Style Notes

by Alderson, Maggie

  These days it has been replaced as the ubiqui-show by Friends. Those wacky flatties are always available somewhere on my TV, sometimes on more than one channel simultaneously.

  As my daughter has recently discovered it as the first ‘grown-up’ programme she can really relate to (mine was Rhoda – also singles in a Manhattan apartment… Dr Freud?), I’ve been watching a lot of it.

  I don’t let her sit and gawp at it on her own, because it’s amazing how much sexual innuendo you realise there is in Friends when you’re watching with a seven-year-old, so I’m always there with my finger on the mute button. She covers her eyes and makes puking noises when any of them kiss, anyway. Really she just wants to watch Joey. Goofy and handsome, what’s not to love? (Hey, Dr Freud, pick up, would ya?)

  So I’ve been watching Friends until I could do a PhD on the development of Jennifer Aniston’s hairdo and something has really struck me: they wore the most unbelievably terrible clothes!

  And just to go back to that famous hair for a moment – the hair that had us all nuking our own heads with white-hot straightening irons – for quite a long time she had it in a monstrously contrived and creepy barrel curl arrangement. The sleek ‘n’ streaked long bob was a relatively late development.

  But even the ringlets were bearable compared to the clothes. In an episode the other night, she had on a miniskirt which had a mid-calf-length A-line skirt over the top, joined on at the waistband, but open all the way down the front, so you could see the short skirt and her legs.

  It was the most horrible garment I’ve ever seen and, I forgot to say, the two skirts were different colours. The mini was the same shade of rodent beige as the dull T-shirt she had on top, the long one was black.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and that was just one of many tricksy get-ups. And Monica’s outfits are just as bad. Weird, clunky clothes which don’t seem to fit properly, and no accessorising. Hardly any jewellery at all.

  What is doing my head in is that I’m sure at the time, we all thought they were rather well dressed. Didn’t Monica/Courtney Cox win some kind of award for it? And I’ve just remembered something else – after she finally gets to leave the café, Rachel/Jennifer works in fashion. By the last series she was meant to be a buyer for Ralph Lauren. In those clothes?

  This has made me realise that Nineties fashion now looks as ugly to me as Eighties clothes did in the Nineties. At the time I thought it was pared-down, minimalist ergonomic chic. Now it just looks drab and I long to put a mad chunky necklace on them, plus a big cuff and a belt.

  And this realisation comes just as we are being told that a Nineties revival is kicking off in fashion. Here we go again. In the Eighties we thought the Seventies were hideous. We spent a lot of the Nineties (when we weren’t doing Rachel-style minimalism) reviving the Seventies. In the Noughties we brought back the Eighties – so the Nineties is the logical next stop.

  But here’s another idea: fashion designers of the world, please come up with some new ideas.

  PS While writing this I typed ‘Rhoda’ into YouTube – they wore fabulous clothes.

  Simply Fabulous

  I’ve written before about the concept of ‘cool’ and my delight that the term still holds currency with the young. I mentioned in passing the qualities of ‘elegance’ and ‘glamour’ and it’s all been macerating in my head ever since; the many different terms for describing fashion fabulousness and the precise calibrations of difference between them.

  I would not, for example, be thrilled to be told I looked ‘smart’. It’s just one hair out of place away from ‘overdressed’ and it means the effort you’ve made is showing. Fail. The only thing worse would be ‘dapper’, although that tends to apply more to men. Men who are a little bit too neat and matchy-matchy. And have slightly too-small feet.

  But if you really want to insult me, you could say I looked ‘fashionable’. Or to feel the full force of my gauntlet landing at your feet, try telling me I’m ‘trendy’. Hair straighteners at dawn for that one, especially as it tends to be delivered as follows: ‘Ooooh, don’t you look trendy?’

  The problem with all of those terms is that they imply that conscious effort has been made. There is an in-built notion that you shopped mindfully and spent hours throwing clothes around in your bedroom, before emerging in the aforesaid trendy ‘rig-out’ (a term frequently used with it). And you did all that because you care what people think of how you look. Double fail.

  The very essence of all the truly flattering terms for looking good is that there is an insouciance to them. You’re not doing it for other people. It’s just who you are, babe.

  According to this logic, as with ‘cool’, you can’t make yourself look ‘chic’ by trying harder. Well, you probably can actually, but you have to be so good at it, you don’t look as though you’ve tried. No wonder it’s such a rare quality. I’m exhausted just thinking about the effort it would take to make it look effortless.

  If you want to know what I mean, hop on a plane to Paris (I know that’s an annoying thing to say, but I mean on Imagination Airlines – where everyone travels first class).

  Stand on any street corner in the sixth arrondisement (St Germain) and you will see multiple examples of that throwaway style. The trench coat knotted at the back. The battered satchel bag slung across the body. The small silk scarf tied artlessly at the throat. The mixed bangles on the same wrist as the chunky man’s watch. Voila! If I tried that, I’d just look scruffy, but on those Parisiennes it’s perfect throwaway chic.

  Glamour is a little easier to achieve. You just need to spend a great deal of time and a great deal of money. Glamour requires very high-maintenance grooming. And very high heels. Every aspect of your look – clothes, nails, hairdo – has to be highly considered and, ideally, highly priced. Glamour done on the cheap can be the tackiest thing of all.

  Done right, it has a polished, air-brushed quality to it – with the glamorous person looking totally relaxed within that buffed skin. Effort has been made, but for oneself, not for the viewing public. See how that works?

  Elegance can be learned, I think. Some people have it naturally – being tall and slim with a long neck. If you’re born with those attributes, you can look elegant in jeans and Havaianas.

  But while elegance doesn’t have to be gussied up like glamour does, it does have to be groomed. Properly maintained, like a car with a perfect service record. It’s an understated style (with good accessories) and deportment – standing up straight, being gracious – is as important as what you wear.

  If all of this not-trying sounds like way too much work, there is one heightened state of gorgeousness which can be achieved entirely on your own terms. ‘Fabulous’ writes its own rules.

  Hey Ho Silver

  I spent the best part of yesterday sitting in my hair salon wearing a head full of tinfoil. Then I handed over the best part of my bank balance to pay for it.

  Then I spent half an hour this morning talking my naturally raven-haired best friend down from a panic sparked by how to cope with her encroaching grey temples. Tinting the lot black again makes her look like a Goth, she said.

  My suggestion that dark hair with bold stripes of silver from the temples is very stylish triggered an outburst so shrill I had to hold the phone away from my head, as the words BADGER and CRUELLA DE VIL were screamed at me.

  Shortly after that I arrived at my lunch date and was introduced to a woman with the finest head of pewter-grey with silver highlights I have ever seen.

  It helped that the just-below-shoulder-length hair was thick, shiny and swishy, and that she had naturally tanned skin and amazing dark blue eyes to set it off. It also did no harm that she is a kundalini yoga teacher and so full of life force she can probably levitate.

  Putting all that aside, her splendid mane immediately made me regret the time and money I had spent the day before having my own grey streaks rendered into mixed streaks of honey-blonde. If I knew my hair could look like this menopau
sal Boadicea’s, I would grow it out and wear it like a crown, I thought. But would I?

  From the terrible moment I found my first grey hair, in my early thirties, I swore I would never surrender to the silver tide. Along with elastic-waist trousers (apart from essential velour trackies) it was not something I was ever going to allow into my life.

  I would stay a blonde till death, I declared, greatly cheered by colourists telling me hair ageing is so much easier for naturally fair-haired people, who can blend grey and silver into the melange without it looking artificial.

  But as part of a generation of women now entering their later years with a confident, out-and-proud attitude to ageing – I’m a year younger than Madonna – I’m wondering why I should care so much about hiding the natural state of my hair? I wouldn’t have Botox (although I don’t judge people who do), or an eye lift, so why do I bother with the hair artifice?

  Adding to my dilemma was Kate Moss appearing at a recent event with what appeared to be grey streaks in her mixed-shade blonde hair. A hairdresser on the Vogue.com site reckoned the effect was achieved using dry shampoo rather than a tint, but was certain that it wasn’t accidental.

  I find it particularly interesting that someone at the end of middle youth like Miss Moss (she’s thirty-six now), would actively want to adopt the look of the next stage on. You’d think she would be holding tight to the last years before inevitable muttonhood (she’s at the hogget stage).

  But maybe it’s part of a fundamental shift in attitude, because even more radically Pixie Geldof – just twenty-one – recently dyed her hair fully grey, as did Kelly Osbourne, twenty-six. And I’ve heard nightclubs are currently full of cool teens with grey streaks.

  So what does it mean that these young women would want to adopt a feature so strongly – and negatively – associated with ageing? Is it just ironic chic?

  I’d like to think it was something more positive than that. A deliberate statement right up front that they are not going to take on the old-school negative attitudes to physical ageing. That in their eyes an older woman is a stronger, wiser woman. Wouldn’t that be great?

  Of course, it’s probably just a passing fad, but I’m keeping my eye on it. Because if grey really is OK, I might even have the courage to let my own silver fox go free.

  Shears Terror

  Have you ever seen what happens to a man when he gets a pair of garden shears in his hands? It’s absolutely terrifying. An otherwise normal, mild-mannered twenty-first-century man is immediately transformed into a wild blade-wielding Genghis Khan.

  I experienced this Hulk-style transformation at very close range just the other day in the pursuit of a lovelier garden. As mentioned previously, I have been in a frenzy of household organisation and beautification in readiness for a first party in a very unfinished abode.

  Well, I made great strides forward on the home front – curtain poles were installed and curtains were hung, pictures were nailed up, horror areas were tidied and a lot of stuff was hurled into cupboards.

  Then I realised the ‘outside entertaining area’ also needed serious attention as that would be where all my smoking friends would be spending the entire evening.

  The garden transformation involved pretty much the same scenario as the house. A lot of old junk was thrown away, the rest was crammed into the shed and the door shouldered shut upon it. Garden furniture had the caked-on bird poo scraped off and was placed at artlessly witty angles. Leaves and other detritus were swept up.

  Then there were a few glorious hours of pure titivation involving brightly coloured annuals and charming old planters, culminating in a bit of a golden moment with a feature mini watering can in cream enamel (French, poncy). Also known as: spending money.

  But then I did that crucial thing that artists know all about – and would have done a lot earlier than I did. I pulled back from the microcosmic view of the pot of thyme and oregano I had been planting up and looked at the big picture, which equalled: some very small pot plants and a few clean garden chairs dwarfed by a horrendous jungle.

  That was when I opened the shed again to find the shears, pruners and secateurs and set to. It was great fun.

  Once you start clipping away at vegetation it’s rather like plucking eyebrows. You don’t know when to stop. What seems like a small and simple job turns out to be quite a huge project when you discover that when examined in a magnifying mirror your eyebrows actually meet your hairline. Well, my berberis turned out to be a Boris Yeltsin of a shrub and the tree thingo next to it (botanical name: haven’tgotaclueii) was a full triffid.

  It was at that point I got Genghis involved. I just couldn’t reach high enough to cut the topknot off the thing to reveal the rather nice purple-leaved tree behind it.

  So I handed him the shears and started to say, ‘Can you just trim it straight across to about …’, when the flash and slice of the blades through the air cut me off.

  I can hardly describe the speed at which those things were whirling and chopping and not even at the triffid, but the lovely tree next to it, with its perfectly formed curving boughs – in full bud.

  Before I could scream ‘Hold fire!’ those branches and all their floral promise were around my feet and Genghis had turned to attack the next delightful plant. I had to physically restrain him, at some personal risk.

  Eventually I got him on to the intended victim and he did his job. Within minutes the wretched thing looked like it had just joined the army. A perfectly round blob of shorn spikes. Genghis still had a wild look in his eye.

  I mentioned this experience to a friend who told me she and her husband have an annual row about his brutal deforestation of their garden. She reckons shears bring up some atavistic urge in men to do with swords.

  But while it must lead to many a domestic upset, we did come up with one positive aspect of the Bladerunner effect: the prowess of male hairdressers. I wonder what Vidal Sassoon would have done to my berberis?

  Fit for Life

  Sorry, hang on a minute, just got to undo the button on my jeans so I can breathe. That’s better; now, where was I? Oh yes, what do you think is the right procedure when none of your clothes fit? I’ve got a new theory that I would like to share – and I’m in a good position to have one, seeing as how none of my clothes do fit me just at the moment.

  Even my comfy jeans are a little on the snug side. And as for my glamour denims – forget it. They are gathering Quentin Crisp levels of dust in my closet.

  I can’t quite believe I have managed to get myself into this state, when I know exactly how to avoid it. Follow the blissfully simple and delicious rules of low-GI eating and go for a brisk walk every day. It’s that easy and I have done it so successfully for so long, yet still I have let things get out of hand.

  One greedy holiday, closely followed by the Christmas party season eat-a-thon, combined with some stress on the work front (I’m not as keen on editing my books as I am on writing them and it takes sugary snacks to get me started) and I have been eating with the carbohydrate abandon of a seventeen-year-old rugby player. Add an ageing metabolism to that and you have a disaster on your hands. Or in my case, on my waist.

  So the obvious thing to do is to go back to the healthy eating and exercise lifestyle which I followed successfully for a couple of years. Apart from anything, it’s very dangerous for your health to carry excess weight around the middle. I know all that, but I just can’t snap to it – I feel so hateful in the shape I am in, I eat for comfort.

  You would think going to my wardrobe and being unable to find anything I can wear would spur me back on to the regime, wouldn’t you? In fact it just spurs me back towards the bread bin.

  It’s a classic vicious cycle. You eat because you feel bad about yourself, which makes you look worse, so you feel bad and eat more and on it goes. That must be how people get really properly fat, I now understand.

  So yesterday I did something which I hope will be a circuit-breaker for this pattern. I bought a new dress.
A lovely new dress which fits me. Mainly because it is very forgiving in the central areas, to the point where it is ever so slightly ante-natal, but fashionable enough for it to be OK. (It’s a shift dress kind of thing with spherical buttons on a ruffle placket down the front – I’m mad about it.)

  I found it by pure fluke, as I had an hour to spare before an important business lunch and I just wandered into a shop and there it was. I walked out wearing it and feeling completely different about myself.

  I don’t think it is unconnected that the meeting went really well. I sat up straight in my gorgeous new frock and looked the world – and my powerful lunch companion – in the eye.

  Also, I found myself able to resist the bread basket and the dessert menu, whereas I’m sure the fat me – wearing the it-will-do outfit I had left home in – would have devoured a buttery roll and found a little space for the tarte tatin.

  So my advice for anyone gripped in the self-hatred comfort-eating trap is not to punish yourself further by slouching through each day in vile elasticated pants and baggy shame tops, but to go right out and buy yourself something lovely that fits. Not that will fit you when you have lost three kilos – but which fits you now.

  Far from giving you licence to stay the size you are, it will give your self-esteem the boost it needs to believe you can lose weight and, more importantly, that you deserve to.

  Home Shopping Network

  Earlier this evening I was chatting to – well, more like counselling, actually – a friend who is in the process of buying his first apartment.

  He is so stressed by the experience he has been having terrible half-waking dreams about running away from his whole life and taking refuge with his parents, and possibly never leaving their house again.

  I totally understand. I’ve had a mortgage for years and it still scares me witless. I think I’ve forgotten about it then I wake up with financial night terrors, proving that debt anxiety still stalks my subconscious.