Gravity Sucks

by Alderson, Maggie

  When I think about it, I have observed later stages of the Swan Moment before, when young girls have come to work with me on fashion magazines. They arrive already fashion-aware, or I wouldn’t have given them the job, but still a little gauche, a touch raw and provincial.

  It always used to delight me to watch the magic of being surrounded by some seriously sophisticated and stylish people do its work on a new recruit. A new haircut, done by a world-famous cutter on a fashion shoot, was often the start, then a different make-up look, a few designer clothes passed on by a kind fashion editor and then, after some exposure to press discount and sample sales, you would see the duckling move into full fashionista mode and off she’d fly. A superb swan.

  And in retrospect I can remember it happening to me too, although I don’t remember a teenage Swan Moment, like Lily’s, as I was always too obsessed with how ugly I was.

  What I can clearly recall, though, is lightbulb moments of understanding about how to dress and shop like a grown-up, from when I first started working on magazines. In fact, I think I am still learning all that; it’s a never-ending process, but I am all too aware that I no longer have the rest of the package to fully showcase the new revelations.

  The juncture of youth and sophistication that is the Swan Moment is truly a glorious thing. And as fleeting as a summer.

  The God of Small Things

  Sometimes all it takes is one tiny scrap of chiffon to change your life. Well, maybe not quite your life, but it can certainly make you feel a whole lot jauntier as you go around your usual drudge.

  The particular piece of fabric I am referring to here is in the form of a funny old scarf I found the other weekend in an op shop. It’s a really beautiful bit of vintage chiffon, which somebody clever has fashioned into a long, narrow scarf. It’s certainly a home-sewing machine job, but it’s been deftly done, so that it is cut on the bias, with three separate pieces joined so that the bias is going in different directions where they meet, with the ends sliced on the diagonal.

  Little details like that can have an almost Pinocchio effect on a piece of fabric – the turning into a boy bit, not the nose – giving it a kind of vitality of its own, as the fabric pulls and dances in different directions. A small and magical fact of physics that John Galliano has a firm grasp on.

  On top of that clever cutting, it’s the most amazing graphic Futurist jazz print, in an absolutely perfect flame-red and French navy, with just-off white. It really is nothing more than a scrap, yet it has boosted my whole wardrobe into this season. And done equivalent wonders for my mood.

  Nautical – with a particular reference to ‘Riviera Style’ – is a key trend right now and this scarf sums it up. Fling it on with my favourite white jeans (which you can wear year-round now; the not-after-Easter rule is so totally over), a navy pique pea coat, a long-sleeved navy T-shirt and my oldest Prada bag (nearly twenty years and still going strong, can you believe it?) with its bang-on-trend chain straps and I feel totally there.

  And I think it is because this tiny little scarf is so narrow and the fabric so outrageously lightweight that I feel I am doing it in a subtle way. I’m referencing Riviera Style, rather than dressing up in it for an am dram production of Private Lives.

  Another feature of this wonder accessory is that it has an extraordinary ability just to keep that little bit of edge in the wind off your neck, so you feel exactly warm enough, without getting overheated. And I also can’t help hoping that the draw-the-eye-downwards dangly nature of it might make me look that little bit elongated too. I feel taller in it, anyway. The fact that it cost the princely sum of $5 has done nothing to mar its charm, either.

  The only thing that is enervating me about amazer-scarf is obsessing on what kind of garment it came from – and what happened to the rest of it. I reckon it was either some kind of fabulous afternoon dress, or a blouse to be worn with wide pants and a cheeky little hat. Definitely wedges on the feet. It’s the sort of scrap that could inspire an entire collection for a properly creative designer, and right now it is fully inspiring me.

  This is not the only time that one little accessory has boosted my entire wardrobe. Last season (or was it the one before? They meld in my brain) I bought a necklace of large pebble-like black beads on a piece of narrow ribbon for a very modest sum in a chain store. It was an impulse buy, but every time I put it on, I felt my outfit had been snapped right into the Lanvin zone, where I would very much like to dwell.

  So bear this in mind, as you are flicking through the glossy mags, so full of ‘key pieces’ you ‘need’ for the new season. While it might be lovely to acquire a whole new wardrobe every autumn and spring, sometimes all you really need is one tiny thing. Less really can be more.

  True colours

  I can sing a rainbow, but I don’t speak Mouse. I’m talking here, specifically, about paint colour, and in that regard people seem to divide into Rainbow or Mouse speakers.

  When I’m choosing how to decorate a room it pretty much comes down to this (and roughly in this order of preference): yellow, pink, blue, cream, green, or dark red. That’s it; those are room colours, as far as I’m concerned.

  And when I do a mental inventory of my house I have rooms in all of them, with the exception of dark red – although I’ve got designs on the dining room in that regard.

  People visiting for the first time often comment, while putting on their sunglasses, that I’m ‘not afraid of colour’, and it’s true. My hallways are art deco green, my daughter’s playroom is ‘Kinky Pink’ (that really is the official name of the shade) and the paint on my sitting room walls is called ‘Sunflower Explosion’. It’s a mighty, mighty yellow.

  Mostly, it delights me, all this colour (and did I mention that I have some chairs in that yellow sitting room in a not-at-all bashful pink devoré velvet?). But then I go to the houses of some of my more tasteful friends and I feel distinctly less-than.

  These are people so fluent in Mouse, they can spot the difference between shades of Mole, Seal and Donkey at 100 metres. When they’re choosing paint they have a whole extra spectrum to choose from, of colours so subtle they don’t even register on my vulgar retinas.

  I’m not talking here about bland cop-out choices, like the dreaded Magnolia, but truly sophisticated shades. If you were to define Mouse colours, they are all the ones where you’re not quite sure if it’s brown or grey, or green or blue.

  So you couldn’t just say, ‘It’s in the yellow room’, or ‘the pink room’, as I do, you’d have to say, ‘It’s in the room that’s a marvellous sort of Oat, mixed with Pebble and a touch of Hazelnut.’ But Mouse speakers just take one look and say: ‘Oh, Shiitake.’

  And it’s not just the walls that get the benefit of these sophisticated mixes. Mousers are so clever at using teaming and toning shades of String and Putty and Cricket Pad on woodwork, whereas in my technicolour world, there are only two colours for doors, skirting boards etc: the colour of the walls, or white.

  Now, I can do shades of white and cream. I do get that. Some off-whites are dingy, whereas others seem to bounce light around the place, and the only way to find out which is which is to paint large pieces of card with the various possibilities and then hold them up on each wall of the room at different times of day.

  But while I can appreciate those subtleties, I just can’t do it with the full gamut of Mouse colours – even though I love them, they all swim before my eyes and choosing is impossible. The differences are just too subtle. It’s really annoying.

  When I go to my friend Hilary’s house I could purr at the relaxed elegance of her colour combos. They’re so calming to be amongst, whereas my sitting room is a bit like being inside a bag of boiled lollies.

  It’s odd really, because I can speak Mouse fluently when it comes to clothes. In fact, I’m much happier with Camel and Taupe and Chocolate for my wardrobe than I would be with the circus colours I paint on my walls. It makes no sense.

  So I’ve had an idea. I’m not going
to paint the dining room dark red. I’m going to hold my favourite jumpers up against it and then find a paint that matches the one I like best. It will be a paint colour version of a phrase book.

  Chop wood, carry water

  Do you ever feel you just can’t match up one more pair of socks? Can’t fold up one more T-shirt, or hang up one more pair of trousers by their ankles? Or put in one more pair of bloody shoe trees?

  I do. Right now I think I will spontaneously combust if ever again I have to hang up the towels tidily and put my bathrobe back on its hook and the shampoo back on the shelf. But I know I’ll have to. I’ll have to do it again tomorrow morning. Because that’s what life is made of. Those endlessly repeated little routines.

  It never stops. Before I go to bed tonight I’ll have to cleanse, tone and moisturise. I’ll have to clean and floss my teeth, rub in hand cream, paying special attention to the cuticles, and put cocoa butter on my cracked heels. On a good night, I’ll even put on eye cream using gentle taps of the ring finger in the delicate eye area. Then I’ll collapse into bed and dream of tidying the towels all over again in the morning.

  I have measured out my life in coffee spoons, said J Alfred Prufrock, or rather T S Eliot, his creator. That line has always really struck a chord with me. Even though I drink tea. But it’s the same thing. Fill kettle. Kettle on. Mug out. Tea bag in. Water in. Milk in. Tea bag out. Do the hokey-pokey and turn about. Smash the kitchen up with a sledgehammer and run screaming naked through David Jones cosmetics hall.

  Aaaah, I feel better now.

  I’m not even a commuter with a boring job, who has to get the same train every morning in the same suit, but I still feel this way and I know I’m not alone here on Planet Tedium.

  A friend of mine at university said he wanted to invent a machine that would trim his hair, cut his toenails and floss his teeth in a set-up similar to Woody Allen’s orgasmatron. You’d just step in, push the button, the machine would do the work and out you’d pop, groomed.

  Then just the other day I got a most inspiring letter from a friend who is somewhere he never meant to be – prison. Far from raging against his fate, he is looking resolutely on the positive side and said he finds it quite blissful not to have to think about watering the plants and putting his shoe trees in, which gave me the whole idea for this column.

  I thought this condition of routine rage might be what they call ‘ennui’, but I looked that up in the dictionary and it means listlessness caused by a lack of occupation, not an overload of repetition. (It would be a good name for a perfume, actually, wouldn’t it? Ennui, by Gucci. For the really spoilt woman with a large household staff.)

  Of course I could just stop doing it all, but what would ensue is chaos and I know that would make me feel even worse. And while I sit here fuming about the clean clothes sorting I know awaits me downstairs (I did it yesterday!), I also know at heart that it is these repeated action patterns that really make up the meaningful fabric of our existences, not the holidays of a lifetime, the dream weddings, the big bash birthday parties and the bungee jumps.

  Chop wood, carry water, said the Buddha. Meaning that the path to enlightenment comes through repeating the mundane but essential routines of life, rather than in some great flash of insight. A piece of wisdom which I’m happy to admit I got from Van Morrison, rather than the Dalai Lama.

  Which reminds me. I have to go and re-file the CDs after the baby pulled them all out of their alphabeticised shelves this afternoon. But first, I think I’ll have another cup of tea…

  Pearly queen

  I’ve got new teeth. They’re Swedish. And it was worth waiting two terrible weeks with a gobful of temporary crowns, which made me feel like Dick Emery dressed up as his vicar character, for them to arrive by special courier from across the planet, because my new teeth show all the characteristics of discreet modern design associated with that great Scandinavian nation. They’re sleek and pale, with no rough edges, like something straight out of John Pawson’s house.

  Really, I’ve never seen anything so glamorous as my new choppers. Not so long ago I could have been a mouth double for Austin Powers, with my terrible dentistry. Now I look like Tom Cruise (in the dark). I can’t wait to get them on a dance floor under an ultraviolet light. I’ll glow like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

  But quite apart from the look of them – pearly, regular, expensive – it’s the feel of them that is so marvellous. They’re as smooth as polished marble and sit flush against my gums, as perfectly fitted as corn kernels on a cob. The terrific thing about that is it means there are no longer any sharp edges for passing pieces of food to snag on. With my previous teeth I had reached the stage where I couldn’t relax at the dinner table, for fear that I had a floret of broccoli, or a chicken leg, caught on my incisor like a dolphin in a shark net. Half the time I would have my hand over my mouth for fear of giving offence, and that really slows up your witty repartee, I can tell you.

  Before my new crowns, the spaces between my teeth were so jagged, even flossing to remove such dinnertime detritus was a nightmare. There were times when I felt like calling emergency services to rescue the dental tape trapped between them.

  So why did I suffer so long with teeth I could hardly take out in public? Simple – the terrifying cost of fixing them up. Two crowns and four porcelain veneers cost the same as a small car – or eight pairs of Prada shoes and two bags, as I tend to look at it.

  And somehow, while I’m willing to go into debt for high heels (foolish, foolish woman), I had this obsession that I had to Save Up for my teeth. So, of course, that took several years, because I kept spending the tooth fairy’s money by accident on trips to Milan’s luxury shopping Bermuda Triangle.

  Mind you, in terms of instant reaction, I was right about the designer accessories being better value. I have had people cross crowded parties to inspect a new handbag, but no-one has commented on my teeth yet, unless I’ve approached them grinning like a werewolf, pointing at my mouth and crying, ‘Ook! Oo heeth!’

  But while I am slightly disappointed they aren’t having the ‘But, but, you’re bewdaful!’ effect on people, as seen in old movies when the leading man removes the frumpy secretary’s spectacles, deep down I know this is the ultimate compliment to my new gnashers. Because – like facelifts and nose jobs – great teeth are the ones you don’t notice.

  If someone came up to me now and said, ‘Wow, what amazingly perfect white teeth you have’, I’d know they were dodgy. It would mean I had one of those brighter than white denture smiles, or those obviously repaired teeth you often see that look like bunches of bananas or sticks of chalk.

  Okay, my new teeth were witheringly expensive. But what price can you put on confidence? So if you are walking around with a cakehole full of old piano keys, as I was, stump up and get your teeth done. It really is worth it. Especially as, unlike even your best Prada shoes, you wear them every day.

  Interiors monologue

  There are few things I enjoy more in life than a good interiors magazine. I love fashion magazines as well, of course, but being a long-time professional Fash Mag Slag, I’m always on alert when I read them, so there is an element of homework about the experience.

  But ‘shelter magazines’, as Americans weirdly call them, are pure, unalloyed pleasure. Unless I make the mistake of allowing my eye to stray from the pictures to the copy. A lot of tripe is written in the name of fashion (and I should know), but I really think that home mags take the Oscar for Best Original Claptrap.

  You’ll find all kinds of nonsense about ‘the new mood in flooring’, but the bits that get me really raged up are the articles about ‘real’ people and their fabulous living environments – and that’s just the kind of stupid word they use: not house, or unit, but ‘environment’, and ‘vessel’ instead of vase.

  The funny thing is that while these real homes are the kind of pictures I most enjoy looking at in homes magazines, when you read the commentary that goes with them the people alway
s sound so unbearably smug and thrilled with themselves and the very cleverness of their witty, vessel-filled environments. I want to club them to death. (And then move into their houses and wee in their vessels.)

  And it’s not just the content; interiors mags have a prose style that is all their own. People never buy things, they ‘source’ them, ‘discover’ them, or ‘unearth’ them. As in: ‘Wilhelmina discovered her ancient Slovakian doorknobs in a scrapyard in Budapest.’ ‘Lionel sourced his untanned goat hair rug on a dung heap in Rajasthan.’ ‘Priscilla unearthed her vessels at an agricultural fair in Tamworth.’

  They’re just fancy names for shopping. Even worse are their stupid dumb collections, or rather ‘passions’: ‘Lionel is passionate about cheese graters.’ ‘Priscilla has an extensive collection of vessels.’ ‘Wilhelmina combs clinical waste bins to find new treasures for her large collection of false teeth – a passion since childhood.’

  These are made up, of course, but check out this real example: ‘After selecting some exotic glasses, plates and silverware from her vast collection, [Laura] decorates the table with vegetables, herbs or fruits from the garden, adding things she has collected during walks in the forest: almond husks, leaves, seeds, rocks, or flowers. Sometimes she will pour powdered spices onto the table.’ Oh, pass my club. And what about this one: ‘“I collect oil paintings of people in red clothing,” says Ellen.’ But why?

  Mind you, it’s not really fair that these people should bear the full weight of my scorn, as it’s not entirely their fault that they come over sounding like such total arses. I know this from experience. My house was once photographed for a magazine.

  Of course, my ego was swollen beyond belief at the idea of actually appearing in one of the mags I love so much, and I was delighted to let them into my environment (and promote one of my books in the process). But I made one great mistake.