Handbag Heaven

by Alderson, Maggie

  This phenomenon first arose with the crisp white T-shirt, as worn under the crisp Helmut Lang pants-suit by Smart Corporate Babes (of both sexes). The problem was that after a few washes, the crisp white T became the dingy whitish T and the SCBs started buying their favourite Petit Bateau, Gap, Country Road, Bonds etc. variations in bulk – and ditching them like used tissues as soon as the drabs set in.

  This led quickly to the princessy end of the SCB set becoming so addicted to the snap of a new T-shirt, with its smooth, crisp fabric dressing – as beguiling as the smell of a new car – that they could only bear to wear each T-shirt once before giving it the heave-ho.

  Maybe it’s my sensible Scottish blood rising to the surface (ne’er waste an oat if ye want ye groats, and that kind of thing), but I find that concept deeply immoral. The sheer shameless waste is repugnant in itself. Then there are the ruinous implications for the environment, as cotton is one of the most pest-bedevilled of crops, requiring lavish spraying and squirting of noxious chemicals to reach profitable maturity.

  And the box-fresh T-shirts are just the start of the disposable trend. Swedish chain Hennes & Moritz was an absolute smash hit when it opened in New York recently. Its philosophy? Style over quality, forget service and sell it cheap. And I mean CHEAP. A report in New York magazine described febrile fashionistas queuing up to get into the thronged shop to snap up ‘throwaway’ one-season-wonder fashion items such as zebra-print halter-tops for US$6 each. One girl was buying ten $6 white bikinis – one for each Hamptons weekend.

  Even apart from the craven waste, this throwaway attitude takes the heart and soul out of dressing. How cold and calculating you must have to be to discard a garment after just one outing. I like to build a relationship with my clothes. Over the years they can become like pets: part of the family, with fond memories – and a bit smelly around the extremities.

  It’s also a very expensive way to dress. Consider this: if you buy one ultra-fine cashmere T-shirt, it will air out every night, need washing only once a week and come out looking like new every time. And while it will cost a terrifying $450 up front, after just nineteen outings the cost per wear comes down to less than one environment-wrecking, one-wear $25 cotton rag ($23.68 to be precise).

  As my partner says, with European smugness, whenever he sees me retrieving yet another amoeba-shaped chain-store T-shirt from the washer – I’m not rich enough to buy cheap clothes.

  Fashion survivor

  I’ve had this great idea for a TV show. It’s called ‘Survivor’. Oh, apparently someone else has already used that name. Okay then – I’ll call it ‘Fashion Survivor’.

  This is what happens: we take sixteen fashionistas and fly them into a city they have never visited before – but their luggage never arrives! All they have left are the clothes they’re wearing, their hand baggage and $500 credit left on their charge cards. Scary!

  We watch as they battle against the elements to dress themselves without any of their favourite pieces. We hold our breath as they struggle to put together a new mini wardrobe, shopping in unfamiliar territory among brands they don’t know, with a budget they’d normally spend on one pair of designer sunglasses – testing stuff!

  The real fun starts as we see them scrambling to meet the daily challenges. Scraping up a look for an industry cocktail party, an important work lunch and a smart-casual Easter weekend, without any of their favourite shoes, scarves or feature bags. This is life on the edge!

  Adding to the tension – every three days one fashionista will be voted ‘out’ by the rest of the style tribe and deliberately not be invited to an In Crowd boutique opening.

  It’s cruel and ruthless – we will see him or her in tears as they ring the PR to see if their invite has been ‘lost in the post’ – but that’s life out there in the fashion jungle. Brutal and savage. Only the innately chic will survive.

  Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. Out of style.

  This reality television proposal was inspired by my own experiences of sending a suitcase via ‘unaccompanied baggage’ from Heathrow airport.

  ‘That second suitcase takes you over the luggage weight limit and will cost you an extra $900,’ said the infant on the desk at Virgin Airlines.

  ‘We will deliver to your door within seven days!’ said the poster at the unaccompanied baggage desk.

  ‘Where do I sign?’ said I.

  After three weeks I was still waiting for that suitcase to arrive. The ‘seven day’ shippers told me it was held up by foot and mouth disease and Easter. What did I care why? I just wanted it back – it contained all my best clothes.

  My Helmut Lang day suit. My Helmut Lang T-shirt. My Lawrence Steele pencil skirt. My Martin Margiela boat neck. My agnès b. stripy matelot top. My best dark red leather coat. And much more I’d forgotten about, having been separated from it for so long.

  I can’t begin to describe how dislocated I felt without it all. I kept going to my wardrobe, like a mother bird returning to a nest that has been destroyed by a predator, only to remember, as I started to rake through the empty hangers, that my babies weren’t there.

  My clothing children were sitting in a warehouse somewhere – I didn’t even know in what country – possibly in a bath of anti-foot-and-mouth disinfectant. I didn’t know when – or if – I would ever see them again.

  This situation forced me to become extremely creative with regard to the wardrobe remnants I had left. Garments which hadn’t seen daylight for half a decade were being brought out for an airing. ‘Mistake’ purchases were finally proving that I wasn’t completely insane when I bought them. Items that had been lost in the dark recesses of cupboards for seasons were making comebacks not seen since Barry White was re-discovered by Groove Armada.

  In some ways it was good to be stretched to the limits of my sartorial survival endurance, but I was getting close to reaching breaking point. One morning I realised I was going to have to break one of my tightly held personal ethic codes and wear black to the races on a Saturday. And that was bad enough to make me vote myself off the show.

  Down and dirty

  Last October I saw a rock star in the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris. He must have been a rock star because no ordinary citizen would have been allowed in the doors of that august institution looking as bad as he did. And he wasn’t just walking through the lobby for the hell of it – he emerged from the guest lift, so he was clearly staying there.

  The little group I was having a drink with had got all dressed up for our night out on planet posh. I was so excited I’d had my hair done and put on my best new kinky boots. But the mystery rock star was wearing a mad old brown tweed coat that was much too big for him and looked as though it was tied at the waist with string (it wasn’t, but it could have been).

  His trousers were way too long and flapping around his scuffed hobnail boots and, looking at his hair, you would have thought he had been sleeping recently in a hedge, rather than one of the world’s most elegant hotels. He was also savagely unshaven – which could have been the name of his band, for all I know.

  If he’d shuffled out of there and taken up residence nearby with the poor old grimy clochards who sleep under the bridges of the Seine, no-one would have given him a second look, but in that setting we were obsessed with figuring out who he was, especially as he had that Please Don’t Look At Me famous person’s expression on his face. (I don’t think it was Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, but he did look very Seattle.)

  Celebrity identity aside, what really fascinated me about mystery manky man was the effort it must have taken to look so scruffy. The only way you could give a coat that found-in-an-ancient-peat-bog effect, without actually stealing it from a real tramp, would be to throw it on the floor after every wearing and jump up and down on it a lot. It would also help to roll around in puddles and then leave it bundled up wet in the boot of a car. Or you could put it in the basket of a very old and incontinent dog.

  The same studied anti-grooming can also be observed in bac
kpackers. They delight me with their aggressively unwashed posturing. I can watch them for hours, twisting their hair into ever more impenetrable tangles and scuffing along in ancient sandals.

  It makes me feel like Jane Goodall observing chimps. The older, more mismatched and droopy their clothes, the happier they seem to be. They even sit scruffily, all hunched down, or with their feet up on the seat in front, or cross-legged. Whether they are in a café, a cinema, or on a bus, the point is to make it obvious that they would much rather sit on the ground – or, even better, a nice filthy gutter – than on anything as bourgeois as a seat. They’re hilarious.

  Of course, the reason there is such prestige in looking as scruffy as possible in that particular and peculiar microcosm of Western society, is that it’s one of the things that marks you out as being a cool ‘traveller’ as opposed to a loathed ‘tourist’. This is a very important distinction for middle-class kids on the well-trod gap-year trail.

  The lark of it is that they think they’ll mingle more closely with Third World locals by wearing the same T-shirt and scuffs for several months, accessorised with a few crappy bangles and thread bracelets, when the native population would be thrilled to have the chance to wear a nice smart suit – or Lil’ Kim’s head-to-toe Dior – if only they could.

  And that’s what I find so fascinating about the contrived grunge meisters. Whether they’re bona fide rock stars, or English public school boys slumming it in Australasia before Oxford, it’s the ones who have been born with a choice who affect to look like down-and-outs. Which makes it the diametric opposite of ghetto fabulous. Aren’t we humans funny?

  Seeing stars

  I saw Cameron Diaz on King Street this afternoon. I saw Jennifer Lopez at the taxi rank, Pamela Anderson in the bank and Jennifer Aniston on the escalators in DJ’s. I spotted Sarah Jessica Parker in a restaurant last night and Fran Drescher has worked in my local newsagency for ages. Well, I didn’t really see them, I saw their clones and, if you go out and look, you’ll be able to see them, too.

  Over the past couple of years, fashion has become obsessively focused on celebrities. Rather than following designer trends, style-conscious gals now seem to dress like their favourite famous person – and whatever designer trends she is following.

  Once you get your eye in, you can see it so clearly, and it’s quite a good game, if you’re waiting at the bus stop, to spot who is strolling by. If you have a like-minded friend with you, you can add a competitive element to it (and it would be unAustralian not to) by scoring points for who spots them first:

  JENNIFER LOPEZ – FIVE POINTS. You can always pick ‘J-Lo’, as His Royal Puffiness insisted she be called, by the large expanses of tanned and oiled skin on display. The clothes – usually a dress, usually jersey – will be skimpy, the overall vibe sultry. There’s a lot of toned calf action in high-heeled mules, looking up through dark eyes and, of course, maximum booty. Lips are pouty and eyeliner mandatory.

  JENNIFER ANISTON PITT – THREE POINTS. It’s the sleek blow-dry, it’s the slick lip gloss, it’s the slinky jersey separates and it’s the sick-making abs. At weekends, it’s the slouchy cargo crops and the singlet. At all times, it is all about shoulders and collarbones, chunking in the highlights, swishy hair and mascara, mascara, mascara. A low score because there are so damn many of them.

  SARAH JESSICA PARKER – SIX POINTS. A higher score because you don’t see much curly blonde hair in our city centres, where the blow dry rules. The score goes down a point with every 5 kilometres you travel in any direction out of town, where mousse and scrunch drying remain more popular.The rest of the outfit is all about shoulders and heels. Strapless, backless, etc., but with less dependence on jersey than other celeb clones. There’s a raw silk thing going on here. Interesting chokers. Bangles.

  LINDA EVANS – SEVEN POINTS. A high score for this look because of the increasing rarity value. Time was when the ash blonde fringe with back-combed crown, and refrigerator shoulders in electric blue silk could be seen on every city street. Now a Linda spotting is something to celebrate. With the 1980s fashion revival upon us, the cone heels and golden jewellery will return, but I don’t reckon we’ll see that hair – or clip-on earrings – again on anyone except a Linda clone.

  FRAN DRESCHER – EIGHT POINTS. Like Sarah Jessica, you will find a greater concentration of Frans outside your CBD inner ring, but wherever you find her, enjoy and celebrate. Isn’t it wonderful that someone is prepared to invest that much money on hair and nail products? And so much time in maintaining her own very particular standards of grooming?

  CAMERON DIAZ – TEN POINTS. This is the double somersault with pike and twist of the celeb clone-spotting finals. Why? Because Cameron is the über chick, the goddess, the best pal we all wish we had. Occasionally you see her, all long legs in dark denim, feathery blonde bob and singlet, eating a hot dog and looking like she’s just heard a really good dirty joke.

  One final rule of the game: scores gained by looking in the mirror do not count.

  Tying one on

  The esteemed former editor of British Vogue, Beatrix Miller, once said that she could always tell if a prospective employee was a ‘Vogue girl’ by the way she tied her scarf. Right scarf, you got the job (and prayed you had a large enough private income to support yourself while you did it). Wrong scarf, forget it.

  I often reflect on the scarf test when I am tying one on (a scarf, not a wild night in a line-dancing bar) and wonder if my knot and flourish would have passed the Miller Test. I’m awfully fond of scarves of all kinds and do have a few variations in the knotting and arranging departments, if I say so myself.

  My current favourite is the simple Swallows and Amazons reef knot (over, round, up, through, under, round, through) resulting in two rabbit-ear ends and a smooth knot, mid-thorax, preferably showing off a nice bit of pattern. This is a jaunty look for smaller and softer scarves. (Please note: the scarf is rolled before tying, rather than arranged in a neat point at the back, unless you actually want to look like a Mountie.)

  Another favourite is the Pseudoblouse – a large, sleek, silk scarf simply folded over at the chest and tucked into the waistband of pants, with no knot. This is excellent when you want to wear nothing, or just a scraggy old T-shirt, under a jacket and it shows off beautiful designs better than most.

  The Lady Cravat – when you go over, all the way round again, up and through, but don’t tuck it back through the knot as you would with a tie – is great for a formal look and when you want to keep your neck warm. It’s a secure knot that won’t let the scarf gradually slip off when you’re not looking, which is a problem with the amateurish-looking once-over knot.

  On occasion, I have even been known to tie a small scarf around my wrist, or a medium-sized one around my ponytail. Get me. I feel very on with Beatrix Miller in both these looks, but I have to admit it – I stole them. The wrist action from a lady in a dress shop in Paris and the ponytail manoeuvre from my friend Pippa, a fashion stylist. She’s a Melbourne gal who once worked for Aussie Vogue and is now a resident in London. Beatrix Miller would have loved her. Why? She just has that indefinable quality that Ms Miller could read in a scarf.

  I was prompted to ponder all this scarfery on Bandanna Day, when the charity CanTeen, which gives support to young people living with cancer, sells bandannas to raise funds (bandannas because chemo- and radiotherapies make your hair fall out and it gets a bit draughty, as I know all too well).

  They were selling them in the kiosk at work and, as I looked around the office, many of my workmates had the brightly coloured pieces of fabric strapped onto their person. There were some rolled and tied around foreheads like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, there was the odd Latino skullcap and a couple of Gidgets. There were deliberately cheeky multiple bandannas hanging from various jeans pockets (go Timmo), one tied around the head like an Alice band and held on with hair slides (you can’t be too careful) and one that seemed just to have landed randomly on the head, like a cat from a hi
gh window.

  How did I wear my bandanna? It was on my head, my wrist, my neck and my ponytail by turns, and was very handy when working out how to describe the knots above.

  In this way, we all express our personalities through a tiny piece of cloth. Somehow I don’t think any of us would have got a job at Miss Miller’s Vogue…

  (For more information, call CanTeen on 1800 639 614 or visit www.canteen.com.au)

  Turning Japanese

  I’m having a Japanese moment. Not as in Comme, or Issey, or Yohji (the world’s sexiest man, but that’s another story), or even Akira, or Tetsuya. But Japanese as in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. I know the whole Pillow Book groove was really some time ago, but I just happen to have read several books in a row with a Japanese theme, and that Shonagon thing is very infectious. You start thinking in her style. Or trying to. Let me give you some examples of things she wrote in the Imperial Court a thousand years ago:

  Things That Give a Pathetic Impression: the voice of

  someone who blows his nose while he is speaking. The

  expression of a woman plucking her eyebrows.

  Unsuitable Things: a woman with ugly hair wearing a robe

  of white damask.

  Elegant Things: a white coat worn over a violet waistcoat.

  A rosary of rock crystal.

  Squalid Things: the back of a piece of embroidery. The

  inside of a cat’s ear.

  Isn’t that all heaven? Sei Shonagon’s style statements are as self-confident and outrageous as Diana Vreeland’s, and everything she wrote – in the tenth century AD – is still fantastically relevant in the twenty-first century. Which got me thinking, what would she be writing now? Perhaps it might be something like this: