Style Notes

by Alderson, Maggie

  Despite this, I did my best to convince my friend he is doing the right thing, that it all gets better after the first year, and how satisfying it is knowing that every cent you put into a place is money invested rather than frittered, and all that kind of trite middle-aged wisdom.

  Then he said something which really made me think: ‘The lawyer told me this morning there is no going back now – and I’ve only seen it twice …’

  The same was true for me, I realised, when I bought my house. It’s not very much time to look and ponder, really, is it – when it’s going to enslave you for the next twenty years?

  And that really is the craziest thing about buying property: working on a dollar per second ratio, you spend far less time looking at a unit or house that will be the most expensive thing you ever buy, than you do buying a pair of sandshoes. It’s absolutely nuts.

  Take the rain jacket I am currently considering purchasing. I’ve already been into the shop twice to try it on and would be ashamed to tell you how many times I’ve looked at it on the internet. It’s a rain jacket. An expensive rain jacket, admittedly, at about $400, but that’s still probably less than one window pane of my house cost me.

  I pointed this out to my anxious friend. ‘You probably spent longer trying on your Dior Homme jeans than you have looking at your new home,’ I suggested. Possibly not very helpfully. There was a pained groan from the other end of the phone.

  All of which has convinced me that the whole property-buying set-up needs to be radically reorganised. The quick shufti at the open viewing, plus the awkward follow-up visit – if you’re lucky – is just not enough service for a purchase of this level. It needs to be made nicer for people.

  Somehow, when you spend too much money on clothing it gives you a rather heady, delicious, heiress-for-a-day feeling – but when you make the much more sensible purchase of a tradeable property, it just makes you feel ill with stress. The difference is largely due to the service you get.

  If you consider the charm differential experienced between say, buying a $40 top in Dotti and a $1200 one in Chanel, then surely the process of buying a $800 000 apartment should be more of that luxury shopping experience?

  So what could they do? Getting rid of the heinous open viewing system would be a start – they are the equivalent of a designer sample sale; an uncivilised free-for-all.

  Instead, potential buyers should be shown around prospective properties in a respectful, nurturing atmosphere – something akin to the approach of a bespoke bridal boutique, where nothing is too much trouble, with no sense of time constraint, and no-one else watching. With a glass of champagne to make it all that little bit more pleasant.

  Equally, just as the best boutiques offer customers high heels, belts and so on to try on with the garment they are considering, we should be allowed to view properties in different lights, at different times of day.

  And the very least we could be given to help get us through it is a really gorgeous shopping bag that we will still like even if we decide the thing it came with was a monstrous mistake.

  Dead Stylish

  I don’t want to be a downer, but I’m planning my funeral. It’s on my mind because over the past six months there seem to have been a lot of them. Several of my best friends have lost their fathers in quick succession, so it’s been a sad time and, I suppose, a mark of the age we are now.

  One of them is burying his dear old dad tomorrow and it was talking to him about the funeral arrangements which made me think I’d better set some guidelines for my own.

  You see, they are having one of those upbeat affairs, where everyone wears bright colours and they play happy music and celebrate his life and not his loss. It’s absolutely right for him – he was a very convivial chap – and for his family, the nicest bunch of party animals you could ever hope to meet. But it’s not what I want for my funeral.

  When it’s my turn to go I would like everyone to be very, very sad. And wearing black from head to toe. I will expect hats (large, or cocktail) for the ladies and enormous black sunglasses – or veils.

  Really, I would like them all to look like Holly Golightly in her funeral outfit from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A white lace hanky would be the only non-black item permitted. And red lipstick.

  Men will be required to wear marvellously cut suits, black ties, polished shoes and ideally a black armband. Sunglasses of course. Very neat hair. The more they look like George Clooney in Ocean’s 11, the better.

  A friend of mine once happened to walk past when an actual mafia funeral was happening at St Patrick’s cathedral in New York. He said everyone was dressed like that – totally to the nines – but what made a really deep impression on him was that all these incredibly chic women in perfectly cut black suits and lace veils were crawling up the steps of the church.

  Anyway, I’m just mentioning that as a suggestion, because a bit of crawling would be welcome at my send-off. Abject grief is what I’m looking for. And if anyone wants to throw themselves into the grave, be my guest.

  I may sound flippant here and I don’t mean to offend anyone who has recently suffered a bereavement – I went through it when I lost my own father and I do remember how sensitive it makes you to these kinds of discussions – but I am trying to make a serious point: I don’t think we grieve publicly enough.

  I think full-on public sorrow is much better for everyone concerned than making it into a jolly knees-up. And having established conventions – be it wearing black, openly crying, or the more extreme church-step crawling – provides a socially acceptable framework for people to grieve. To let it out.

  So to help everyone emote fully at my send-off, I will set the scene. The service will be at the journalists’ church, St Bride’s in London’s Fleet Street, opposite where I used to work on the Evening Standard.

  I’d like a lot of very expensive white flowers, please, specifically calla lilies. I’ve refused to have them anywhere near me all my life, because they are ‘funeral flowers’, so I want to make the most of them on the one day I can.

  And just to get everyone in the mood, I will arrive in a hearse drawn by six splendid black horses with enormous black feather plumes on their heads. One of them might play up with a bit of whinnying and ground-pawing for drama.

  A London undertaker who has photographs of such arrangements on the walls of his establishment once told me that that kind of funeral is only booked these days by East End gangsters and ‘gay gentlemen’, but I’m sure he’d be happy to add me to his list.

  I just hope I’ve got long enough to save up for it.

  Shoe Shape-Up

  I love the modern world. I’ve always agreed heartily with Paul Weller on that point. The modern world is marvellous because everything just keeps getting better.

  I was thinking that the other day as I settled into my long-haul airline seat and started scrolling through the hundreds of great films and TV shows there were to watch, starting and stopping any time I wanted. It doesn’t seem so long ago that there was one film you had to crane your neck to see and if you missed the beginning that was tough luck for you.

  Cars have got better too. I’m deeply grateful for that device that goes ping! ping! ping! at me if I try and get out of the car with the headlights still on. What is this thing you call ‘jumper leads’?

  Tellies are way better. They’re flat. You can put them on the wall and they no longer need nasty ‘stands’. I remember TVs before remote controls came along. They were a massive bonus to humanity (and manufacturers of outsize track pants). Actually, I remember TV before it was colour, but we won’t go back that far. It’s embarrassing.

  And what about phones! Phones are ridiculously brilliant now and it just keeps getting better. We’ve got iPads and sat nav and Kindles and so many wondrous new gadgets, which they keep improving to the point where I don’t just love the modern world, I’m in love with it. I want to marry it.

  But while so many of the things that we use every day just keep getti
ng better, there is one major exception: shoes. Despite all the mind-blowing developments in technology and engineering, shoes are pretty much the same as they were twenty years ago. It’s still really hard to find a pair which are comfortable to walk in, keep your feet dry and look all right with a skirt.

  Of course there have been some innovations. Crocs ha ha ha. Then there are those ones which are supposed to give you a Kylie derriere just by walking to the corner shop to buy biscuits. Which is a lovely idea, but they’re plug-ugly shoes, aren’t they?

  Trainers are the one area of the footwear market where technology is a key part of the marketing spruik, yet apart from actual sports use (jogging to the shop to get biscuits), most people I know have reverted to the Converse All Star as their default sandshoe. And they’ve been pretty much the same since 1917.

  The most useful innovation I can think of is Velcro fasteners on kids’ shoes. There was an attempt to market shoes with two heel heights – you screwed one off and put the other on – but they never got beyond the stage of the novelty invention.

  Folding and roll-up flats to keep in your bag for when you can’t endure your heels for another minute have their place, but they’re not proper shoes. More of an emergency service.

  I have enjoyed the mutant shoe genre, which put witty kitten heels on wellies and thongs, and gave us the very useful wedge deck shoe (the ultimate smart casual shoe), but what I’m looking for is a shoe revolution equivalent to the exponential shift from your grandma’s hall table telephone to an iPhone.

  I want a heel that lowers itself automatically on uneven surfaces and a waterproof sole as slender as leather that thickens into a platform in rain. Insoles which give you pressure point massages to relieve bunion pain as you walk.

  Shoe shops which take X-rays of your feet and create the style you want tailored exactly for your foot, on the spot. I want size six-and-three-quarters. I want innovation so new I can’t even imagine it.

  Surely the collective human brainpower that brought us such innovations as the touchscreen is up to this. Mr Jobs, Mr Blahnik, are you listening?

  Catalogue of Disasters

  I’ve been thinking about what I might wear when I’m old. Not just a bit very old, as I am now, but really properly old. It’s been on my mind as I seem to have made it on to some kind of database for clothing catalogues for women of A Certain Age and they’ve started arriving in bulk.

  I’ve been studying them in detail – initially in case there might be something in them that could plug one of my current gaping wardrobe holes. There wasn’t, so then I went forensic, analysing the elements of the garments and concluding that this is a whole different genus of clothing, with very strict paramaters.

  Fabrics don’t cling. None of the dresses have cinched waists. They all have sleeves of some kind. There is a lot of draping around stomach and décolletage. Necklines are carefully pitched not too low – disastrous muttonhood – and not too high – frumpy school ma’am.

  The tunic top features strongly, in various lengths, as do the elastic-waisted pant (in many levels of crop) and the elastic-waisted gored skirt. Which all makes perfect sense because the area that seems to be the problem as you get older is all the mid-zone.

  The upper arms may cease to be things of loveliness, thighs not for sharing, but the real problems on the ageing female form are concentrated around the equator. In more extreme cases the torso can approach the spherical, so clothing that passes discreetly over this area makes perfect sense.

  But a lot of the catalogues also feature a sub-species of garment I have always sworn I will never wear: the short-sleeved jacket. This seems a particularly clunky object to me, with all the weight of tailoring petering out into short sleeves from which tiny little arms protrude. It makes the flesh look uniquely vulnerable and exposed to my eye. And there’s something pterodactyl about the protruding bony elbows.

  But I can see the temptation of it. When your waist is a mere memory, your middle feels like scrambled eggs in a sock, and your bosoms are making a bid for their own postcodes, you might imagine that a little light tailoring can bring crispness to a silhouette, without the bundling up and overheating risk of a full long-sleeved jacket. No. Don’t go there.

  I will never, at any age, no matter how bowling-ball my physique, wear a short-sleeved jacket. Much better, in that instance, to go for the three-quarter-length sleeve, which is so often found in a vintage shop (if you’re really lucky, still with the matching dress). Or a cute little cardie.

  And that realisation has made me vow that no matter how old I am, I won’t shop from these catalogues. I can see the appeal; I’m already reaching the stage where I find it taxing to try on lots of clothes in shops, so the notion of it all being delivered so you can try it on in the privacy of your own home has its attractions.

  But I’ve found another way round this. Shop relatively near home at big stores and chains, which have good returns policies. Or better still, at independent boutiques and vintage emporia, where you can build up personal relationships with the owners.

  That way you get to try the stuff on at home – possibly with a glass of wine to hand – with all your accessories on the spot, and can return it without a draggy parcel-wrapping, post office queue drama.

  Of course, if you live miles from decent shops, this might not be an option, so you might consider scheduling an occasional overnight trip to your nearest great shopping zone. Then you can try the gear on in your hotel room, or at a friend’s place, and take back what doesn’t suit the next morning.

  I can already see that clothing the ageing physique is going to bring with it a whole new set of challenges – but the answer doesn’t have to be compromise catalogue clothing.

  Clooney Loony

  Just what is it about George Clooney? What is it about him that renders every woman I know a gibbering wreck? Among my friends there is a sort of a Loony Clooney Club. We get together and watch DVDs of Ocean’s 11, 12 and whatever other numbers he might care to make in a similar vein.

  We all agree that he is the one man on earth any of us would be unfaithful to our husbands for – and it wouldn’t count, if it were George, we all agree. It wouldn’t be adultery, it would be a duty to womankind, to go there and report back. In full.

  Clooneymania affects women of all ages. Just the other day I had lunch with my dear friend B, whose next big birthday features an eight as the first number.

  ‘He’s got one of those Vietnamese pigs,’ she told me. ‘So I wrote to him and said, “If you just get rid of the pig, George, I’m there.” Actually, I wrote again the other day, saying, “I’ve been thinking, I could live with the pig…” ’

  She was joking, of course, but not about the fact that he makes her feel quite silly every time she looks at him. He just has that effect on a woman.

  He even made a cameo appearance in one of the sweetest novels I have read for a while, The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn. It’s really not germane to the plot, but the single heroine in the book wins a date with George Clooney in a competition and it is lovingly described in great detail, with GC portrayed in every way as the perfect man. Quinn clearly has as daft a crush on him as the rest of us.

  In a similar vein, one of the funniest Clooney moments I have experienced was when the respected and distinguished BBC talk radio presenter Sue Lawley interviewed him on the venerable Desert Island Discs programme, where interesting people choose six tracks they would take to a desert island as a vehicle for telling their life story.

  George reduced Ms Lawley – who interviews archbishops, industrialists, Nobel Prize nominees and the like on the programme – to a quivering mess. You could practically hear her blushing as he flirted outrageously with her on air. And if a tape of that programme is in circulation in my immediate circle, I make no apologies for it.

  Not only does he transcend age in his appeal, he cuts right across the ‘type’ barrier as well. My friend J – the founder of the Loony Clooneys – and I pretty much span the
extremes of type preferences. In short, she likes cherubic blonds and I like vulpine brunets.

  We have always taken great comfort in the fact that when it comes to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid she has always swooned for Robert Redford, while I have fainting fits over Paul Newman.

  It occurred to me the other day that George Clooney is kind of a mixture of the best of both of them.

  But on top of that potent combination and along with that curling mouth and those knowingly twinkling eyes, I do actually know, from first-hand experience, what the secret of GC’s charisma is. It is pure unbridled confidence.

  I could see it from just a few metres away, the time he was front row at the Giorgio Armani show in Milan, and I was perfectly placed to eyeball him. He had been seated in the best spot in the place, in the ‘catwalk end’ position, so that all the models walked, in effect, straight up to him, on the floor-level runway Mr Armani prefers.

  He sat there for the duration of the fashion show with a wicked smile on his face – and his legs wide open. The models must have felt like they were walking straight at his crotch, which was clearly his intention.

  Well, lucky them.

  Ruinovation

  I have recently observed a new trend in home décor. It usually involves wood-effect laminate flooring throughout, the cheapest versions of fashionable bathroom fittings – very small rectangular sinks, in particular – and a sold-by-the-metre kitchen. Then a great deal of pale mushroom paint.

  The people who adopt this style call it ‘renovation’, but a better term would be ‘ruinovation’. And I think more harm has been done to perfectly good properties in its name in the past ten years than in the previous fifty.

  I can remember in the 1980s, when I put a tentative toe on the first rung of the property ladder, being astounded at the horrors which had been unleashed on London’s mainly Victorian housing stock in the 1970s.