Style Notes

by Alderson, Maggie

  I did not, at that stage of my life, know anyone else who wore Chanel clothes – I had one pair of earrings which were my most precious possessions – and I was deeply impressed with the insouciance with which Issy wore that top, on a Tuesday evening, straight from work, as casually as I would have worn a chainstore T-shirt.

  Along with recognising true originality in other people, that was her talent and she will be greatly missed for it.

  Type Cast

  So what’s your type then? Mine’s simple: I like sporty men, not too tall, with very black hair that flops slightly over one eye. My ideal would be a mad scientist’s fusion of Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, José Mourinho and most of the Argentine football team. Oh, look, there’s my husband coming out of the machine now! Or is it my first husband? Hard to tell from this distance.

  This has been my type since I was a teenager. There has been the odd variation, of course, like R, who was six foot four with blond curls, pale blue eyes and cheekbones like Genghis Khan’s, but he was an exceptional exception (and he still is; we’ve remained pals).

  I’ve been trying to figure out what made this so specifically my type and I blame The High Chaparral. Don’t know if you had that TV western series in Australia, but I was mad about it as a pre-teen. Particularly Manalito, the dashing Mexican dude with silver buttons down his (very tight) pants. Buenos dias, conchita, down at the cantina they’re giving Green Stamps with tequila.

  This look is so fixed with me – my head swivels round like a CCTV camera if a good example of my type hoves into view – I might be worried, but I know I’m not alone in having one, as confirmed recently at a lunch party which a friend was hosting with his new wife.

  In the spirit of the modern family, they had invited her first husband (father of her child) and my friend had invited his first wife (mother of his children) and she had brought her new chap with her. Still with me? If we were sitting at dinner now, I could draw you a diagram.

  In short, you have two women and three men, one of whom (my mate) is the hinge connecting them all. Those three men were so similar-looking it would be hard to pick them out in a line-up. And they could all be Colin Firth’s brothers.

  It was strikingly odd and I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. My husband started to comment on it very loudly, until receiving a sharp kick to the shin from me.

  And that’s not the only weird partner lookalike experience I’ve had. I once went to visit one of my best friends, who was living overseas at the time with a new chap. He was out and we were having drinks in his apartment when I noticed a silver-framed picture of my gal pal wearing a fabulous Pucci caftan.

  ‘Love the frock,’ I said, picking it up. ‘Nice bit of vintage. Where did you get it? And why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because it’s not my dress,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, did you borrow it then?’

  ‘It’s not me in the picture. It’s his first wife.’

  I nearly dropped the photo frame in shock. The former wife was so astonishingly like my friend – of thirty years’ standing – I had thought it was her. I think her own mother would have thought it was her.

  Completing the circle, she is now very happily shacked up with another of my oldest friends. (I introduced them – the only bit of successful matchmaking I’ve ever done.)

  I knew his last two major girlfriends and his second wife – and they could be put in a neat row with my friend, just like the men at that lunch party. Creamy skin, pretty faces, 1950s curves, and long, wavy, jet-black hair.

  Who knows how these types get seared on to our brain maps, but I can see two distinct advantages to it. Firstly, it cuts down the field when you’re searching for a mate. Secondly, people’s types are both so varied and so specific, it means everyone is somebody’s ideal.

  Home Sweet Home

  On Monday night I sat at dinner with a man I’d never met before and had to listen to him droning on about how he had renovated four apartments in five years, selling them all for a fat profit and moving on. He was particularly proud of the fact that because each one was his primary residence he hadn’t been required to pay any tax on the capital generated.

  ‘I suppose you could say,’ he proclaimed smugly, ‘that as well as being a [insert profession of your choice], I am also a property developer.’

  Now, I don’t have a problem with anyone turning an honest buck. Good on him if he has been able to make some nice fat cash on top of his normal income, but there is something about this new attitude to the home purely as an investment opportunity that I find a little depressing.

  The guy in question has a young daughter and I wondered where all this profit-generating renovating and moving on had left her sense of home. I was incredibly attached to the two consecutive houses I lived in until I was eighteen and have never quite got over the fact that my family left either of them, especially as they have both subsequently been knocked down by property developers.

  With all the moves she has had in her short life, how could that man’s child possibly have enjoyed the deep sense of security and belonging that comes from a family home? I still mourn mine, but at least I had them while it really mattered.

  Of course you might say, as long as she had her mum and dad around, that ought to be enough, but I really don’t think it is. Humans get very attached to our surroundings and I think the notion of the family hearth as a sacred concept is not one we should casually chuck out in favour of cash in the bank.

  I do understand that the ridiculous property prices we now endure means that few of us can afford to leave home and move straight into the house where we will raise our own families. These days we all have to do a bit of moving on, surfing the market to get to our dream – or even dream-ish – home.

  Not many people now are as fortunate as a neighbour of mine. Every time I pop round there, I am fixated as I leave again by the two photos he has hanging in a frame by the front door.

  In the left-hand one, he and his young wife – in early 1970s clothes – are going in through that door carrying a small baby. In the right-hand snapshot, my neighbour is leaving the same door with a young woman in a wedding dress on his arm. It’s his daughter – the one who was the baby in the first photo.

  Every time I see those pictures my eyes fill with tears. Especially as I often see that very same daughter going back in through that very same door with her own children. What a sense of belonging they must all have – so much more meaningful than a fat bank account. And I think we have collectively lost sight of that.

  We are all so obsessed with what our houses look like these days, endlessly gussying them up with the latest fixtures and fittings, and it seems strange that we invest all that time, effort and money in the superficial effects, yet seem to place so little value on the emotional role these buildings play in our lives.

  So while I can see the attraction of trading up to the best house you can afford, I do think a point comes where you should accept that you have chosen your brick and mortar bed and then attempt to lie in it for as long as possible.

  Or else we might as well all go and live in safety deposit boxes.

  Big Is Beautiful

  I have in the past issued an extreme weather warning about buying clothes that are actually a bit big for you, under the misconception that if you are a little ‘curvy’ it is more flattering to have fabric skim over the body, rather than cling to it. In fact, it’s better to let the odd bulge show, than to wear a big top that makes you look like a Big Top. Roll up! Roll up! Room for more in the back stalls.

  For the same reason I have long believed it is better to buy a jacket you can’t do up, but which is a good fit across the shoulders, than the same one two sizes bigger, which you can button – but which hangs on you like a you’ll-grow-into-it-Charlie school blazer on a little boy. You might also remember the oversized suit worn by Talking Heads singer David Byrne.

  The buttoned jacket will be much too long – which makes your legs look shorter, no thanks
– and you will have to waste time and money having the sleeves taken up by a tailor, which spoils the line of them. Too big at the wrists.

  My tip is to buy the jacket that fits your frame, wear it over a plain T-shirt of the same colour, and fill the void between buttons and holes with beads, pendants, scarves and other accoutrements.

  But while I generally counsel against garment super-sizing, yesterday I bought a pair of jeans which are two sizes too big for me.

  I needed a pair of comfortable workday denims, because my favourite skinny jeans are just a bit too skinny to sit at a computer in for eight hours straight and my old com-fies – which I’ve had about twelve years – are really past it. In fact, they split across the bum last week.

  So I wasn’t in the market for serious designer jeans, just something cheap to get around in. I tried several styles in my real size and they all looked absolutely hideous. The cut of the things just wasn’t clever enough to be flattering – that’s what you get from the expensive brands.

  I could do them up, but the muffin-top factor of waistband over-spillage was foul and they seemed to flatten my bottom, widen my thighs and generally inspire extreme changing-room depression. I tried going up a size and felt so frumpy in the flapping acres of undefined denim, I nearly fled the shop.

  But still game for a laugh, I tried on the pair of dark denim skinnies two sizes too big I had picked up by accident. I thought being reminded that there were clothes in the world too big for me would cheer me up, but it was most peculiar. I could get them on and off without undoing them, but when I looked in the mirror something interesting was happening.

  I threaded my belt through the loops, cinching them in, as we used to in the 1980s Bananarama era, and bingo! They looked absolutely great. I think it is because they are so big they come much higher up my waist, minimising muffin-hood. There is also bagginess on the bum and thigh region which is very flattering, in a slouchy boyfriend-jean kind of way.

  But what really keeps the whole look together is the way they then cling from the knee down to an almost legging tightness. It gives a hint of a jodhpur, which is a very fashionable silhouette right now.

  I did wonder whether I was having some kind of desperate body dysmorphia moment, but my husband, daughter and best friend have all subsequently confirmed that my giant jeans not only look good – they look seriously cool.

  So what I have learned from this is there is no need ever to get hung up on clothing sizes. It doesn’t matter what your ‘real’ size is, let alone the size you wish you were – it all depends on the particular garment. In fact, I think it would be very helpful if shops dispensed with sizes entirely.

  Wouldn’t that take a lot of unnecessary stress out of shopping?

  Kiddie Couture

  Like all small children my daughter has long held strong opinions on her clothes. Since she was about two there have been things she has flatly refused to wear, such as the shell-pink cable-knit cardie which I thought was so classic, but she considered utterly naff and that worst of all crimes: babyish.

  Likewise she won’t even look at the indescribably chic day dresses I buy for her whenever I get near a branch of my favourite French supermarket (the marvellous Monoprix).

  These come in sophisticated colours like RAF blue and mud-brown, in pleasingly crisp poplin and styled along the lines of a fisherman’s smock, or a Swedish apron. Patch pockets, round necks, buttons down the front, that kind of thing. Not a High School Musical decal in sight. She won’t even try them on.

  From about the age of three she has longed above all to wear ‘crop tops’. I don’t know where she even heard about them, but they remain the acme of her sartorial ambition. When I’m not looking she’ll roll up a perfectly nice T-shirt, the better to resemble a baby Britney. I then roll it down again. This happens about five times until I threaten to cancel her birthday party and she leaves it down.

  I am relieved that, at nearly seven, she is well over the Princess Ballerina phase of wanting to dress at all times in hot pink with sparkles and now formally aspires to look ‘cool’, but the clothing negotiations continue.

  The latest development is that she now likes to put her own outfits together. Last night I announced we were going out to dinner as a special treat (because Mummy just couldn’t bear the thought of boiling up one more pan of water) and she ran upstairs fired with enthusiasm to create a look special enough for a café seven minutes’ walk from the house.

  She did well. The basis was a lovely white denim miniskirt sent by a godfather in New York. I wouldn’t have bought her Marc Jacobs myself, but I’m glad he did. She put a grey marle singlet on top, balanced out with grey leggings (old tights with the feet cut off) below. It really worked.

  Shoes were silver Birkenstocks and the perfect finishing touch was a cardie with broad multi-stripes in bright colours, which added a childish air to what could have been an over-sophisticated ensemble. I was so impressed I was wishing The Sartorialist would pop up to snap her, but then it all went wrong. She started accessorising.

  On went an old black velvet Alice band of mine. On went a butterfly-shaped purse with lavish embroidery and a long strap to be worn bandolier-style. On went some plastic bangles and a necklace which had come free on the front of a comic. On went a pair of white sunglasses I bought her recently in a moment of weakness. The outfit was now a wreck.

  Then I heard these words come out of my mouth: ‘When cool grown-up girls are getting dressed, they always look at themselves at the end and take one thing off.’ She looked at me blankly, presumably imagining the skirt coming off. ‘Less is more, darling,’ I ventured. ‘You don’t want to over-accessorise …’

  That was a word she knew. ‘But I like my accessories,’ she said. ‘I want to wear them.’ So off we went, a small Christmas tree trotting along in front not treading on the cracks.

  I considered putting my foot down, wondering if we have a responsibility to teach our children how to dress, just as we teach them how to cook and lay a table, but then thought better of it. She’s got a whole life to worry about being too matchy-matchy, underdressed and over-accessorised.

  And the problem soon resolved itself anyway, as an urgent series of cartwheels led to each accessory being retrieved from the pavement and stowed in my bag.

  Shopping Black Belt

  Just the other day I was on my way to do a replacement purchase of a pair of sandshoes which are great, but now too tatty to wear, when it occurred to me that there are many levels, or stages, of shopping. Repeat purchases of that kind are quite high up the scale, which you progress your way through like ballet exams, or karate belts.

  I clearly remember my first solo shopping experience: buying lollies at the newsagents near my junior school. My mum wasn’t there and it was the first time I had bought anything without her help. I’d done a bit of the ‘Now Margaret, you give this to the lady, now give me the change …’ sort of shopping, but this was my true debut.

  I had a few pennies and I can remember deliberating very seriously whether to buy a lot of the cheapest lollies (fruit salad chews), or one big one (Sherbet Fountain). I went for the chews. I must have been about seven, because I could do the maths.

  My next shopping memory after that is choosing Christmas presents for my family all on my own with saved-up pocket money, in Woolworths.

  Woolies is a very different affair in the UK: it’s not a food shop, but a cheap and cheerful, you-can-rely-on-us, discount general store. Tightly clutching my vinyl pussycat change purse, it held as much promise as Harrods to me.

  Not so many years after that I took to haunting the cheap make-up aisles in the same emporium, eventually plucking up the courage to buy a frosted pink Rimmel lippy, feeling as guilty as a smuggler. I can still remember how it stung my lips. I suppose that was my introduction to covert shopping and I still sneak guilty purchases into the house when my husband isn’t looking.

  The next stage was getting a bus with my best friend for half an hour to the n
earest bigger town where there was a proper bookshop. A pair of library card-carrying bookworms, Jane and I would save our pocket money for weeks so we could buy as many books as possible, horse trading our selections so that we’d both be able to read the entire works of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Joan Aiken, or whoever we were obsessing on at that point.

  I can so vividly remember the bliss of minutely examining the books sitting in the bus on the way home. I haven’t seen Jane for twenty years, but I still have all those books.

  Shopping for my own clothes was the next huge step. I tried to negotiate with my father for a ‘clothing allowance’, a stunt I am sure teenage girls still try to pull off. It didn’t work, but from time to time my mum would give me money to go shopping, or I would save it up from part-time jobs.

  Going with Jane on the train to Birmingham – a proper big city – and buying a denim jumpsuit in Miss Selfridge with my own money was a very big moment. (I wish I still had it, it was so this-season Stella McCartney.)

  From there I advanced quickly to working through the summer holidays and having my own bank account and cheque book, and it wasn’t long after that I first had a credit card, which was when the fun really began, because you can spend money you don’t even have yet. It’s black-belt stuff.

  After doing that for far too long and getting myself in all kinds of trouble, I have now reached the enlightened Third Dan stage where I use debit cards rather than pernicious credit cards, so I can only spend what I actually have.

  Which leads to the grown-up version of my dilemma at the lollies counter. Do I have six pairs of chainstore shoes, or one pair of Christian Louboutins?