably stained T-shirts, out of style mini skirts, and jeans which I have finally accepted will never actually fit me again, I threw out some real old friends. Garments I have owned for ten years, which have seen me through all manner of clothing crises, but just don’t hack it any more.

  The hardest to part with was my English Eccentrics baroque-print red silk shirt. I can still remember the day I bought that shirt – it would have been in February 1990. I was the editor of a fashion magazine at the time, just about to embark once more on the biannual trips to the Milan–Paris–New York fashion shows.