Some of my friends are so enthusiastic about the ‘new austerity’ that they have been throwing ironic ‘thrifty’ dinner parties, where everybody eats baked potatoes and homemade coleslaw, and drinks cider. Such larks. Others have a gleam in their eye when they talk about buying sewing machines – sales are up hugely, apparently – to make their own clothes.
Well, I hate to be a party pooper, but I don’t think the brave new world of austerity is going to be that much fun at all. I think we need to be realistic about how much we are going to enjoy unravelling old jumpers to knit new ones.
I can remember the 1970s when we used to tie-dye old men’s long johns to make leggings. It wasn’t nearly as nice as going to a Westfield or a divine little boutique strip and spending lots of pretendy money, really, trust me, it wasn’t.
This all hit me just the other day when I had a blinding flash of realisation that for my entire life I have completely misunderstood a particular well-known phrase.
It all comes down to one of those punctuation adjustments which entirely changes a meaning. The kind which Lynne Truss wrote about so entertainingly in her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves – as opposed to ‘eats shoots and leaves’, which is how that phrase should have been punctuated, in relation to the dietary habits of the giant panda. (As opposed to a hungry Mafia hitman … )
The phrase I had wrong is ‘make do and mend’. I had always thought of it as a very jolly prospect. A ‘Make! Do! And Mend!’ kind of a thing, pregnant with possibility for creative crafty fun.
In fact, it turns out, I should have been thinking of it all this time as: make-do and mend. A much less attractive prospect. Making do – not making and doing. Not three jolly activities to choose from, but a stoical ‘make the best of what you have’ scenario. Not so much turning out a Martha Stewart table centrepiece, as turning in your sheets.
Oh, you don’t know what I mean by turning in your sheets? I’m not surprised. Nobody does it any more; we buy new ones – and not even when the old ones have worn out, just when we feel like it. Or we did until very recently.
But when I was a little girl (ie early Jurassic), when sheets got thin in the middle, housewives cut them in half and stitched them back together, so the unworn fabric that had been on the sides was in the middle. Along with a seam which was quite uncomfortable to lie on. That is making do and mending. I wish I thought it sounded like fun. I also wish it sounded like something I am ever going to have time to do.
Which is why I think all this fanciful talk about knitting our own socks again is a load of twaddle. We’ve moved on too far. Instead, we are going to have to buy a whole lot less – but better quality, so it lasts. Which, funnily enough, is exactly the way of consuming I had been trying to embrace previous to Le Crunch, for environmental reasons.
So that is one way I can find to feel less than desperate about the economic Armageddon. My new shopping regime is a choice I’d already made. I’m not going to be a recessionista – I’m already an Eco Chico.
Age Appropriate
One of the most searing criticisms of a woman’s sartorial style – and I have never heard it applied to a man – is ‘mutton dressed as lamb’. Meaning the embarrassing spectacle of a woman past her prime trotting about (and presumably saying baaaaaa) in clothing intended to showcase firm young bodies.
I confess I buy into this judgemental code as much as the next middle-aged fashion obsessive, terrified of the 1666 phenomenon, where a woman looks sixteen from the back and sixty-six from the front. Equally, all new trends have to be considered according to the rule and some – such as harem pants – only taken up once they have bedded in enough no longer to be cringemaking on the older person. But I’m beginning to wonder about it.
One of my near neighbours is one of the most spectacular muttoneers I have ever known. I’ve no idea how old she is, but I suspect she has at least ten years on me, if not more. In fact, if she told me she’d danced to the Beatles live at the Cavern Club I wouldn’t be surprised.
Partly because she wears her deeply dyed hair in the same style as legendary British ‘Queen of the Mods’ Cathy McGowan, who presented the 1960s pop show Ready Steady Go: long and black with a heavy fringe. Of course, it’s also the same style as Lily Allen’s, but I strongly suspect my neighbour’s look is more inspired by the first style icon. She’s certainly fond of popping a Swinging London peaked cap atop it, preferably in silver.
Just at the moment she’s got a deep purple tint over the black hair dye. So you’ve got the silver cap on the long purple hair, maybe a wide-striped black-and-white tunic T, cinched with a patent fuschia belt with generous fringing, atop a pair of black skinny jeans and lime-green sequinned basketball boots. And that’s before we’ve got on to the costume jewellery.
She really works a look, does my neighbour. I’ve never seen her in the same one twice, and never under-accessorised for her job accompanying adults with learning difficulties to and from their various courses and day centres. They seem to love her – and so do I. She’s a wonderful person, incredibly friendly and always cheerful. She may have a lined face and a bit of a stoop, but boy has she got life force.
Which made me think, when I saw her the other day in the get-up described, does it matter that she dresses in clothes clearly designed with fourteen-year-olds in mind? I really don’t think it does. In fact, she brightens up my day with her crazy rig-outs, far more than the women aged fifty-plus I know who have retreated into the invisible safety of elastic-waist pants, sensible jackets and Ecco shoes.
The only argument I can see against dressing in frivolous clothes over the age of forty is that the more provocative flesh-revealing styles could be seen as less than appropriate on women no longer biologically seeking a mate to breed with. But then I think of another older lady who lives near me, who clearly prides herself on her permatan and her figure, and likes to show them off in strappy dresses.
And so what? Her skin may be more crèpe de chine than peau de pêche, her jawline on the slack side, but she’s got a much better figure than I do. Why shouldn’t she show it off?
I don’t know whether she is hunting for a chap, or if she’s got a bloke at home fiercely proud of his gorgeous lady. And it doesn’t matter. I’m fairly sure she dresses for her own entertainment.
So, I urge us all to throw off the shackles of the judgemental ‘mutton’ tag we have allowed to limit us. Whatever our age, size and skin texture, let’s wear whatever we damn well like – and enjoy it.
In Memoriam Mr McQueen
When I first heard the news about Alexander McQueen’s death – via Twitter, of course – I was so shocked I burst into sobbing tears.
My reaction surprised me. He wasn’t a friend; I never even met him. The closest I ever came to the fashion designer born Lee Alexander McQueen was when he came out at the end of fashion shows to take his bows. So I felt slightly embarrassed by my outpouring.
It seemed rather presumptive to shed tears over someone I didn’t actually know, but even beyond the wretched sadness of any suicide, I think I was mourning the loss of his towering talent.
I was sad when Michael Jackson died last year, but it was more for what he had been than the man he had become. Like Elvis, when he died, he’d been in decline for years already, personally and creatively.
McQueen was still at the towering top of his amazing game and with the news he was dead, the world immediately felt a duller place. I imagine it was a little how they must have felt in 1959 when Buddy Holly et al went down in the plane crash. The day the fashion died.
Although I don’t cover the Paris fashion shows any more, the thought of that gruelling schedule without the bright northern star of the McQueen show to anticipate – always near the end of things – is dismal.
It was so much more than just elaborate clothes on skinny women; it was a happening, an art event. Above all, it was always different. Radically, thrillingly different.
You never knew what he was going to do – holograms, water, fi
re, live moths, car paint sprayers, a fully choreographed ballet – but you knew you’d never seen it before on a catwalk. Twice a year he came up with that. Something new. Which is much rarer in fashion than you would think.
I didn’t always like it. I was outraged by the first McQueen show I ever saw, way back when he was still part of London Fashion Week. He herded the audience into assigned cattle pens before the show and then subjected us to models in all kinds of misogynistic, restrictive contraptions. It seriously offended me, but it gave me a lot to think and write about.
It was fascinating over consecutive seasons to watch him explore and work out the confused feelings about women which seemed to be his dominant theme. Over time it seemed less an apparent desire to mutilate and humiliate than to portray them as wronged but strong.
I particularly remember a show in 2003 where a model had to force her way along a glass wind tunnel, walking against the very powerful wind force – with 36 metres of parachute silk blowing behind her. It was astonishing to watch, every step – in towering shoes – an act of survival.
Another, apparently less controversial, show had as its theme Hitchcock heroines. The clothes were glorious: sexy secretary suits, siren evening gowns, nothing S&M in sight, but then you realised – all inspired by another creative genius with a complex relationship to the opposite sex.
The shallowest research into McQueen’s life sheds light on this venerate/hate paradox. The youngest of six children, crammed into a council flat in London’s East End, he was brought up mainly by his mother, in an environment where it seems violence against women was rife.
He once said in an interview that, as a child, ‘There were scenes when I saw my sisters being beaten to a pulp.’
The fact that he took his life on the eve of his beloved mother’s funeral, after losing in the past three years his friend and champion, Isabella Blow – who also committed suicide – and an aunt he was close to, seems to me part of the same psychological jigsaw.
But whatever the inspiration for McQueen’s work and the reason for his tragically early death, what remains is his legacy.
Mr McQueen, you will be sorely missed.
Shoe Legacy
Like all parents I watch the growth of my daughter’s feet carefully. I take her every few months to have them measured. But most of all I’m keeping an eye on them, praying they won’t ever grow above an Aussie size 6 (that’s a size 37 in French and Italian, obviously the most important sizing system when it comes to shoes).
She’s a kids’ size 12 now, so it’s getting towards the critical time. Some of her school friends are already just one size down from me, which is making me nervous. Why does this matter? I’ve got nothing against normal-sized feet (mine are inelegantly small) – but if she goes above a 6 she won’t be able to inherit my shoe collection.
Of course, I could be selfish and pray she grows kayak-sized tootsies, because if she does end up a 37 I’ll be lucky to have a pair of Crocs left I can wear, let alone the exquisite designer shoes I’ve been hoarding for her since, well, before she was born really.
I gave one pair of my 1970s high-heeled lace-up brogues to one of my nieces when they fitted her ten years ago, but I salted away my other vintage pairs – including some of my mum’s from the 1930s – with the idea that perhaps one day, I might have a little person of my own to give them to.
As well as those attic-stored treasures I’ve got all my own Robert Clergerie shoes from the 1980s (I used to buy them in the sales), a selection of Manolo Blahnik and Gucci from the 1990s, and a whole load of Prada of various periods. Most of them still with the original boxes and shoe bags. Imagine the frustration of having that Aladdin’s cave of shoe treasure and not being able to fit into them.
Actually the worst that could happen – for both of us – would be if she were to hit my size at age thirteen. The shoes would be borrowed without my permission and trashed, without her ever being properly chic in them. So she has to grow size 37 feet – but not until she is eighteen. Hmm, not great odds, are they?
Meanwhile, there are the clothes. Storage is actually getting to be a bit of a problem, because I have had to abandon my ‘one thing in – one thing out’ rule. Previously I would have sold half-decent things I don’t wear any more at my local designer sell-on shop, but now I can’t. She might look lovely in them one day.
There’s a fabulous Alberta Ferretti dress (a sale find) and another by Costume National (ditto) that would be heading in that direction because I never have a good time in either of them, but the hex might not work on her. I’ve got to let her try them.
This is partly inspired by watching 1940s and 50s films with my mother in my own youth and every time I said, ‘Oh, look at that hat!’ or whatever, she’d say, ‘I had one like that…’ Then I’d wail, ‘Why didn’t you keep it?’
I’m hoping that one day I’ll be watching a film with Gwyneth Paltrow in it with my daughter and she’ll say, ‘Oh, look at that top!’ Then I’ll be able to reply, ‘It’s Donna Karan. I had one just like it that I bought in the David Jones sale … and here it is.’
So that’s my game plan. The house is filling up with clothes and accessories I’m saving for her – as well as a few amazing vintage pieces I’m buying and laying down, because the supply of early 1960s frocks will have run out by the time she’s eighteen. In short, I’m doing what I wish my mother had done.
Of course the outcome is inevitable. She’ll go Saffy on me. She’ll hate vintage, or won’t even be interested in clothes at all. So I’ll save it all for my granddaughters.
Me Vintage
Hold the front page: I have just returned from a short trip to Paris, where I wore everything that was in my very restrained packing and always felt I had the right thing to wear. To say this is a first is something of an understatement. In fact it’s a bloody miracle.
What made this event even more extraordinary was that I had packed in a dangerously experimental way. Apart from some jeans and T-shirts, and a pair of silly shoes, everything I took with me was Me Vintage. Or to use the American expression, I ‘shopped my closet’. Which means old stuff I had lurking in the wardrobe.
The combined age of it is 108 years – and the unifying factor was that it is all serious designer gear, with price tags which had made me faint with nerves at the moment of purchase.
The grande dame was my very first Prada bag, purchased in 1989 at Miuccia Prada’s very first fashion boutique (as opposed to the family luggage business), so genuinely vintage at twenty-plus years old. The next oldest was my one and only treasured Chanel jacket, bright fuchsia-pink boucle tweed, bought for my best friend’s wedding in 1991 – and the colour bang on for this season.
Other items included a grey flannel Paul Smith suit (twelve years), a Prada trench coat (ten), black Chloë pants (nine) and a pair of black lace-up brogues (eight) by classic French shoe brand Paraboots, which are as on-trend as the pink jacket. Not that I’ve ever stopped wearing them since I bought them.
This surprisingly successful packing experiment was inspired entirely by panic. It was a high-fashion holiday, specifically to spend time with my treasured pal Mark, who is a New York-based fashion director for a magazine, and to be a tourist for a couple of days in my old working life at the Paris designer shows.
I knew we would be spending every waking hour in fashionista hot spots surrounded by people with a forensic ability to rate and grade every item of clothing you are wearing in one cool glance – and, I am afraid to say, you with it.
As I no longer reside in that world twenty-four/seven, I knew I couldn’t signal my membership with key seasonal details, the tiny indicators that place you as a fashion insider, rather than a civilian who gets your info from them.
It’s a very subtle code that no amount of studying show videos on Style.com, or even The Sartorialist (a marvellous site, check it out) will reveal. I knew I couldn’t break it by remote control, but still have too much veteran’s pride just to give up and wear jeans eve
ry day. But what to do?
Inspiration struck after I had picked out the Prada bag and trench – pretty much travel staples – and noticed the Chanel jacket hanging there. Could I? Yes, I could! And that led to an hour or so of dress-ups until I had my this-goes-with-that retired fashionista Me Vintage wardrobe all worked out.
It demanded a bit of cunning. I knew the Chloë pants were way too long for this season’s proportions. They needed to be cut above the ankle to reveal the crazy shoe, but I wasn’t game to mutilate my best ever pair of trousers for a one-season wonder, so I belted them up high round my waist (as opposed to letting them hang on my hips as previously) and rolled them up at the ankle, in a slouchy way that just hinted towards a gathered harem pant. It worked. Even Mark said so.
What a satisfying outcome. Not only did I feel I could hold my head up among my former peers, it confirmed three of my fashion commandments.
It is worth spending serious money on really classic pieces of the highest quality.
Don’t get rid of investment items, even if you haven’t worn them for a while. Their time will come again.
Stay in shape so you can carry on wearing them.
Second-Best Friends
I have been reminded recently of when I first went to New York in 1975 and found that you could watch Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy at any time of the day or night.
That was my introduction to the disappointment factor of multiple TV channels (the UK had exactly three back then) which has continued to this day – and which Bruce Springsteen immortalised in music. Fifty-seven channels and nothing on. Well, nothing except I Love Lucy, which was usually your best bet.
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