Bare breasts. Or breasts visible through sheer fabric. Great for getting coverage in the British gutter press, but really annoying as you have to narrow your eyes and imagine the same outfit with a nice neat slip underneath. Experience teaches that it will never look as good as Giselle’s bouncing breasts, so it’s a big cheat.
Tailored jumpsuits on men, î la Torville and Dean. They make me prickle with embarrassment. It’s something to do with the arrangement of the charcuterie counter, yet in the uncensored cut of a matador outfit this has quite another effect (phwoah!). Maybe it’s just the incredible mimsy-ness of figure skating. And the terrible thought of anyone who does it ever having sex (yeeewww).
Anything too redolent of a ‘costume’. Whenever you see something that makes you hear an echo of Alfonso in the studio saying:‘I’ve got it!’ (snaps fingers) ‘Why don’t we… ?’ to a pack of simpering yes people, half his age, who are all rolling their eyes behind his back and applying for other jobs on the sly, you know you’re in for a cringe-a-thon. The Wizard of Oz, Flamenco A Go Go and Show Boat are three such experiences that come to mind.
Fashion senses
Like the other two best things in life – sex and food – clothes are sensual. They stimulate the senses. And to be any good, they have to delight all five of them. Okay, you probably stopped thinking the cuffs of your cardigan tasted delicious when you were around the age of ten months, but we do talk about well-dressed people having ‘good taste’ and we react to clothing in a very stomachy way. Clothes we don’t like are pukey. They make us want to throw up. We don’t say the bridesmaid dress she wanted us to wear was unattractive, we say it was revolting. It didn’t make us want to weep, it made us want to vomit.
Sight is obviously involved. It’s about a Look, so you want to enjoy looking at it. Touch is crucial, as you will know if you’ve ever worn a lambswool jumper next to the skin. Then a cashmere one. Or polyester pyjamas. Then silk ones. Or anything at all made of that frightful cack that pretends to be linen, but is actually made from scratchy palm trees.
You realise how important smell is whenever you encounter people who don’t realise how important it is. These tend to be people who smoke. And people who retrieve garments from the washing basket for just one more little outing…
But in all this looking and smelling and feeling, I reckon sound is the sense it’s easiest to forget. Unless you’ve ever worn creaky shoes in a library. That reminds you of it very quickly. You try peg-legging it, you try tippy-tiptoe, shuffling, goosestepping, hopping and still they creak. Step. Creak. Step. Creak. Step. Creak. Terrible.
Just last night I was walking up a dark street and I could hear this woman behind me in some kind of wooden clogs. Clonk, clonk, clonk. In the end I had to turn around to see what kind of cringing weirdo would wear such awful clonky shoes. She looked perfectly normal, she just sounded shocking – because she hadn’t got off the carpet in the shoe shop. You must get off the carpet. You have to test drive shoes for sound as well as sight.
I recently walked away from buying a pair of shoes which I loved and adored, because when I walked around the shop in them fast they went slap-slap-slap against the soles of my feet and I suddenly understood where the term ‘slapper’ came from. By the same token, some men find the rat-tat-tat-tat of fast-moving stilettos on parquet extremely arousing. They know a taut calf and slender ankle are in the vicinity. Which is another reason to take sound into account in different clothing contexts. Instant erotica may be just the effect you want to achieve on a Saturday night, but at Monday morning’s shareholders’ AGM it’s not such a bright idea. You might be correctly corporately attired from the ankle up, but if your shoes click-a-clack into the room like Gypsy Rose Lee, you’ve blown it. You might be thinking about the bottom line, but everyone else will be thinking about your bottom.
Men have to concern themselves in this regard with corduroy. The chafing sound of thighs rubbing together in corduroy trousers is extremely disturbing. It’s a sort of squeaky, swishy noise. Sqweash sqweash sqweash. Here comes thunder thighs.
But not all clothing noises are bad. In fact, the great joy of wearing a full-bore evening number with a big swishy skirt is the swishy part. Rustling is great. Skirts always rustle in historical novels where bosoms heave and dashing men stride in with their spurs jangling. The tramp of heavy leather soles echoing down stone hallways can evoke terror or joy – is it Bluebeard in a murderous mood or Prince Charming in his handmade thigh-high riding boots?
Or just some twit who didn’t test drive his slip-ons?
You beauty
We all know good-looking people, attractive people, pretty people and sexy people, but true beauty is something else entirely. I realised this the day I was sitting in a departure lounge at Paris airport and there was this woman I could not stop staring at. She just had something fascinating about her and I was desperately trying to figure out what it was. I kept trying to tear my eyes away because I know it’s rude to stare, but I couldn’t. She was mesmerising.
What was it about her?
She had interesting black clothes on, pretty blonde hair, a slim figure and terrific legs with really finely turned ankles. She had nice shoes on, too, but that wasn’t it. There was more to it than that. Her face just seemed to have a glow about it. It was in permanent soft focus. She looked as if she were in her late forties, but her face was strangely ageless, childlike and wonderfully mature at the same time. And even though I was across the other side of the room, I could see the blue of her eyes clearly. Especially when she caught me staring at her and a look of pain seemed to flit across them.
That was when I realised it was Julie Christie.
Julie Christie is the most beautiful person I have ever seen. End of story. And I’ve interviewed just about every supermodel on the planet. She has an inner radiance that is like some kind of alien energy. Kate Moss and Claudia Schiffer and Elle Macpherson look beautiful in pictures, but I didn’t find them overwhelming in real life. Gorgeous, but not too much to handle.
Naomi Campbell came close, as previously described, and Helena Christensen stood me still. My throat closed up when I had to interview her. I felt like a lumbering klutz, impossibly coarse, beside her. She is so beautiful she made me feel grubby. And, surprising as it may sound, Miss Kylie Minogue is much more astonishing in real life than she is in photos. She has a little bit of that alien fairy dust sprinkled on her, too. Maybe it’s something to do with having a very large head-to-body ratio.
That may be one of the reasons why Bob Dylan is so charismatic in the flesh. He has a damn big head on him. Big heads must spark off some kind of primeval reaction in observers, because babies have them. Come to think of it, so do aliens. Anyway, I saw Mr Bob up close at a press conference in about 1986 and his presence filled the room in a way quite out of proportion even to his legendary status – and he sure ain’t pretty no more. But you just couldn’t take your eyes off him. I was totally smitten. It was like being at a press conference for Jesus.
The most truly beautiful man I have ever seen, however, was Imran Khan. He walked past me and my best friend, Josephine, at a cocktail party in London years ago and we just turned and looked at each other in amaze-ment. The beauty of the face. The nobility of the bearing. The shoulderiness of the shoulders.
And I’ve never forgotten it because it prompted one of her better remarks.‘Well, he just bowled two maidens over…’ she said.
The slippery slope
I’ve finally been skiing. Well, I didn’t actually ski. I just went to see what everyone was wearing, because the main reason I’ve missed out on winter fun all these years is that I had too much outfit anxiety to go.
It wasn’t that I was worried I would be hopeless on the piste. It goes without saying that I would be terrible at it, but after a lifetime of rivalling Mr Bean for negative sporting prowess I am used to physical humiliations of all kinds. What I really couldn’t have endured is being incorrectly attired for the slopes – because when
you are really bad at something, you have to do it in the right clothes.
If you’re really good at something, it doesn’t matter what you wear. I’ve got friends who have been skiing since they could stand and they swoosh down black runs in cocktail dresses and ballet tutus for a lark, but if you haven’t got a clue you’ve got to have the gear. Not the ultimate, latest, most expensive professional rig-out – that looks really tragic on a beginner – but just right enough to fit in, so you look like you know what you’re doing, but are having a bit of an off day.
It is also important, if you are a total klutz, that your kit on no account looks new, which was another reason for making an investigative expedition to the Snowy Mountains. A joyful afternoon’s tobogganing gave me the chance to wear in my newly purchased Smurf hat and zip-front microfibre body warmer, so when I actually have my first ski lesson (some time next year), at least I won’t be wearing that New Hat facial expression along with one of abject terror.
I bought those accent accessories in advance, but hired the rest of the outfit on the way to the snow, which was a hell of a risk. All the way to Cooma I was convinced that the only rental ski wear on offer would be white nylon with jade and jacaranda feature stripes – the kind of gear Sylvester Stallone’s mother favours – so I was thrilled when I found some really acceptable black waterproof trousers and a Sportif bright red jacket I actually liked. It is, however, the last time I will be hiring footwear. Other people’s feet. Enough said.
And there was another pleasant surprise about wearing padded clothing in public – one of the many aspects of skiing I had always regarded with horror – because why would anyone knowingly apply additional bulk to their frame? Would the Michelin Man wear a puffa jacket? Would Humpty Dumpty rug up in a doona coat? But in actual fact, rather than making me feel like the Pillsbury Doughwoman with a bad case of premenstrual water retention, my padded gear was very freeing. For once it was the clothes that were fat and not me. I could blame the whole thing on my pants.
It was worth going to Thredbo to spend a whole weekend without holding my stomach in.
Of course there were sleek snowrider babes strutting around in slinky black all-in-one ski suits and ski boots that made their pylon legs look even longer, but most people looked like me. Paddington Bear. Paddington Bear with a red nose and a lot to carry. But happy.
By Sunday afternoon, I was so relaxed in my ski gear I could hardly bear to take it off, even though it was about thirty degrees in the sun. Eventually, I was so emboldened that I found myself on a pair of skis, hurtling down the slope in a race, dodging trees and even doing the odd jump. The skis in question were attached to a $2 video game, but it was a start. And I had the right hat on while I was doing it.
Woolly thinking
You know, like, Einstein’s theory of relativity and everything? Well, that space and time stuff is very interesting, but I think Tiny Einie missed out on a key area of application for it: shopping. So, as a tribute, I have been working on Alderson’s Theory of Shopping Relativity.
It goes like this: the desirability of objects is relative to the other objects around them.
See? There is an ineluctable physical law that explains why you come back from holiday with a lot of terrible crap you never would have bought at home. It was the least horrible stuff among all the gruesome gee-gaws on offer – it is not until you see it in a broader context that you can acknowledge that it is repulsive. Just about every item of clothing ever bought in Bali falls into this category.
‘Look at this dolphin-print 100 per cent viscose jumpsuit – isn’t it heaven?’
My theorem was conclusively proved during a trip to a very untouristy Greek island – so untouristy that it had nothing cute to buy. Even the postcards featured things like hydro-electric power stations. The most desirable item I could find was a jar of honey, and I couldn’t wear that or get it through customs.
So imagine our excitement when we heard that the travelling gypsy market was making its annual visit to the neighbouring village that very week. What luck! I couldn’t wait to snap up armfuls of colourful bangles, hand-embroidered peasant blouses and beautiful shawls.
Boy, was I in for a let-down. Just as gypsies have replaced colourfully painted wagons with nasty caravans, and darling piebald horses with ozone-zapping jalopies, they have replaced their exotic traditional attire with head-to-toe man-made fibres. This market was full of it.
You have never seen such a frightful array of ghastly tat. Hundreds of stalls winding along the narrow cobbled streets and nothing I wanted to buy. And believe me, I worked at it. First I went through it in great detail, convinced that, if I just kept looking, I would find the little old lady selling off her wedding trousseau. Then, when all hope faded, I went through it again just to marvel.
In the end I grew rather to love the piles of acrylic jumpers, the acres of Corfam shoes (similar to vinyl, but cheaper looking), the thickets of bristling nylon children’s dresses and the racks of fake Nike sportswear.
But most interesting of all was observing my companions, who were still determined to find something to buy. They found it all right – natural wool vests and long johns as worn by shepherds. Natural wool in this context means it was practically baaaaaa-ing. The dags were still attached. It smelled so strongly of sheep that a border collie would have had you rounded up in a paddock in minutes.
Admittedly, the shape of the tops was quite nice – long sleeves and classic grandad’s shirt necklines. But that’s because they were Grandad’s shirts. They smelled like Grandad had just taken them off. Or died in them. I have rarely seen more unpleasant objects, but my companions carried on like they had just discovered pashminas. There was wild talk of exporting in bulk and they couldn’t believe I wasn’t snapping up a few to wow everyone at Fashion Week.
At dinner that night they all wore them, wittily worked back with bandannas and T-shirts. But guess what? I haven’t seen those items since. I think when they were unpacked at home, their owners probably sprang back in alarm and called the exterminators.
Because that is the second rule of Alderson’s theory of shopping relativity. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts – and what you have when you get home is just one of the parts.
A friend like Ben
Thank you for asking me, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to come out for the next few weeks. I’m rather busy, as a little white stranger was delivered this morning. It is five years since I have heard the patter of a tiny spin cycle in my own home and I’m staying in to bond with Ben.
Ben Dix the washing machine, that is. He is my new pride and joy, and I won’t be happy until every garment, towel, sheet and tablecloth I own has passed through his porthole door and come out clean and fresh and smelling of the free fabric conditioner he brought with him.
When my parents first got an automatic washing machine, in about 1970, they pulled up chairs to watch it go round, washing and rinsing and spinning all by itself. They thought it was miraculous – no more mangle! I thought they were nuts, but now I’m trying to figure out how I can get the sofa into the bathroom so I can watch Ben perform the cold wash in comfort. And I can’t wait for that climactic moment when he switches from spinning to drying.
Because Ben is a combined unit. He can wash and dry all on his own. That’s why he cost the price of a one-bedroom unit in Perth.
Apart from his technical wizardry (he heats up his own water and judges the minimum amount he can use for each load completely unaided, because he cares deeply about the environment), Ben represents a return to adulthood for me, after half a decade living in units that simply could not accommodate any whitegoods beyond a fridge and a toaster.
For that time my Saturdays were a trudge of humungous bags in and out of lifts to communal laundries, only to find all the machines were already full. Or having got up at 7 a.m. to secure one, of going back an hour later to find my pile of precious clothes suppurating on top of the drier while someone else’s gear purred smug
ly inside.
In one building where we had a rooftop washing line, I came back to check on my non-fast coloureds load to find a woman moving my damp whites out of the sunshine into a dank corner in favour of her own, because hers were ‘wetter’. I went back later and threw a pair of her knickers off the roof.
After that I stopped hanging my stuff out to dry for fear of reprisals, so it was a choice of festooning it around the flat, like the rags at the site of a recent vision of the Virgin Mary, or nuking it in the communal driers.
They certainly do the job (you could fire pots in them) but the process involves first taking the pubic lint out of the drier after someone else’s turn, which makes me feel sick. Irrational I know, because it is all freshly washed (otherwise it wouldn’t be in the drier, would it?), but I don’t want to touch other people’s sock fluff and underscunder plunder at any stage of the wash cycle.
Mind you, at least the apartment buildings here have laundries. In London you have to go to a public laundrette. The horror, the horror. The last time I ever used one I saw a man inspect a pair of trousers he was about to wash, then take off the ones he was wearing and put them in a machine instead. And believe me, he looked nothing like the bronzed love god in the Levi’s commercial.
Barbie’s my kind of girl
Somebody gave me a ‘Barbie Through the Decades’ calendar for Christmas. And, let me tell you, I was as excited by that telltale pink tissue paper wrapping as I would have been by the blue of a Tiffany box or the orange of a Hermès carrier bag. So far I haven’t even broached the cellophane wrapping (too special), but just by looking at the small photos on the back, I can tell you that in the 1988 shot Barbie is dressed by Ferré (she has wide-belted leather pants tucked into boots and a floor-length coat; she’s walking the dogs), and 1989 could be Valentino (it looks like something Joan Collins would wear to Ascot) or Lacroix (colour, sweetie, colour).
Handbag Heaven Page 9