I’d have an old dinner jacket I bought in a second-hand shop in London and a very old, very floppy black silk bow tie, which would always be undone and hanging down by the end of the evening because I would be hot from all the dancing. I’d have jet studs in my starched-front dinner shirt and evening shoes polished to a high shine. I’d shrug my overcoat over my shoulders. I’d look pretty good in a kilt, too.
I’d have an old Guernsey sweater for sailing, whites for tennis and Speedo swimming trunks saying Bondi on the bum. I’d wear a flower in my buttonhole at the races and a sarong to dinner on holiday.
If I were a man, I’d have longish sideboards and a side parting, a bit floppy on the top. I’d look really good with wet hair and one day’s growth after the gym on Sundays. I wouldn’t have my shoulders waxed but I would keep an eye on uninvited nose hair.
If I were a man, I would polish my shoes and always have a clean cotton hanky in my pocket.
If I were a man, I’d never leave the lavatory seat up and, if I were a man, I’d marry me.
The wrong trousers
Talk about the wrong trousers. I had the wrong trousers, the wrong shoes and, in particular, the wrong dry cleaners.
Oh, I felt so cool, spinning up to the ABC’s Gore Hill studio to tape my second appearance on ‘O’Loghlin on Saturday Night’. Television, smellyvision, done it a million times (well, maybe twenty-five), I know what to wear. Not stripes or geometric patterns because they ‘jazz’, not black because it just goes into a blob, not white unless you want to look like you’re singing in a gospel choir.
I was so laid back about it all I just dropped by my dry cleaners on the way to the studio (‘studio’) to pick up a couple of pairs of pants to sling into the back of the car along with my choice of Armani and Equipment shirts (one navy blue chiffon, one snakeskin print, both dead groovy), and a wild selection of shoe-en.
I had selected a pant-and-shirt combo particularly because the last time I went on the show I wore my best dress. It’s a gorgeous frock but I soon discovered why not many people wear dresses on television. There’s no waistband to hang the microphone powerpack off, and they were forced to rig me out with this thing like a 1950s sanitary belt to hold it in place.
So I had to make my big entrance down the steps in front of a live audience, terrified it was going to slide down my hips and make a special guest appearance between my legs. Very relaxing. Hello, Mum.
So this time it was all going to be perfect. I hung my gear up in my dressing room in its dry-cleaning bags and went to chill with the guys in the Green Room, before cruising into Make-up with the nice ladies who knew me from last time. I was so at home I made Richard Wilkins look like Mr Bean. Catch you on the flip side, baby.
Then I went to get changed. La la la. Should I wear the black jersey pants or the grey jersey pants? Oh. The black jersey pants weren’t the swingy bell bottoms I thought they were. They were my cropped pants. Not a good look with the range of strappy stilettos I’d brought with me as feature shoes. Okay then, the grey, with the snake, with the Michel Perry hologram silver spikes. Beauty.
Not. When I wrestled them from the plastic covering, my very expensive grey jersey Halston-style flares turned out to be size 4 half-mast gaucho pantalones. They’d shrunk 30 centimetres in the leg and about 10 around the waist. It was ten minutes to showtime and there was only one thing I could do. I panicked.
Fortunately, the producer happened by when I was doing an impression of Munch’s The Scream in the corridor and he sent Natalie from Wardrobe to look after me. Cool, calm and collected, Natalie took one look at the shoes, one look at the wrong trousers, agreed I was a total disaster and marched me straight down the concrete corridors to the ABC wardrobe. This is not as good as it sounds. For a moment I thought I was going to be appearing as B1. His costume was the best thing they had on offer down there.
But among the massed ranks of police uniforms, polyester dresses, padded blue-and-white striped pyjamas, banana heads and dear little Ratty noses (like a fun fur fez on elastic), Natalie found one rogue pair of black Emporio Armani trousers. The right trousers. A size or two too small and several metres too long, but no problem, we had at least three minutes to shorten them and to find a safety pin large enough to fasten the waist.
And so I made my entrance in somebody else’s pants, slightly shaken, but equally stirred – by the row I was planning to have with my dry cleaners in the morning.
The meaning of like
The press and buyers at the European fashion shows have a language entirely their own. ‘Genius’ has nothing to do with discovering the cure for cancer: it’s a fair description of the latest Gucci heel shape.‘Working back’doesn’t mean staying late in the office: it describes ways of accessorising an outfit to make the clothes look less boring and ordinary, as in ‘I’ll be working back the camel suit with the Prada brogue mule in the bilberry.’
But this fashion lingo – flingo – is never more abstract than when you ask someone’s opinion as you are all leaving a show. Saying the wrong thing could lose you crucial advertising/an exclusive retail account/your reputation in an instant. So a special obtuse code has been developed. As you walk out of the abandoned factory/disused fire station/scrap heap where a show has been held, you will hear the following responses to the question: ‘What did you think of that?’ And here is what they really mean…
‘There were some nice pieces.’ (Really means: It was incredibly boring, but they advertise in the magazine, so I’ll have to find a white shirt or some godforsaken thing I can use to give them an editorial credit. Or sometimes it means: It looked hideous to me, but I’m not confident to say so. What if everybody else loved it? Or: I loved it, but I want to see what Suzy Menkes says about it before I admit to it. What if everyone else hated it?)
‘It was quite pretty.’ (It was boring.)
‘It was pretty.’ (It was boring, but they advertise.)
‘It was really pretty.’ (It was pretty. Really boring, but pretty. If you like pastels.)
‘It was really, really pretty.’ (It had a lot of gypsy embroidery and harem skirts and I feel like doing a fashion trip to Morocco.)
‘It was a bit predictable.’ (I fell asleep. And when I woke up, a bride was coming down the runway.)
‘It was really commercial.’ (It was indescribably boring.)
‘It was quite classic.’ (It was indescribably boring, but they are advertisers. We’ll definitely be doing a white shirts story.)
‘It was fabulous.’ (It was fabulous.)
‘It was genius.’ (It was fabulous and I get a discount.)
‘I loved it. I love Dries.’ (I didn’t like it that much, but he sent me a fabulous free handbag this week.)
‘I know I can make it work in-store.’ (I think the designer has been taking some mind-altering drugs. I’ll force him to make me a black suit the same as last season’s or they’ll lose the account.)
‘It wasn’t bad.’ (It was awful.)
‘It was great.’ (It’s going to fit my big bum.)
‘I thought it was adorable.’ (I thought it was tragic, but the designer is a really good friend of mine. Well, we had lunch once.)
‘It was tragic.’ (They just pulled their advertising – and after I featured that hideous black skirt last month, the ingrates.)
‘I missed it because I had an appointment at Dolce.’ (It’s always gruesome and I went shopping instead. But they advertise. I really hope they did some white shirts.)
‘It was pretty blah.’ (They gave me a seat in the seventh row.)
‘It was a waste of time.’ (They gave me a standing-only ticket.)
‘I couldn’t go. I had to go to an appointment at Fendi and they don’t sell in Australia anyway.’ (The bastards didn’t invite me.)
‘It was disgraceful. They should be sued for vilification of women. I’m never going to one of their stupid shows again, hideous misogynists.’ (It was all bum cheeks, bare breasts and prostitute clothing and I work on a ne
wspaper, so I can say so.)
Beautiful strangers
I once bought a man’s entire life in a box. I thought it was just a box of old maps which would be great for wrapping presents, but when I got it home and looked at it all I realised it was a time capsule.
There was a complete set of 1930s London Transport leisure maps, with beautifully illustrated covers, showing all the lovely places at the end of the tube lines where you could go rambling. I can imagine those rambles in stout shoes and a tweed jacket, through copper beeches and mighty oaks, conkers on the ground. And then a pint of beer in an old Surrey pub.
I hope Mr Map enjoyed those simple pleasures because further down in the box there was a large number of army maps of northern France. I have looked at those maps many times trying to picture the landscape they helped Mr Map to navigate. Or perhaps he was Captain Map at that point.
I’ve never been sure if I was looking at the battlefields of Flanders, or the Normandy landings, but whichever war it was, Captain Map survived it. There were lots of maps from his travels, including a trip to South Africa in the early 1930s. The first-class passenger list from the ship is in there, in elegant Art Deco typography. I can see them on that voyage. Just like the one in Brideshead Revisited. I have always wondered whether there were any love affairs at sea. In white linen. Whatever he got up to in Africa, Mr Map travelled extensively in the United States, by car, in the 1950s, and he went back to England eventually (1960s Ordnance Survey maps).
I had forgotten about Mr Map until today when I went into one of those shops that re-sells designer clothing, and met Madame Hermès. Well, I didn’t meet her exactly, I met her clothes. You don’t often find gear by Hermès in those shops (and believe me, I’m looking), it’s so expensive and such good quality it tends to be last-a-lifetime stuff, so I was instantly intrigued.
The first things I noticed were some enamel bangles in a locked display case. Then I saw there were about four Hermès scarves in there, too, and six Hermès cashmere jumpers. Mint condition, signature gold buttons at the neck. Hardly worn, no pilling, not even under the arms. Black, navy, grey, cream and two green. I know how Howard Carter felt when he discovered Tutankhamen’s tomb.
But as always tomb robbers had got there first – the Kelly bag had already gone. For $800. I could have wept, but rallied when I heard it was green. That really started me thinking. If you can only have one Kelly bag in your life it’s never going to be a green one. You’ll have a black one, then a camel, then you might move into interesting skins, but a green one is going to be low on the list. Who was this woman? Why did she like green so much? And what else was she throwing out? I picked that shop over like a vulture.
Next find was a beautiful grey flannel skirt, with two zip pockets on the back edged with leather. Gorgeous with that grey sweater. And then something very special – a dark red coat of a style that is correctly called a redin-gote, nipped in at a high waist, sweeping out to the ankle, large flaps on the pockets, very Scarlet Pimpernel. The kind of coat you would wear to sweep through the Palais Royal in November, in long boots. Carrying a green Kelly bag.
And while you might look like a poet in that coat, you just might be on your way for a bikini wax, because the last thing I found was definitely intended for serious poolside action. It was a mint green towelling beach playsuit. Not the kind of thing you’d throw on for a Bondi dip. More like Cap Ferrat.
Oh Madame Hermès, I wonder who you are and why you are selling your things. But whatever the reason, thank you. I’m going to have that black cashmere jumper for life.
Accidental coutur-ist
The shirt was made from such a brilliant print – a hyperreal photomontage of tropical fish and coral – that it was a few moments before I noticed that the fellow wearing it, standing on the next escalator step up from me at a city railway station, was a rough old diamond in his seventies.
With his two-tone white and yellow hair standing up like a brush, he looked like the kind of gnarly old digger who props up the bar at his local pub, watching the doggies on TV and growling ‘Owareyamate?’ at all comers. And there he was in a shirt that any Generation Y postmodern ironic Newtown or Brunswick dude would have been stoked to unearth in an op-shop. Or that any South Yarra or Paddington Generation X fashion victim would be thrilled to find copied in a cutting-edge designer boutique.
The shirting equivalent of vinyl wood-grain wallpaper, it was such an unusually magnificent piece of kitsch that it made me wonder what had gone through Mr Shirt’s head as he was getting dressed that morning. Was it, ‘I’m going into town, it’s a nice day, better wear my best short-sleeved shirt, the one with the fish on it’? Or was it just,‘Where the bleep is my nearest shirt?’ Or even, ‘Sniff, sniff, this’ll do’? But, actually, it looked clean and pressed, so maybe there was a Mrs Shirt there, too, saying,‘Wear your nice fish shirt, Ted, I’ve ironed it for you specially.’
Then I started pondering what Fish Shirt Man was thinking when he bought that wild garment. Did he choose it because he loved the bright print, because warm tones flatter his colouring, or because he likes tropical fish? Or perhaps it was just the first one he came across the day he went out to get a new shirt because he had spilled too much sauce on his other one. (Someone moved the pie mid-squirt.) For all I know, he went out looking for a tropical fish shirt, or had it specially made, because he is the president of the Australian Fish Fanciers Association and he was off to the annual general meeting. Maybe he was wearing it as a dare. Or to advertise fish food. I’ll never know, dammit.
Why ever he has it, I actually loved Fish Shirt Man’s mad fish shirt, but I’m sure it wasn’t for the same reasons that he does – and that’s something I obsess about whenever I see little old ladies (or tall old ladies, for that matter) carrying copies of Prada bags. Do they know their handbag is a plausible copy of Miuccia Prada’s latest style and hope that people will think it is the real thing, in the same way that impoverished young fashion assistants will score a $20 Canal Street version just to have the look? Or did they just happen to like it when they saw it in a shop? Or was it the only black one under $50?
In short, I am fascinated by how sane people – that is, those not formally involved in fashion – come to be wearing the clothes they do, because for those of us inextricably caught up in the madness of haute couture and the rest of it, even the smallest clothing purchase is a major life decision. You don’t just grab a generic item with the lack of discretion Homer Simpson applies to food (cookie, mouth). Everything you choose is a semiotic satellite dish of who you are, who you think you are, and who you wish you were. You wear your heart, your hopes and your bank balance on your sleeve (and your shoe and your handbag).
So while I am often scruffy, sometimes daggy and occasionally downright slobby, I just can’t imagine being accidentally dressed. And I wouldn’t mind a tropical-fish-print shirt, either.
GSOH
I know I am absolutely the last person on earth to get on to this, but I have just fallen very much in love with Ricky Martin.
I’d heard about him of course – was sick to death of hearing about him, actually, and how I’d missed out by not seeing him live when he was in Sydney. But I really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
I’d heard his pappy Latino music and couldn’t be bothered with it, and I’d seen pictures of him, but so what? A good-looking dark-skinned man with great abs. You see a million of those down on Bondi Beach any sunny Sunday, so why all the fuss?
Well, last night I saw the video clip for his song ‘She Bangs’, and one look at his eyes and I totally got it. Not only is Ricky – sigh – terribly good-looking with a great bod, he’s got a GSOH. A good sense of humour. You can see it in his eyes.
In the video clip all these beautiful women with practically no clothes on are writhing around all over him and his shirt’s coming off (oh God). In the middle of it all he looks straight at the camera (or maybe it was straight at me) with an expression that seems to say, ‘
Struth, mate, they’ll have my fillings out in a minute.’
What Ricky has is a very distinct twinkle. A twinkle that tells you immediately he is the kind of person you could have really good church giggles with at inappropriate moments. And because of the GSOH twinkle I’m now mad about him, like the rest of the world.
But forget a romantic dinner on a Saint Tropez terrace, I would love to go on a camping holiday with him. You’d be hysterical over the groundsheet before you’d even left your own street. He’d do funny things with the tent pegs, you can just see it in him.
It’s exactly the same kind of twinkle that made craggy old Paul Hogan an international star. Let’s face it, Croc Dundee was not that hot to look at (and we won’t go into his recent plastic surgery any more than we shall be discussing Ricky’s sexuality), but that cheeky knowing look in his eye made him terribly attractive.
Sometimes you meet elderly taxi drivers and septa-genarian fruit sellers who have the same twinkle. Some children have it and some dogs. It’s a kind of complicity – we’re in this together and we’re going to have a laugh about it. It’s the most attractive thing on earth.
Then you meet the opposite type, the beautiful person with absolutely NSOH. I never know what to do with myself when I come across them – and there is a disconcertingly large number of them at large.
I just don’t know how to interact with people who are not in a state of constant alert for something amusing, and I find it deeply distressing when I meet one. It’s as though they don’t wish to engage with you at all, because a laugh or a smile about the silliest little thing is an instant bond between humans. Dogs sniff each other’s bottoms, we have a bit of a laugh – it’s how we diffuse the tension between strangers. People who don’t understand that repel me.
Handbag Heaven Page 4
