PENGUIN BOOKS
Style Notes
Maggie Alderson was born in London, brought up in Staffordshire and educated at the University of St Andrews. She has worked on two newspapers and nine magazines, editing four of them. She is the author of six bestselling novels: Pants on Fire, Mad About the Boy, Handbags and Gladrags, Cents and Sensibility, How to Break Your Own Heart and Shall We Dance? She has also published three previous collections of non-fiction: Shoe Money, Handbag Heaven and Gravity Sucks. She now has a website: www.maggiealderson.com
Style Notes
MAGGIE ALDERSON
PENGUIN BOOKS
To Fenella Souter and Judith Whelan
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHANGEOVER CHALLENGE
EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE
PARENTS ON PARADE
FANTASY FOOD
THE AGE OF ELEGANCE
HOUSE PARTY
GREAT CLOTHING MYSTERIES
MORTIFYING MUMMY
HAREM SCARE’EM
LIQUID FURY
THE BEST PART OF MAKING-UP
THE LINE OF BEAUTY
THE HAIR AND NOW
HOBBLEDY HOITY-TOITY
ALEXANDRE DE PARIS
PRETTY BEAUTIFUL
BEST-DRESSED STRESS
BUSY DOING NOTHING
IT’S A MAN’S WORLD
UNTIL DIET DO US PART
MAN-MADE MIRACLES
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
SKINNY MINNIES
COUNTER REVOLUTION
ANNA IN OXFORD
THE COMPACT CONTRACT
CAMP OLDER
SHOE SURE
GETTING SHIRTY
BY A NOSE
ITCHY AND SCRATCHY
TAILS IT Is
ISABELLA BLOW
TYPE CAST
HOME SWEET HOME
BIG IS BEAUTIFUL
KIDDIE COUTURE
SHOPPING BLACK BELT
YOGA GA GA
LIVING DOLLS
COOL RUNNING
THE GROOMING POLICE
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
MAKE DO AND MEND
AGE APPROPRIATE
IN MEMORIAM MR MCQUEEN
SHOE LEGACY
ME VINTAGE
SECOND-BEST FRIENDS
SIMPLY FABULOUS
HEY Ho SILVER
SHEARS TERROR
FIT FOR LIFE
HOME SHOPPING NETWORK
DEAD STYLISH
SHOE SHAPE-UP
CATALOGUE OF DISASTERS
CLOONEY LOONY
RUINOVATION
HIGH HAIR
UNHAPPY FEET
LOVE YOURSELF SLIM
SHOPPING LIES
GOING GIRLY
FIVE WEEKS LATER
JEAN GENIUS
CHEWING THE FAT
AGEING GRATEFULLY
MALCOLM MCLAREN
NO MINI-ME
FAILING THE TASTE TEST
DRESSING BY NUMBERS
AMATEUR HOUR
WEAR AND TEAR
PUMP UP THE JAM
YOUR BEST DUDS
HEELS UP
Introduction
It all started very casually. I’ d done three short pieces in a rather mannered, humorous style for the summer section of the Sydney Morning Herald. The editor of Good Weekend, Fenella Souter, saw them and asked me if I would like to do a regular column for the magazine. Loosely based on a theme of fashion and style.
I rather thought I would. Like a rocket.
The amazing thing was that twelve years – and over 600 columns – later, I was still doing it. But that wasn’t the main adventure of writing the column for me. The big treat turned out to be the readers. You lot.
What a lovely – and loyal – bunch of people and what amazing letters, emails, Facebook messages and Twitter tweets, from such a cross-section of people. Women and men, fourteen to eighty-plus, town and country, funny and sad, gay and straight.
Some of you sent comments, some questions, some answers, and some shared the saddest and most personal events of your lives with me. The last group, through multiple exchanged emails, began to feel like friends.
I’ve kept all the letters; I just wish I could say I have replied to them all … I did in my head and my heart. And to the three people who sent me sugar tongs, when I expressed a yearning for them, a very special thank you.
At book signing events over the years I’ve been able to meet quite a lot of you in the flesh and how great it always is to put a face to the imagined reader.
My last book tour coincided with the Good Weekend column coming to an end and while we had a lot of fun, I was moved very close to public tears by the woman in Canberra who told me her ailing mother had asked to have my column read aloud to her every Saturday through the last months of her life. Then they read one out at her funeral. That still makes me tear up.
Then the girl behind her in the book-signing queue told me she was nineteen and had been reading my column since she first learned to read … That set me off again.
So the saddest thing for me about the column coming to an end was the thought that these long relationships could start to fade away – but that’s not going to happen. In fact, I’m hoping to make a lot of new friends as well, by posting a Style Notes column every Saturday, just like I always have – but online.
If you subscribe – which is free – via the link opposite, it will land in your inbox each Saturday morning, just like a newspaper plopping through the letterbox.
The site has been up and running since late 2010 and one of the great things I’m already finding about this new form of delivery is that I’m able to reply immediately to readers’ comments on it, so it feels much more current and personal. (And I don’t have the guilt of the unanswered letters.)
I can also put up pictures, videos and links, which adds fabulous new realms of possibility. Now when I tell you about a great pair of pants, I can direct you straight to the online shop to buy them. If I’ve bought something new and fab, I’ll post a pic. Hurrah!
Of course, I do appreciate that not absolutely everyone in the world is online, so a heartfelt request to all of you who have rels or friends who aren’t internetted up (who tend to be my cherished older readers):
Would you print it out for them each week?
And if you are one of those non-internetters yourself, please ask a hooked-up pal to subscribe and do it for you.
So I look forward to seeing you – and chatting with you – online. Meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy this selection of columns from 2006 to 2010.
Get your weekly Style Notes delivery by subscribing here: www.maggiealderson.com.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the best team of sub-editors I have ever worked with, who stopped me looking stupid so many times, but let me keep my made-up words.
So a big thank you – in strict alphabetical order – to Eliza Compton, Deborah Cooke, Roz Gatwood, Jim Hope, Helen Long and Sally Treffry. And a particular special mention for Cindy MacDonald.
Changeover Challenge
Local authorities should be obliged to provide shoe-changing cubicles for women. Standing on one high heel, on a hard surface, while you try and cram on the second shoe is a highly dangerous activity. Surely health and safety standards demand that comfortable seating be provided for it?
Also a hook for your handbag, so you don’t have to leave it on the ground during the shoe-changing manoeuvre. This is a security issue, as it would be very hard to pursue a handbag thief while wearing one high-heeled shoe. Providing this simple amenity could instantly reduce the crime rate.
There are also clearly broader security issues for the greater public safety. Think about the number of women you see – especial
ly around 5.30 p.m. near any business district – leaning against a wall changing their shoes, with bags littered on the pavements around them. Who is to know which bags belong to innocent shoe-changers and which might contain an Improvised Explosive Device? The shoe-changing cubicles could have bag checks with X-ray equipment and possibly sniffer dogs.
Most of all, though, providing adequate shoe-changing facilities is a human rights issue. It’s extremely damaging to the self-esteem to have to change your shoes in public. In some cultures it is considered highly offensive to show someone the soles of your feet. According to our own social mores, it’s devastating because everyone knows you can’t hack it full-time in the heels. It’s humiliating. Your status as a woman is in question.
The other thing they clearly need to put on the statute books is a service of free osteopaths, who could operate in booths next to the shoe-changing cubicles. These are obviously necessary due to the crucial woman hours being lost to back and neck pain caused by carrying very heavy handbags containing the other pairs of shoes.
The trend for roll-up and folding ballerina pumps, specially designed for the mandatory double-shoe commute, has alleviated some of the handbag weight. But as the bag is only lighter while the more challenging shoes are on the feet, this advantage is offset by the catastrophic effect on the spine of walking in high heels.
Perhaps the shoe-changing cubicles could also include a range of vending machines offering painkillers and a selection of podiatory requisites. Obviously the osteopaths would offer a complimentary foot massage after each spinal realignment.
Another way the government could combat the increasing problem of shoe-related female physical and mental health issues would be to provide adequate education in the area. It really is quite shocking that walking in high heels is not on the junior school curriculum.
Studies have shown that women who do ballet from a young age find it much easier to walk in high heels in later life, so introducing the subject of walking on the balls of your feet in kindy makes obvious sense. Complimentary courses in bunion management and corn care can be introduced at the high school stage.
Another area where health policy is really slacking is in offering an adequate array of foot plastic surgery options. Toe-lengthening for a more attractive sandal foot and removing the ‘unnecessary’ little toe, which senselessly restricts the range of shoes many women are able to wear, should all be freely available on Medicare.
Once these measures are in place, the next stage would obviously be a system of ‘walkers’ recruited from the long-term unemployed. They could be collected from pens on street corners, next to the shoe-changing booths, and be used to lean on while negotiating kerbs, stairways and that tricky first escalator step.
If none of these proposals are adopted we will have no choice but to stop wearing ridiculously uncomfortable high-heeled shoes we can’t actually walk in without experiencing searing discomfort and ruining our feet.
What a ludicrous idea.
Emotional Baggage
A detail of modern life which never fails to amaze and – mostly – amuse me is the way normal-looking people behave around airport luggage carousels.
You all get off the plane, traipse along endless dreary corridors, queue through Passport Control (if exiting an international flight) without incident. Then the weary, but still basically civilised, crowd hits the luggage collection area and is transformed into a crazy wild-eyed mob. Men in executive suits and women in quietly witty smart casual separates suddenly become raving lunatics.
The first sign of this lemming-like fever is the sprint to be as close as possible to the point where the bags appear from the great hidden beyond that is the airport baggage handling area.
I always deliberately stand on the far side to try and avoid the really mad people, and having established a comfy spot where I can see what’s coming, but where there is no-one with an overly aggressive demeanour too close, I settle in for the wait.
But no matter how unappealing my spot in the hierarchy of prime carousel-watching real estate, after about fifteen minutes, when I am feeling a certain claim over my territory, some barge arse will come and stand right in front of me, leaning in over the conveyor belt, so it’s suddenly impossible to see anything, let alone grab your bag should it ever appear.
I try and rise above it by attempting to understand the behaviour I see around me. I can appreciate that at the end of a long journey everyone just wants to get the hell out of there. Then there is the issue of the taxi queue, but really, is it going to make that much difference to the big picture of your journey if you have to wait a couple more minutes to grab your bag?
But rational thought doesn’t seem to come into it. There is a kind of demented group obsession to see the bag. Then to get the bag. Woe betide you if you get in the way when Mrs Grabby has spotted her case coming along. She’d club you to death to get at it.
Indeed, one such maniac nearly did kill my daughter at Heathrow Airport a couple of years ago, when she grabbed her huge hard case from the belt and just threw it behind her without looking to see if anyone was there – because she had spotted her other bag coming behind it.
If it hadn’t been for the kind lady who literally snatched my four-year-old out of the way, I really don’t like to think what would have happened. It was horrendous.
That was extreme, but I always wonder what these crazies think is going to happen to their bag if they don’t grab it the moment it emerges from the sorting area. Are they worried someone is going to pinch it? I could understand if it were a Louis Vuitton trunk, but someone else’s scuzzy old wheelie case, and its random contents, is hardly likely to tempt a thief who could afford an airline ticket.
Even harder to understand is the great fear of not getting the bag off the carousel immediately. What do they think will happen if they can’t get to it first time and it goes back through the rubber curtain? Have they confused the moving luggage carousel with the set-up at a crematorium? Do they think their bag will be taken straight into an incinerator?
Surely they have seen the strange purple suitcase which goes round and round in every luggage collection hall on earth? Wait five flipping minutes and your bag will come round again like a plate of tired mackerel sashimi on a sushi conveyor belt.
I’m sure it all relates to the primal anxieties about shelter that travel provokes in us, but can we rise up and end this collective luggage lunacy? All together now: ohmmmmm …
Parents on Parade
I love a man in uniform. I just didn’t realise quite how much until I showed up at my daughter’s school for the annual Careers Day this week, when parents from different professions volunteer to discuss their career route with that year’s school-leavers.
One of the dads is on active service and, currently home on leave, he turned up to man the Armed Services stand. Wearing his camo fatigues.
Holy flipping moley. A man I know as part of a very nice family, father of one of my daughter’s classmates, husband to a wife I really like, was suddenly white-hot sexy. I knew he was physically fit, it’s part of his job description, but that uniform rendered him an aphrodisiac in human form.
It was almost embarrassing how attractive he was. And it took a Herculean effort on my part not to rush over and snap his picture to entertain my pals on Twitter (although they did get a verbal heads up).
My husband was furious. Not with me – but with Camo Dad. My old man was rigged out in his best European Soccer Coach uniform of slim-cut Italian jacket, white shirt, ultra-narrow pants, black sunglasses and a draped scarf, as perfectly executed by José Mourinho (Real Madrid) and Roberto Mancini (Manchester City).
‘Damn,’ he said, glaring at Camo Dad through his Dolce & Gabbana sunnies. ‘He looks better than me.’
He did. And so did the Policeman Dad. He was wearing the cool tight-fitting uniform, with the body armour, rather than the daggy day-to-day shirt ensemble, and looked almost as sexy as Camo Dad.
What was going
on? I asked myself. Why was a policeman in riot gear – something I would normally associate with scary civil unrest and state oppression – suddenly giving me an attack of the vapours?
Then things evened out a bit. One of the mothers turned up in her hostie uniform. An unreasonably tight-fitting suit, with a cravat and – the killer details – a hat atop her chignon. Even the metal airline badge on her lapel was sexy.
Funnily enough, my husband immediately forgot all about his face-off with Camo Dad and was off on a tour of the stands, adjusting his collar and shooting his jacket sleeves as he went.
Oh look, there he was by the Careers in the Travel Industry table. But then I felt strangely attracted to the same part of the hall, when Hostie Mum was joined there by Pilot Dad. With his cap on.
By this stage I was getting ready to burst into a chorus of YMCA. It could only be a matter of time, I reckoned, before Builder Dad turned up in a plaid shirt and Timberland boots, and Nurse Mum arrived fresh from the set of The Benny Hill Show.
It was part fancy-dress parade, part fetish night. So many clichés in one school hall. But what is it about uniforms that has this effect on us? As I said, Camo Dad is a fit bloke, but I’ve never found him attractive before. He has a nice enough face, nothing extraordinary, but the uniform propelled him into a different league.
I could understand it in myself if I was some kind of a pervo who watched fetish porno about manly soldiers getting it on with pert military nurses, but I’m so not.
It’s not something I’ve even ever really thought about, until confronted with those broad shoulders, normally slumbering beneath a nice cosy dad’s polo shirt, now flexing beneath camouflage-print cotton like sleeping tigers. It had an alchemical effect.
My conclusion is that by negating the system of messages about ourselves we project through our choice of clothing, uniforms free people of their true identity, rendering them stereotypes that can then be sexually objectified.
Yeah, yeah, whatever, Mr Barthes, enough with the semiology. Some things shouldn’t be analysed, just enjoyed.
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