Style Notes

by Alderson, Maggie

  I had intended originally to be Montgomery Cameron, a name which seemed to convey the kind of Eurotrash, Tods-loafer-no-socks guy I wanted to be, a little bit Harrow, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, smooth as a milkshake but a tiger in the kickboxing ring, but can you believe it? My name was already taken. So rude.

  Now I can’t believe I ever considered any moniker other than Montgomery Nagy. I love the hint of an exotic Scottish/Hungarian ancestry. And maybe Montgomery would be related to that Bauhaus coolster László Moholy-Nagy. Yes, I think he would be. Great-uncle.

  And his – I mean my, must get into character properly – my mother is from an impoverished but achingly aristocratic Scottish family. Freezing castle in the highlands, the works. I get my marvellous cheekbones from her. My slightly oriental eyes are from the Hungarian side. But they’re strikingly blue. Women have been known to gasp when I remove my Rayban Wayfarers (vintage – they belonged to my uncle, who was a screenwriter in Hollywood in the Fifties) to reveal them.

  Black hair, blue eyes – it gets them every time. The white teeth, black Amex card and caramel skin don’t do any harm either. And you should see my shoulders.

  Ooh, there you go, I’ve turned into him. The name’s Nagy (which is pronounced ‘Naaarj’ by the way, not ‘Narjie’, and definitely not ‘Naggy’ or ‘Nadgie’, and I once punched a man out for refusing to say it correctly, so listen up; the signet ring on the little finger of my left hand can leave a nasty scar). So where was I? Yes, Nagy, Montgomery Nagy. And don’t call me Montie either. Close friends call me Gomery.

  Not that I let many people get close. I’m a lone wolf. You won’t find me on Facebook or Myspace, tarting around like the new girl in Year Five trying to make friends: ‘Choose me! Choose me!’ Not my style. Like Mr Coward’s song has it, I travel alone.

  I’ve got a BlackBerry packed full of numbers, of course, but I prefer just to run into people. If I want you to find me, you will. And if I don’t? Try the Holy Grail, it would be less trouble.

  My heart’s not entirely stone, though. There was a girl … but let’s not go there, OK? All I’ll say is this: if you are a redhead with creamy skin and a well-defined waist, chances are I’ll be sending a bottle of champagne over to your table. Krug. Why even ask?

  So that’s me. I’m a genius at pinball, can ride a motorbike like Steve McQueen and I even have nice handwriting. I know exactly who I am, but I can’t tell you any more about what it’s like to be Montgomery Nagy on Second Life as I have had some technical problems with the site. Mainly, not being able to get it to work.

  But you know what? I don’t think any of us really need a complicated internet site to experience another life – we’ve all got one already in our heads. Imagination.com.

  Until Diet Do Us Part

  I’m a diet ho. By which I mean I just can’t stay faithful to one weight-loss system. I’ll come across a new prospect, fall madly in love, tell everyone that absolutely definitely this is The One, but then a couple of years later I just can’t raise any enthusiasm for it at all.

  Quite often I have come greatly to hate it, pouring scorn and contempt on a regime I once considered perfect in every regard. The more I thought it was The One and Only, my forever diet, till death do us part, the more I will hate it for not being that. See, it is just like a love affair.

  When I’m in the full throes of a diet infatuation I can’t think, or talk, about much else. Anyone foolish enough to utter the words, ‘You’re looking well’ will get a very full response, in great detail, my eyes shining with enthusiasm. And no criticism of it will be countenanced or considered. Don’t diss my baby. Hell no.

  Once it’s all over and the true nature of the diet is revealed to me – impossible to live with, unreasonable, a lying tyrant, just like all the others – I can wax at similar length about everything that is wrong with it. The bastard.

  This has happened so many times now, from the Scarsdale, through the F Plan, Macrobiotics, Cabbage Soup, South Beach and – the most tumultuous affair of them all – the great Atkins romance (what a whirlwind that was! ), I’m beginning to wonder if I have a commitment problem. Especially as the last two weight-loss systems I used – GI and Weight Watchers – were by far the most sensible and effective yet.

  They were more like happy long-term relationships than the giddy holiday flings and one-night-stand diets of younger days, and using first one and then the other, I was able to keep my weight stable for several years. I know they both work, are easy to stick to and make you feel great, but I’ve tried going back to both of them recently and I just can’t hack it. They bore me.

  So what I’ve come to understand is that you need a madness comparable to the early stages of a love affair to stick to a diet. You can’t half-do weight loss, any more than you can be half-infatuated. You need to be entirely obsessed and consumed by your passion for the weight-loss system of the moment or you couldn’t possibly stick to it.

  Constantly re-reading the book until you know it almost by heart is one of the symptoms, and I have dog-eared diet books all over the house to prove it. Other sure-fire signs you are fully infatuated are buying loads of fad foods (anyone for stevia?) and gadgets, and taking up demanding new fitness regimes. Now where is that pedometer?

  You will also spend whole afternoons trying out very complicated recipes which result in a ‘lemon meringue pie’, or ‘cheesecake’, which does nothing more than remind you of how nice the full-fat/carb/high-GI/real sugar (depending which food group your current diet deprives you of) versions are.

  In the full flight of your obsession, though, you will convince yourself that such ersatz treats are absolutely delicious, just as good as the real thing. Rather in the spirit I have seen girlfriends more usually inclined to spend Sunday afternoons on the sofa enthusiastically take up fly fishing and watching motocross to share the hobbies of the man of the moment. It all makes utter sense at the time.

  Having understood this process I now realise that what I need to lose the latest weight gain is not necessarily the best diet system around (I think Weight Watchers is probably that), but almost any new one. It just has to be compelling enough to suck me in.

  So sorry, dear old diets. It’s not you – it’s me.

  Man – Made Miracles

  This afternoon I spent a very pleasant half hour looking through a couple of old copies of British Vogue, which I came across when I was sorting out my office to move (it’s amazing how much reading you can catch up on when you’re supposed to be packing boxes, isn’t it?).

  Dating back to 1964 and 1968, they are full of treasures, including a fabulously camp pictorial essay by Norman Parkinson in Jamaica, but two themes particularly jumped out at me. The first was that 60 per cent of the clothes in the 1964 mag and about 90 per cent in the later one would be totally wearable now – and not in a vintage way.

  You’d just have to work them back with modern hair and make-up, as opposed to the major Hair Dos and false eyelashes in these pics, and you would look chic as, and not at all costume-y. I found that fascinating, as it shows just how broad fashion is these days. You can wear any hem length, any pant style, any colour, prints, plains, different heel shapes and heights; it all works.

  So that was interesting, but the other thing which struck me while I was studying these forty-plus-year-old time capsules was the pages and pages of ads for hilariously named man-made fibres.

  ‘What a pity Eve missed Acrilan …’ says the caption on a photo of a model looking worried in a nasty cardigan (and nothing else), holding a shiny red apple. ‘She’d have fallen for the feel.’

  ‘Magnificent Minkaleen by Astraka’ was a fake fur, as was ‘Furleen’. ‘Lancola’ was ‘Britain’s “silkiest” man-made fibre, colour-sealed for life.’

  ‘And now the Elegance of Terlenka double jersey. It is supple without stretching, slinky without clinging. It looks good anywhere, any time, all the time. High time you tried something new.’

  And my personal favourite: ‘T
ouch me. I’m ORLON.’ To which you mentally add: Just be aware you may get an electric shock. Because these are precisely the kinds of fabrics which now make us recoil in horror in op shops and vintage stores.

  What looks like a lovely linen shift dress from a few paces, perfectly wearable for summer, turns out to be made from (and I quote from another ad) ‘crisp Tricel fabrics with their interesting linen-like surfaces’.

  ‘Linen-like’ – but not really, because real linen isn’t like wearing a plastic bag on a hot day. In a similar vein: ‘Just leave it to fashion’s ace fibre …’ says a line of copy for Terylene ‘… and you’ll glow through the chilliest months of the year.’ Well, ‘glow’ is the nice way of putting it, isn’t it?

  But looking further at the ads, the appeal of these fabrics back in their day becomes apparent. ‘Atrima make the suit – BRI-NYLON makes it carefree’ says one. Courtelle ‘means a carefree fashion future’ and as for our old friend Tricel: ‘Creases are rarely, if ever, seen. Ironing is rarely, if ever, necessary.’ Then comes the clincher: ‘When you think it needs washing you can wash it.’

  Now that doesn’t seem such a big selling point to us, does it? We’re accustomed to throwing our finest fabrics into the washing machine on the handwash setting, but before the arrival of the man-made fibre revolution, keeping clothes clean, uncreased and unsmelly was a trial.

  Most fabrics simply couldn’t be washed and dry cleaning was not widely available as it is now. Even if you could wash something, you probably didn’t have a washing machine and if you did it wasn’t automatic. You had to fill the tub, then drain it and re-fill to rinse. Then you had to put it through a mangle, get it dry somehow and then iron the bloody thing. You’d be too tired to go out.

  So while they are repellent to us, you can see why that first generation of eezee-care fabrics was so appealing forty years ago. And give thanks that we live in an era where jackets – that don’t even give you electric shocks – can be thrown in the washing machine.

  Terms of Endearment

  Oh, it’s the little things in life which make me happy. These past two weeks I have been whistling cheerfully, simply because I have acquired a hilarious new fashion term.

  Courtesy of the very wonderful Kath & Kim comes the ‘Muffin Top’ – the perfect way to describe that small waterfall of midriff fat that cascades over the top of your low-cut boot-leg jeans.

  Sharing this gem with my fashionista best pal Mark inspired us to document all of our favourite fashion and body part slang terms – and to make up a few new ones we felt the world needed.

  (Health warning: contains vulgarity and some coarse references.)

  Fashion Victim: person who will wear anything that is declared to be in fashion, however unflattering and foolish.

  Label Whore: person who will wear anything by a well-known designer – and who will do anything to get hold of same.

  Runway Ready: person dressed head-to-toe in one designer’s total look, as seen in fashion show.

  Show Crows: fashion show harpies in head-to-toe black.

  Fash Mag Slag: ageing fashion magazine staff member.

  Bag Hag: woman who spends disproportionate percentage of her income on overpriced designer handbags.

  Period Pains: people who slavishly dress in the style of one era, such as the 1950s.

  Fleabag: individual overly devoted to wearing vintage clothes and accessories.

  Con-ex: contrived fashion eccentrics who just look ridic.

  Muttony: shortened adjectival version of ‘mutton dressed as lamb’.

  Combover: man’s hairstyle, involving a long piece of hair combed over and stuck down on other side in sad attempt to hide bald patch.

  Helmet Head: overly structured and overly sprayed woman’s hairstyle, eg Margaret Thatcher.

  Exxon Valdez: greasy hair.

  Bad Hair Day: self-esteem-destroying random day when hair won’t behave for no obvious reason.

  All Fur Coat and No Knickers: loud, vulgar woman in flashy clothes.

  All Mouth and No Trousers: loud, vulgar man in flashy clothes.

  Follow-me Shoes: overtly sexual footwear.

  Result-wear: overtly sexual eveningwear that is highly attractive to the opposite sex.

  Polo-neck Pants: trousers which sit above the waist.

  Chandelierrings: oversized ear ornaments, out of proportion to the head.

  Christmas Tree: an over-accessorised individual.

  Dog’s Dinner: person who looks as though they got dressed in the dark.

  Pussy Pelmet: ridiculously short skirt.

  Brezhnev Brows: eyebrows bushy enough to have their own postcodes.

  Monobrow: eyebrows that meet in the centre, aka unibrow

  Chicken Wings: upper-arm loose skin flaps. Also known as ‘Hi, Helens’, as in waving to a friend.

  Underarm Cleavage: those little sausages of fat that squodge out from under your arms in a sleeveless top.

  Toe Cleavage: crack between the big toe and the next one, visible in a low-cut pair of shoes.

  Headlights On: erect nipples of either gender.

  East West Breasts: mammary glands which appear to be going in different directions.

  Two Bunnies in a Sack: small, wobbly braless breasts in locomotion.

  Tuppence in a Long Sock: long, flat breasts, as seen in National Geographic.

  Man Boobs: pouches of fat on the male chest, resembling breasts.

  VPL: visible panty line.

  VGSL: visible G-string line.

  VT: visible thong, showing above the lower garment.

  DT: display thong, worn to be seen. Usually features a diamante butterfly.

  Camel Toe: when a lady’s too-tight trousers unfortunately bifurcate her private parts.

  Moose Knuckle: male version of above.

  Dog in a Hammock: male member notably visible through trousers.

  Banana Hammock: male thong.

  Dental Floss: what Brazilians call thong bikinis.

  Brazilian: wax depilation of female pubic area, for the wearing of dental floss.

  Landing Strip: small strip of pubic hair left after above.

  Back, Sack ‘n’ Crack Wax: wax depilation of the male anatomy, including abdomen, back and genital regions.

  Hanging Gardens of Babylon: wayward pubic hair emerging from swimwear.

  Back Bush: luxuriant hair on back of human male.

  Skinny Minnies

  I am fascinated by the phenomenon of young men in jeans so skinny they are more like sausage skins than trousers, usually finished off at the foot with a pair of preposterously pointy white shoes. I love this look. I love its daftness, I love its dandiness and most of all I love its ubiquitousness.

  It shouts out to me that another whole generation of young men – following on naturally from Beau Brummel, the Incroyables, Mods, and New Romantics – really care about their look, because it’s not an easy one to carry off. Some of them look absolutely ridic, but that doesn’t matter, they’re in the skinny jean club.

  Those ludicrous pants – especially when combined with a silly haircut that falls over one eye – shout out that they’re quirky and interesting, a bit geeky, a bit arty. They like Japanese books and indie films and laptops and are probably obsessed with the apps on their iPads. They may even design them. I look on them fondly like an indulgent aunt. Were I twenty-five years younger I would be madly in love with several of them.

  But what I particularly appreciate about this trend is that it tells us that jeans still have currency beyond being a wardrobe staple – and I was really beginning to think they didn’t.

  I have written before about the extraordinary reach of the contemporary denim trouser. Everybody wears them now, from presidents to pensioners (hello Mummy!), preschoolers and princesses. All ages, all shapes, and both sexes wear jeans for every kind of occasion, so you would think they’d have lost their semiotic power.

  It’s certainly true they no longer shout rebellion as they did when astride the i
mpressive motorcycle-hugging thighs of Marlon Brando, or the skinny butt of James Dean. Neither are they the freak flag of counter-culture as they were bell-bottomed, patched and embroidered in Haight-Ashbury and at Woodstock. But jeans do still have the power to broadcast your membership of a particular tribe if you want them to – as the skinny boys clearly do.

  This means a lot to me personally, as at a particular point of my teenage years, your jean style was a vital communication system. I can tell you the exact time – from November 1976 onwards. If you wore skinny jeans at any point after ‘Anarchy in the UK’ came out on EMI you were broadcasting your allegiance to punk rock.

  (Incidentally, I still have my original copy of that single in the all-important ‘black bag’ paper cover. Going to donate it to the Powerhouse Museum one day, along with all my original Seditionaries clothes.)

  The straight jean, as we called it, was such a powerful signal then, I would actually go up to total strangers (teenage strangers, obviously) and talk to them on the strength of it. I made friends with people in 1976 and 1977 simply because of the mutual cut of our trouser legs. That’s how radical it seemed to wear narrow jeans as opposed to the then-universal flares.

  After that point, straight became the generally accepted jeans style, so that if you were still wearing bell bottoms in 1978 you were making a powerful statement of another kind. Either you were a die-hard hippy and proud of it (don’t bogart that joint, my friend) – or you were such a unreconstructed square, you hadn’t noticed.

  In the latter case, I had to take my lovely, bookish uni pal Simon to a jeans shop and force him to buy two pairs of straight-leg cords, as I really couldn’t be seen with him in public wearing flapping denim flares. We’re still friends, which is an indication of how big a favour he subsequently realised I had done him.

  So that was the power of the jeans leg thirty-plus years ago – and I am delighted to observe that it doesn’t seem to have lost any of its significance. I wonder what will happen next …