Lockdown has knocked the stuffing out of us women.
Months of shuffling about the house in baggy teeshirts, saggy jogging bottoms and down-at-heels slippers, knowing there’s no danger of chance callers, have gradually sapped our determination to maintain self-care and grooming.
The worst cases of flabby resolve have even abandoned supportive underwear.
The sartorial sins of our menfolk are a grievous matter too distressing to address.
Suddenly, opportunity is knocking for us to go ‘OUT out’ and we’re panicked into chronic indecisiveness. Just as the weather turns autumnal we’re emerging blinking into social light and the fashion gurus are determined we’re going to do it in style. I’m inundated with unsolicited clothing catalogues (or ‘big girls’ comics’ as the Loving Spouse used to call them) making never-to-be-repeated offers for the new season. I flick through the pages thinking: “Why does it all look vaguely familiar?” I note the return of the flared trouser, the double-breasted jacket (so unkind to the fuller busted), the how-to-look-instantly-dowdy tiered midi-dress in busy print; the Dynasty shoulder, the puff sleeve, the high neckline that gives the impression one’s head is nailed directly onto one’s shoulders. It’s all ‘retro’. I’ve worn them all before, whether they suited me or not, believing ‘better out of the world than out of the fashion’.
The style carousel revolves eternally. Truly, there’s nothing new apart from the current deplorable aberration of accessorising everything (including ballgowns) with bovver boots or gutties – which is just perverse. The young can get away with eccentric combinations of garments and footwear – the mature simply look ridiculous.
Despite increasing age and decrepitude, I’ve never lost my interest in fashion. I walked in the wake of a grown-up, classically elegant, size 8 sister who was a pattern-card of good taste and did her best to educate my chunkier adolescent self in the art of dressing well. Alas, she was on a hiding to nothing.
In the mid-sixties, hemlines shot up, necklines slid down and fashion became cheap. Little boutiques sprang up everywhere. Oh, the undiluted joy of buying a wee frock on a Saturday and wearing it that very night. Dismayed elders chorused, “Omigawd! You’re not going out in that!” I ran the gauntlet of my mother and Auntie Mollie standing sentinel in the front hall, hoping to escape undetected in a modest length button-thru dress, that unbuttoned to reveal matching hotpants. Fortunately, they focussed on the chalky make-up and painted-on lower lashes that made me look permanently surprised. “Running away to join Duffy’s circus are we?” came the cutting remark. I was not to be advised.
I blush still for the mustard corduroy flares with fourteen-inch bottoms flapping in the breeze; the riotously-patterned flounced frock that made me look like an upholstered sofa and the eye-wateringly aquamarine boilersuit with pockets down the legs that I wore to a formal ‘do’ and nobody said anything.
One thing I did learn was, ‘what goes around, comes around’. Never throw anything out. My contribution to saving the planet is I could dress the female cast of any modern play from the mid-seventies onward, in sizes 12, 14 and 16.
‘Fun’ fashion and eye-catching trends have the brief life of a fruit-fly. True elegance is timeless, well-tailored and gimmick-free.
I opened a newspaper last weekend to a feature headlined ‘New Autumn Trends’ and beheld a near-duplicate of an outfit hanging on my roofspace dress rails for two decades. The twin drawbacks of re-discovering an old treasure are (a) will it still fit? and (b) the hazard of someone saying, “You wore that to Dave and Eileen’s wedding.” (Their youngest has just gone to university.) Yes, and I’ve still got the shoes and the bag to go with it.
Today’s young are forsaking ‘fast fashion’ manufactured in questionable conditions and rummaging excitedly through charity shops for ‘retro’ fashion finds. I have my own vintage emporium. When I shrug smugly and say, “What? This old thing?” for once I’m speaking no less than the truth. “Keep a thing long enough….”
