Opinion

Anita Robinson: I was once a dedicated follower of fashion, but sadly no more

"Youth can get away with sartorial murder; women of a certain age attract more criticism"
"Youth can get away with sartorial murder; women of a certain age attract more criticism" "Youth can get away with sartorial murder; women of a certain age attract more criticism"

I’m worried about myself. What’s happened to me?

My passion was fashion. Now, it just irritates me. Previously an avid consumer of style magazines, I find myself baffled by what passes for being well turned out these days. Fashion shoots appear to be ad hoc affairs, featuring odd-looking models wearing stuff culled from a dressing-up box, and blurrily snapped by a bleary-eyed photographer in slum surroundings.

It’s an expensive con, full of grotesque combinations of overpriced garments and women are idiots for colluding with it.

But then we’ve been in thrall to fashion since prehistoric woman discovered a more flattering way of arranging her animal-skin garment than her neighbour. Whose idea of ‘chic’ is a chunky, oversized jumper with knuckle-grazing sleeves worn with a mid-calf length chiffon skirt, bare legs and biker boots that make you look like an orphan extra from ‘Annie’, the musical? Anti-fashion rules! It’s just perverse.

For all its fickleness, fashion is cyclical. Like a virus, it’s self-perpetuating and must constantly mutate in order to survive, infecting each generation in turn. What goes around, comes around.

Edwardian women sported a bolster-like mono-bosom worn high and a savagely corseted waist, echoed in the 1950s by aggressively pointed bosoms and waspie-cinched waists. Nobody had a bust in the 1920s as flappers’ hems rose knee-high, nor in the Twiggy-slim sixties when hemlines shot up to danger-level and we got a modest glimpse of the Queen’s knees – and rather too much of commoners’ mottled meaty haughs. The patchouli-reeking seventies went all drapey-traily in bohemian velvets and cheesecloth reminiscent of the Bloomsbury set a century earlier and the eighties ‘power-shoulder’ was merely an exaggerated iteration of the wartime forties.

Now it’s all ‘sport’ or ‘street’. There are women sauncing about in athletic gear who wouldn’t walk the dog and others, who, at the behest of fashion gurus are arbitrarily putting together outfits that neither mix nor match, in clashing colours, prints and patterns that are an offence both to the eye and the artistic soul, unaware they’re only the latest in a long line of fashion victims that stretches back through history.

Be assured, I know of what I speak. I was one myself. Growing up with a significantly older sister who was the epitome of understated elegance, I had the best of training by example. But I came of age in the youthquake that was the late sixties and spent every penny on clothes and shoes. Like the Kinks, I was a dedicated follower of fashion. I had a Biba catsuit, an Ossie Clark dress, 22 inch mustard velvet flares, platform shoes high as two piles of ham sandwiches and a succession of trendy hairstyles that didn’t suit me.

In my first teaching post I was called to the headmistress’s office, where she voiced concern over the inadequate length of my skirt. Attempting to escape the house unobserved one evening wearing hotpants, my mother flung herself against the closed front door and declared I’d have to kill her to get past.

Auntie Mollie was my severest critic. “Holymacoat!” she’d exclaim, “what class of a figary is that? There’ll be more lookin’ at you than’ll give you anything.” It was a Mary Quant knickerbocker suit worn with knee-length boots. She looked at me long, clicked her dentures and announced, “That rig is SHROUD BROWN. You’ll never have luck in it.” (From a quick foray round Debenhams fashion floor last Saturday, I note that ‘shroud brown’ is back in a big way this autumn.)

Many women, bless them, adopt everything that comes along whether it suits them or not. Youth can get away with sartorial murder; women of a certain age attract more criticism. The new long-sleeved, high-necked, flower-print midi-length dresses that ought to be a boon to those of us not in the first flush, make me look like my grandmother in a crossover pinny. Less ‘mutton dressed as lamb’; more mutton dressed as mutton. Sad face emoji……