There is also something very interesting to me about the way that the clothes of some designers will just never suit one. Most shops and labels will yield something which flatters, but then there are these others which are just non-starters.
I can pretty much tell, when I am watching them go by on the catwalk, which outfits – however gorgeous – would make me look like a pregnant rhino. But I like trying them on in real life, as well, when possible, so I can: a) prove it to myself, and b) try and analyse what it is about them that is so wrong for me.
I had the perfect opportunity to undertake one of these missions the last time I was in Milan for the shows, at a small warehouse on the edge of town, which houses one of the greatest attractions of visiting that city for, I think, the majority of the female delegates. It’s the Marni outlet.
I can hardly begin to describe the place that the label Marni holds in the heart of the average fashionista. It is adored with an almost religious fervour, a fetish really, beyond even the collective lust we feel for Prada ready-to-wear.
Prada clothes are impeccable, in my opinion, but Marni has a very specific appeal: it’s less well known to the general public, it’s not on sale in that many places around the world – and it’s fantastically expensive.
Even beyond all these layers of exclusivity, it is also a little obscure in its colours and shapes. You have to have a very refined aesthetic to ‘get’ Marni. It has no sex appeal whatsoever, in the generally understood manner and – unless you know what it is – it doesn’t even look expensive.
The final appeal of Marni, to those who subscribe to the cult, is that it only suits tall, slender, small-breasted women – and, in my opinion, only brunettes. Preferably ones who are married to architects or famous artists. They look absolutely wonderful in it – and I love the clothes – but as a short, chubby blonde (married to a retired footballer), I look hilarious in Marni.
It’s not just that I’m too squat for it, or even that the 1950s-style jackets with their cropped, bracelet-length sleeves and shawl collars, in fabrics like leftovers from a Polish car seat factory, make me look frumpy. I just look mad in it. Mustard never has been my shade.
So I had a hilarious couple of hours in that warehouse with my fashion bestie, Mark, who was on the hunt for presents for his female workmates. I’d told him all the way there how bad I look in Marni and he wouldn’t have it, but after I’d modelled a couple of shapeless duster coats in old rose tones, he fully believed me.
He believed me so much that he kept finding new things for me to try on, for our greater amusement. A very full skirt, gathered on to a waistband, will always make me look like a tea cosy, but a cropped kimono jacket in stiff, puttycoloured brocade was the high point.
The wide sleeves and slope shoulders, the washed-out colour and shiny fabric, were simply appalling on someone with broad shoulders, noticeable breasts, short arms and fair skin – and we were almost helpless with laughter.
By this point, people were giving us funny looks. We were laughing in the temple of Marni, where all the other women present were experiencing the racing pulse I would have at a 99 per cent off sale of Bottega Veneta tote bags.
But in my way, I was as happy as they were, leaving with six huge carrier bags of stuff each (true – I saw them). They’d had a shopping coup and I’d had a bloody good laugh.
Boot scooting
Question: of the many, many pairs of shoes, boots, sandals, sandshoes, mules, slippers and flippers that have graced my feet over the years, which do you think would be my most comfortable footwear of all time? The Havaiana thongs? The battered Nike neoprene trainers? Well-worn Birkenstocks? Cork-soled felted-wool orthopaedic clogs (they are certainly ugly enough to want to be comfy)? None of the above. The outright winners of this award are my battered black cowboy boots. No contest.
I’ve had them good ol’ boys over twenty years now and they just keep getting better ’n’ better (I just wish writing about them didn’t make me mentally talk like George Bush, all you folks).
I can walk for hours in my cowbies and they never rub or pinch, or make my feet feel tired. They also have some mysterious property that makes it possible to wear them even on quite warm days without overheating, and of course they are beyond brilliant when it’s cool. I like something I can slip on over a sock. Very comforting thing, a sock.
True, they’re not quite so great in the wet, with the leather soles and all, which are getting thinner as the years and the kilometres of concrete go by, but I feel so happy whenever I wear my cowboy boots, I don’t really mind if my toes get a bit damp.
There’s just something about a boot, isn’t there? Somehow you have a relationship with your boots that you don’t have with any other footwear. There’s a sense of a bond, of being in it together, of knowing that your boots will never let you down. Boots aren’t mere accessories, they’re mates.
As befits best mates, I can take my cowbies anywhere. They always fit in. They’re great mixers, too. You can wear them with anything and I have. They look just as good with long skirts as they do with pants – better, really – and in my golden-thighed youth, I used to love wearing them with cutoff jeans and even miniskirts (but always with a big sweatshirt on top to avoid that trailer trash look).
They may not have the postmodern ironic flirtatiousness of a Prada mule, the chic of a Chanel pump, or the pure sex appeal of a Manolo stiletto, but I always have an extra spring in my step when I climb into those boots. They make me feel cool and ageless, like some kind of junior Georgia O’Keeffe type of person. Or Sheryl Crow’s rather chubby older sister.
Even though they have been worn for decades by all kinds of respectable people who have never been anywhere near a rodeo, cowboy boots are still slightly outsider wear. To wear them is to say: I go my own way (and I’m sure Stevie Nicks has quite a collection of them herself, to work back with a wafty frock and a bit of a macramé skullcap).
It’s no wonder they’ve always been a staple of the rock ‘n’ roll wardrobe. Real rockers always wear boots, rather than shoes, and cowbies have that requisite rock style detail – like jeans and leather pants – of looking better the older and more worn-in they get. And, of course, they are simply genius to dance in.
Cowboy boots are also a tribal marking. Not so niche as Marilyn Manson make-up, an Hermès Birkin bag, or a skinhead number one crop, but nevertheless an indication that the inhabitant thereof is not likely to be your average square peg. (Unless you are in Texas, when all such bets are off.)
The only thing that has got weird for me is that, after twenty years of wearing them with no regard whatsoever for prevailing trends, suddenly cowboy boots are ultra-fashionable among the young and cool creative crowd. I’ve been stopped on the street by girls with terrifying haircuts asking me where I bought my boots.
‘You can’t buy boots like these,’ I want to say. ‘You have to earn them.’
Gloves off
It was all about gloves. According to the fashion shows that had just finished in Europe, the glove was the key new item we would all need to update our wardrobes for next winter. Hurrah.
Not just any old gloves, mind, but some feature gloves in a witty colour – new-leaf-green would be ideal, especially if they were ostrich skin. And preferably they should be long gauntlets which would stretch up to the elbow if allowed, but are worn scrooched down to the wrist in artless folds. That was the important differential from the last time the feature glove was the go, back in the 1980s, when it was a short glove you wanted and, ideally, red. Mine were and I did love them so.
The first time I saw the New Glove (at the Prada show in Milan), I could have clapped my (gloveless) hands in delight, because it looked so right and I thought it so clever of them to come up with a new accessory necessity, now that we all have more handbags and belts than we know what to do with. And one which, like the shoe and the handbag, does not present any possible humiliations of a sizing nature, which was a drawback with some of those belts that were m
eant to sit insouciantly on the hip, but sometimes tourniqueted the waist when tried on in public in a pretentious boutique.
Then, in the midst of all this excitement about forthcoming shopportunities, I made a few discoveries about the new It accessory. There is a bit more to gloves than I initially thought.
I had the first revelation at a cocktail party in Paris where I was chatting to my very chic friend Joan Burstein, founder of legendary London fashion emporium Browns, who has been elegant for much longer than I have been alive. She was with a friend of equal style and vintage. I was enthusing about the new glove, and Joan’s friend – who was not only elegant, but also une vraie Parisienne – said: ‘In our day you simply did not leave the house without gloves and a hat. It was unthinkable.’
Joan agreed and lifted up the short fur jacket (purple-dyed chinchilla) she had resting over her right arm and showed me that she was holding a pair of exquisite black gloves trimmed with white piping. It was the way she was holding them that struck me. The palms were together, the fingers were smooth and she was grasping them lightly by their cuffs.
Her friend laughed and lifted the pashmina she had folded over her arm to reveal another pair of beautiful gloves in an identical arrangement. (She was holding a pair of spectacles very delicately by their arms too, and a glass of champagne. Reckon she could join the Peking Circus.)
I showed them my gloves. They came out of my coat pockets like a pair of mummified rat remains. All curled up and a bit crispy. They were good gloves, too, once. Black kid.
The next thing I learned about gloves was from an extract in American Vogue from Andre Leon Talley’s recently published memoir. It was the most moving tribute to his grandmother, who brought him up, and it described how she had never allowed a shortage of money to compromise her innate sense of elegance.
‘Mama’ as he called her, never went out without gloves – and she always carried a spare pair in her handbag in case the first pair got dirty. Later in life, Mr Talley read that the Duchess of Windsor lived by the same rule.
So far from being some easy-option instant outfit update, it seems gloves demand a certain amount of savoir faire. But I’m optimistic. I did get past the need for the piece of elastic through my coat sleeves, so perhaps one day I will also learn how to hold my gloves like a lady. Perhaps.
Ginger nuts
I have recently read three really good novels – Don’t You Want Me? by the brilliantly funny India Knight, Shagpile by my pal Imogen Edwards-Jones and Atonement by Mr Literary Smartypants himself, Ian McEwan.
One thing united these very different reads – they all show the most appalling discrimination against redheads. India Knight uses the fact that the male romantic lead has red hair as the pivot of her entire plot – her (hilarious and wonderful) main character Estella de la Croix cannot possibly fancy her otherwise perfect and hunky artist lodger Frank, because he’s a carrot top.
Imogen Edwards-Jones uses the crime of ginger hair to further demonise the fabulously appalling coarse and lecherous husband of her lead character Madeleine. (She also describes him tucking his emerald-green dinner shirt into his red Y-fronts, to very amusing effect – the book is set in 1976.)
Now, those two are funny, wicked babe writers, known for being unafraid of an outrageous remark, but I was shocked at Ian McEwan. I’m sure it was all part of the incredibly clever and carefully contrived set-up of the book (and it does set you right up, let me tell you, if you haven’t read it), but there on page nine we come across the first bit of gingerism.
The three rather unfortunate children (‘refugees from a bitter domestic civil war’) who come to stay with the Tallis family are immediately set out as being less-than in the eyes of ghastly, precocious Briony Tallis (whom we are, of course, meant to hate), because ‘all three were ginger-haired and freckled’.
OK, I understand that the riff about how the fairytale characters of young Briony’s play, which she wants them to perform, could never be freckled, is a device to show us what a nasty little girl she is, but it still annoyed me. Can someone please tell me: What is wrong with red hair and freckles?
I love red hair – all shades from the most carroty orange to strawberry blonde and dark auburn – and I think freckles are really attractive too, so why do people go on about it so?
If, for example, I read one more nasty reference to the Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall and his red hair I am going to found an Anti-Gingerism League and have protest marches. I hate his pappy music as much as the next person, but you can’t blame it on his hair colour.
Now, I have to admit I have, over the years, made a few unkind remarks about reddish hair myself, but it has always been with regard to people adopting red hair who don’t have it naturally. Elton John and Paul McCartney in particular.
And that is the really weird thing about this irrational anti-ginger movement – for every beautiful natural redhead forced to experience this cruel discrimination, there is someone else paying a fortune to go red at the hairdressers.
I can see why – some of the most attractive people I have ever known have been redheads. There is such a wonderful exoticism about madly red hair, especially when combined with that wonderfully fine-textured, creamy skin which often seems to go with it. Yet time and again I read nasty comments about it. If you said such things about black people or albinos there would be public outrage.
I mean, just try substituting the idea of ‘black’ for ‘ginger’ in any of the books described above. If Ian McEwan had used ‘all three were black with Afro hair’ instead of ‘ginger-haired and freckled’, he would have been vilified, not shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I’m beginning to wonder if gingerism hasn’t become some kind of outlet for basic human bigotry in our increasingly politically correct society.
In the mean time I’ve got four words for unrepentant gingerists: Ann-Margret, Peter O’Toole.
Heels of steel
I’ve come up with a new sporting event that would be perfect for the 2012 London Olympics: Women’s Competitive High Heel Wearing.
For reasons I am still trying to understand, getting around in ridiculously vertiginous high heels has become a status symbol among women of a certain ilk. Not just at cocktail parties, but for daywear. For work.
Just yesterday I was at a standing-room-only fashion event at which the PR was wearing Gucci heels so high that most women would only be able to lie down in them. It was 3 pm and I wanted to lie down just looking at her.
When I first noticed this syndrome, I thought it was some kind of statement along the lines of: the higher the heels you can cope with, the more of a woman you are, in a sex goddess kind of a way.
Wearing what amounted to fetish heels for daywear seemed akin to strapping yourself into stockings and suspenders (yuck) out of choice when there are perfectly good tights available. But I’ve subsequently realised that competition heels are not really about sex at all. They’re not aimed at men – they’re aimed at other women. It’s a power thing.
Speaking of power, American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who basically runs world fashion, is famous for only wearing high heels. Manolo Blahnik high heels, to be precise. As she says in her foreword to his book Manolo Blahnik: Drawings: ‘The truth is, I wear no other shoes but his.’
So I was interested to read a ‘Me and My Overpriced Wardrobe’ type article featuring the editor of the recently launched Teen Vogue, Amy Astley, in which she smugly confides: ‘I only ever wear Manolo Blahnik heels.’
What a Mini-Me – and how interesting that she has chosen that particular aspect of Wintour’s persona to imitate. It strikes me as distinctly All About Amy. She seems to be declaring that, like Wintour, she’s tough enough to work a sixteen-hour day in tottering power heels, without ever resorting to the tragic barefoot-in-the-art-department look I used to be guilty of back in my magazine editor days, if I was ever stupid enough to wear heels into the office. That kind of physical endurance takes serious iron lady discipline – and funnily eno
ugh, Margaret Thatcher always wore high heels while she was in power.
But it was in Amy and Anna’s milieu, at the European fashion shows, that the concept of high-heel competitiveness first struck me. In that context, wearing inappropriate party shoes before lunch is a neon sign declaring that you work on a high-status, big-budget magazine and are ferried from show to show in a chauffeur-driven limo.
You simply can’t walk Milan’s cobbled streets, or the long corridors of the Paris Metro, as more lowly delegates like me needs must, in ten-centimetre stiletto salon shoes. So the glamour girls at the shows in heels look down on we drones in flats, both metaphorically and literally.
I put on some heels myself (nine centimetres) a minute ago to remind myself what that sense of superiority is all about. I did feel instantly more elegant, taller, more in charge. There is no doubt that heels have transformative qualities, which can be great when you use them to boost your own self-esteem. It’s just the element of using them to undermine other women’s I don’t like.
It’s similar to the air of superiority some women adopt when they contrive to eat less than all the other chicks at the lunch table, and it makes me feel almost as uncomfortable as wearing high heels all day.
But there is hope. I saw that fashion PR again yesterday after she thought everyone had gone. I popped back up to get something and there she was – wearing her Birkenstocks.
Handbag black holes
Notice to all purveyors of accessories: I am never, not ever, buying another handbag unless I’m allowed to take it out for a test drive first.
I’m not speaking here of the little fun bags that you buy for parties, or summer hols, but your investment type of working handbag, racking up at over the crucial $500 mark, which is all too easy to pass these days.
Gravity Sucks Page 7
