Style Notes

by Alderson, Maggie

  Harem Scare’em

  After years of pouring scorn on designers who showed anything in the pants line resembling a Gandhi nappy look, I suddenly find that my inner aesthetic has joined up with the international fashion zeitgeist, which is currently promoting the trend en masse.

  A harem trouser, a bit cropped on the leg where it nips in, drapey throughout and mighty saggy in the crotch, suddenly makes perfect sense. Especially if it is in a lightweight jersey, preferably grey. I was fingering just such a concoction in one of my favourite chain stores recently, sorely tempted to purchase.

  I could immediately see its role in my life, replacing the velour track pant as the chic answer to softwear (to translate from the fashion-ese: comfy clothes in stretch fabrics).

  As well as sofa lounging and scuffing to the shops for the papers, I would work it back more formally with a long-sleeve T and a soft grey stole scarf, looped casually several times around the neck. A high shoe, possibly wooden platform sandals. Maybe even a boy-style blazer over the top. You have to push the arms up – a bit like the way they did in Miami Vice, but pushed rather than rolled. Oh, fashion’s tiny details. I love it.

  So there I was auditioning dem pants for all kinds of action in my life, when I made myself turn round and walk right out of the shop. Not because I shouldn’t be shopping (and I shouldn’t), but because I know my husband would hate them beyond endurance.

  I questioned my decision all the way home. I like them. A lot. I think they look surprisingly OK on me, despite my age and lack of stature. They are on trend and on the money (ie cheap) and – most important of all – I don’t dress for him. I dress for myself and if I am around fashion tribe pals, a little bit for them, but really only for myself. I dress to feel like the best me I can.

  I don’t think I’ve ever dressed for men, not even when I was younger and hunting for the right one – or I probably would have found him sooner. In fact, I think I used my quite extreme fashion looks to filter out the kind of men who wouldn’t really understand me. A kind of ‘love me, love my studded belt and brothel creepers’ safety net – which my husband clearly slipped through.

  If I did dress for him, I would spend my life in beautifully cut trousers and very pointy high-heel shoes (or heel-high shoes, as he still says, in his fetching Eastern European accent), with some kind of vile blouse on the top. I don’t know why he loves that supper party look and I don’t really care, because I have no intention ever of wearing it.

  He loathes a lot of my clothes, most especially any kind of platform shoe, but while I’m prepared to compromise on the dhoti pants, I’m not going to stop buying those shoes. I love platforms because they make me taller, adding leggy height with much less pain than the winklepicker torture-chamber pumps he adores.

  I do have a few pairs of those and sometimes they are absolutely the thing I want to put on. I do so enjoy seeing the delighted look on his face when they appear.

  And I suppose it is in that spirit that I didn’t buy the so-right-for-now harem pants. They really would distress him – much as I would feel if he started sporting the tracksuits he wears to work as casual day wear.

  That won’t ever happen and equally he has promised never to wear a short-sleeved cotton shirt, or gentlemen’s cropped pants. So the least I can do in return is to hold back from what would be an equal sartorial horror for him. Dammit.

  Liquid Fury

  Do you know what is an absolutely massive rort and really totally wrong? Liquid soap. To my mind this small domestic item represents everything that is wrong with our mindlessly consuming and disposing, marketing-enthralled culture and we must rise up together and boycott it.

  What don’t we want? LIQUID SOAP! When don’t we want it? NOW! It’s a small gesture – but it could be a significant one.

  First of all let us review the history of this pernicious product. It started off as a commercial item for use in dispensers in all kinds of public loos – makes sense, I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t want to share one increasingly rancid bar of soap with a load of filthy strangers either.

  But then the marketing department of one of the vast petrochemical conglomerates which make the stuff had a fiendish idea for how they could sell a lot more of it – for a much higher unit price. The brilliant idea was to flog it to the vast international suburban market as a new kind of domestic soap that was somehow cleaner and nicer than your normal bar of honest soap.

  This was the soap for the family that was coming up in the world. No more old-fashioned soap dishes, nasty cracked half-used bars, or humiliating cruddy ends. A clean modern soap for the clean modern home. What a brave new world that has such handwash in it.

  Shame it made your hands feel like raw hide. And you know why? It’s not soap. It’s washing-up liquid made opaque and a bit more slithery and its major ingredient is that nasty sodium laureth sulfate which is so extraordinarily drying to human skin. That’s why they call it ‘handwash’ – they can’t legally call it soap. Oh, I can imagine the chuckles of triumph when they came up with that one. ‘Handwash’ sounds so clean and efficient. No muss no fuss.

  But despite the fact that it’s more expensive than soap, turns your cuticles into Pringles in short order and smells like an operating theatre, in very short order liquid ‘soap’ seems to have become the default setting.

  I stayed at a very stylish friend’s house recently and was amazed to find she didn’t have a single bar of soap in the house; everywhere there were goddamn bottles of squirty soap. Even in the shower.

  Admittedly they were very stylish bottles and as they were the liquid form of those delightful Portuguese soaps with the lovely old-fashioned printed paper wrappers that look like Florence Broadhurst wallpaper, they may even have contained a liquid that was actually a form of soap.

  In the same vein you can get Provençal liquid soap that smells exactly like tomato plants, and others made with organic lavender, but however gorgeous they may be – not to forget expensive; I’ve seen them at $35 a pop – they have one thing in common with bog-standard handwash. They come in plastic bottles.

  Now that raises two issues that I have big problems with. Issue one: plastic is made from oil and this is a bloody waste of it. Issue two: what happens to all the empty plastic bottles? They go to landfill, or at very best they get recycled, a process which involves further expenditure of energy.

  Think instead of what happens to a bar of soap when you can no longer wring another hand wash out of it. The tiny sliver that is left goes in the bin and off to the tip, where it just melts away. Now that is what I call ‘no muss no fuss’.

  So I call upon you, dear readers, to join with me in a mass boycott of all forms of bottled ‘handwash’ and liquid soap. Finish what you have, recycle the bottles, and go back to buying lovely old-fashioned bars of real soap.

  And even if you don’t give a toss about the environment, your crispy cuticles will thank you for it.

  The Best Part of Making-up

  I’ve had an idea for a New Age self-help book. It’s called The Healing Power of Make-Up: Finding Your Inner Strength Through Your Outer Surfaces.

  Wrapped up in the waffly language and gimmicky terms (‘that is why it is called dis-ease’ being one I particularly hate) of the genre, the gist of it will be this: wearing even a light coating of slap can have a powerfully positive effect on your self-esteem, and anything which boosts that helps you to perform better in every aspect of your life.

  But while I am being flippant about the book, I do actually believe the above to be true about make-up. I made this discovery recently – or rather, re-made it – because I have embarked on a programme of wearing make-up every day.

  Even though I spend most of my time entirely alone in a small-ish room, tapping on a computer and talking to myself (it’s the only way I can write dialogue), I now make myself put a proper gob on each morning. And since I started doing that, I have felt a lot less slumped in my seat about it all.

  I used to
wear make-up every day when I worked in a proper office with other people and a water cooler and everything, but when you work alone – or don’t work at all, I imagine – it is so easy to slide into sloppiness. It’s bad enough letting yourself shuffle around in track pants all the time, but if you do it with an unmade face as well, it all gets very ugly very quickly. And I mean ugly in every sense of the word.

  My relationship with my cosmetic drawer was rekindled initially because my poor raddled skin has been so bad lately. I suffer from the red blotches of the chronic condition rosacea, which is exacerbated by many things including stress. I’ve been under a bit of a monstrous deadline all this year and my cheeks and nose are hanging out crimson bunting to announce it to the world.

  One day I realised I really wouldn’t be able to get myself to leave my house for my office, seven minutes’ walk away, because I was so ashamed of my flaming mug, so I put some foundation and concealer on to cover it up. It worked surprisingly well and once I had that on, rather than resemble the late Marcel Marceau, I had to go blusher, mascara, lip pencil, lippy and eyebrow comb.

  After I’d done it, I was quite surprised at the person looking back at me in the mirror. It wasn’t exactly the one who goes out for dinner parties, but she was way better than the normal daytime hobbit.

  I was still wearing clothes Bilbo Baggins would feel at home in, but I was walking with my head up and on my way to the office I bought a bunch of bright flowers, which had the same effect on my work cave as the make-up had on my persona. We both felt a bit more grown-up and chipper.

  I’ve worn make-up every day since – but not my track pants. The made-up me demands more of a proper outfit. We’re not talking immaculate tailoring, but at least some arrangement of the decent jeans and nice top variety, which has to be better than trackies and a gardening jumper.

  Cosmetic moi also insists on a spritz of scent each morning, with a refresher before sitting down to family tea. I carry a lipstick with me at all times and reapply it through the day.

  I reckon I had to bottom out to rediscover this most fundamental lesson of feminine grooming and I recommend it to everyone, whatever your daily circumstances. And as I will say in my book, in the New Age idiom: ‘That is why it is called “make-up”.’

  The Line of Beauty

  Every now and then my husband is an absolute darling and just goes right ahead and hangs the washing out in the garden for me. And every time he does it I have to sneak out there when he’s not looking and do it all again.

  The thing is, laundry has to be hung in a very particular way. I had this drummed into me by my mother, who pretty much does as above whenever I hang washing out at her house. In her opinion, there aren’t just guidelines on this matter, there are cast-iron rules.

  Socks are hung individually by their toes. Undies by a short side seam. Simple rectangular shapes such as sheets, towels and tablecloths are hung with their short edge on the line, longer sides hanging down for maximum flappage. Large sheets can be folded in two, but may need turning mid-dry. Shirts are hung by their tails with four pegs, one at each edge and one at each seam, so they take up a disproportionate amount of space on your line. Bastards.

  Where I always go wrong chez Peggy Senior (my mum’s house) is on the T-shirting. This is hung in a manner I find counter-intuitive, with pegs at the armpits – but it does make sense really, as it is where peg marks are least likely to show. The idea of the line making a dent across the chest of my favourite Splendid tops always makes me a bit queasy, but an iron gets it out in a jiffy. Hang T-shirts from the bottom and you will end up with tunic tops.

  Of course when I was a teenager these kind of housekeeping rules made me cross-eyed with frustration. Why did it matter? I was hanging it out, wasn’t I? It’s quicker to hang three socks from one peg, so what’s the big deal? No, I WON’T do it again. I didn’t ask to be born.

  But with maturity comes the understanding that if you follow time-honoured procedures, developed from experience, the job gets done more quickly and efficiently. It’s not picky for the sake of it, Mother really does know best.

  Now I take a pride in hanging out my washing correctly, hence my inability to leave be the Tracey Emin installations my husband rigs up. For one thing, he likes to economise on pegs, so a good gust of wind – the key feature of a Good Drying Day – can blow the whole lot on to the dirty paved yard. Not helpful.

  But there is more to it than practical considerations. In fact, I think I have a fetish about washing lines – and forgive me my UK upbringing here, but I am more at ease with the long straight line version, rather than the great Hills Hoist. I can see how brilliant they are in space efficiency, but I enjoy the walk along my line – and I really like what a nicely hung one looks like. I confess, I have even been known to take photos of mine.

  I do know this is bonkers, but in my defence I first did it when I was on holiday in Provence. The washing line in question was hung between orange trees and by coincidence all the things on it were striped or checked, in a mix of red, blue and ecru. It looked like a cover from Vogue Entertaining + Travel and I had to record its fabulous Frenchness. I may have moved things around a little here and there before taking the picture, but it was basically a holiday snap.

  I did it again when my daughter was a baby and everything on the line was pink and tiny – teensy little growbags and vests, just adorable. I’m glad I recorded that. It’s a lovely visual memory of a very particular and fleeting time in my life. Even though the vests were pegged incorrectly, from their bottom edges.

  The Hair and Now

  I am not, generally, a fan of fashion absolutes. By which I mean snappy little diktats which purport to be unbreakable rules of style. Such as ‘everyone looks great in a crisp white shirt’.

  As someone who looks horrendously fat and frumpy in them, I think there are plenty of sound arguments against such statements, the uniting theme of which is that it depends on the individual.

  But as the result of a recent experience, I have come to a new understanding which I would say was pretty fireproof for all women, which is this: once you are over forty-five, hair is everything.

  Where did I come upon this truth? At my twenty-five-year uni reunion. Oh my Lord, what an unusual and challenging occasion that was. I am not joking when I tell you that my first instinct on walking into the room was to turn on my – very high black patent – heel and leave. I honestly thought I was at the wrong party. This was clearly a gathering of old people.

  It was only when one of said geriatrics ran up and embraced me that I realised I was in the right place. How ancient we all were. And how so much the same.

  Within moments of arrival I was in a corner giggling with James and Andrew. James is an opera singer, Andrew runs a major British arts body – and it was he who pointed it out.

  ‘Interesting how the arty ones are still sticking together, isn’t it?’ he said, as we watched the bankers, insurance brokers, golf course managers and wives of major landowners chatting in their groups.

  Andrew himself was interesting in another way. At forty-seven he is still as absolutely astonishingly beautiful as he was at nineteen. He was the best-looking man in that room by a long lead and his female equivalent was the most beautiful in 2007, as she had been in 1980. Although it was hard to see her for the circle of drooling men around her. A standard feature of all our undergraduate parties, as another girlfriend reminded me.

  Perhaps that is predictable. They were both blessed at birth with symmetrical faces, lovely eyes, appealing mouths, nice hair, good skin, long legs and fast metabolisms. The passing of twenty-five years hadn’t affected any part of those packages.

  But there were other outcomes there which were much more surprising. I had to squint to read one chap’s name badge (none of us could believe they’d used such a small typeface). I knew the voice, but I didn’t think the fat bald cliché of a businessman I was talking to could possibly be the Death in Venice beauty I once knew. But it was.
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  The man who had been the full-on gilded youth was now very much the portrait in Dorian Gray’s attic. Every undisciplined, debauched moment he’s lived since I last saw him in 1982 was visible on his waist and face.

  That was a bit depressing, but there were other happy-ever-afters which were quite uplifting. A couple of girls who had not been considered very attractive back in the day were now really beautiful. One, in particular, whom I had considered unfortunately plain, was really elegant and gorgeous.

  I think they must be the type of women who don’t realise their full potential beauty until they have had children. Some feel motherhood ruins their looks, but others are made by it. These two have seven kids between them.

  And they both had wonderful haircuts. The women who had fared least well on the tides of time all had terrible hair. Badly cut, frumpy styles, and awful colour jobs, if any. It made much more of a difference than weight. Result!

  Of course, clothes made a difference as well, but the uniting feature of all the women at that party who looked good in their late forties was well-kept hair. I find that very encouraging.

  Hobbledy Hoity-Toity

  It is one of those universal female experiences: the divine pair of shoes that you fall in love with, buy, but then find you just can’t wear. They felt fine in the shop, but once you get them home and road test them it all goes wrong.

  Sometimes they’re simply too painful, or they keep falling off your feet in weird ways. Once I had a pair that made a terrible squelching noise. Which I didn’t discover until the first time I wore them – which happened to be to a job interview. I didn’t get the gig.

  But beyond these occasional shopping mistakes I have recently encountered a whole new phenomenon in relation to unwearable shoes – which are ones people really actually totally honestly can’t walk in. Yet still they proudly wear them in public.