With so many fashion rules to follow, it’s no wonder women don’t start wars
Have you heard? Boho chic is back but with a new and polished edge. Beyoncé-inspired cowgirl core is also a la mode. Oh, and TikTok is going cray-cray for the office siren look (what I would call “Slutty Apprentice Boardroom”).
I’m not one for lazy stereotypes, but even I think these three phrases above go quite some way towards explaining why women don’t start wars; who’s got the headspace? It’s difficult enough to leave the house in the morning with so many mixed messages flying around. Strategy, like charity, starts at home.
Saloon girl corsetry with a slutty pencil skirt and chaps? No, not those sort of chaps – which would be easier, to be honest. Ponyskin perhaps. But with a nice Mint Velvet jacket, if that constitutes a polished edge?
And then you have to factor in confronting your husband as he nurses his morning coffee while slumped over the news headlines at the kitchen table.
“What do you think?”
Stunned silence. Might be the outfit, might be the exhortation to think.
“It’s just a question,” seething undertone. “How do I look?”
Cue massive argument. Forget the European Convention on Human Rights, it’s the fashion police who are oppressing us. So here’s the skinny; I have pieced together an approximation of all of these three style diktats. It does not look good on the hanger and it won’t look any better on me.
A droopy pale Monsoon skirt, a meh silk blouse just the right side of frilly, a waistcoat that may or may not fasten over my post-Noughties embonpoint. Picture it, if you dare.
The one saving grace is that I do have a pair of dainty ankle-length cowboy boots I bought in Texas, where the fabulous southern belle who served me raised them aloft and cried, “These boots are going to London, England”, whereupon a smattering of impressed applause broke out. But will that be enough? It’s a mighty tough call.
Anyone else remember the 1957 movie Funny Face in which the stunningly beautiful Audrey Hepburn was somehow gaslit by Fred Astaire into thinking she had the eponymous funny face? I expect it would have been cancelled by now if Gen Z ever watched proper films, but by way of a plea in mitigation, it was set in Paris with a fabulous score by Gershwin.
In one inimitable scene, a woman’s glossy magazine editor, played by Kay Thompson suddenly announces, “Banish the black! Burn the blue and bury the beige! From now on, think pink!”
She casts a shimmering bolt of sugared pink satin across the floor and with that, ushers in a new era and a great song and dance number – even though she’s actually wearing a grey suit. It’s flirty and fabulous as fashion ought to be, but we live in a very different age and with such a cacophony of voices it can be hard to make sense of it all.
My advice: if in doubt, sit this one out. It won’t be long before another set of sartorial decrees are imperiously issued from above. By the law of averages, some trend or other is eventually bound to collide with the contents of your wardrobe and then: ta-dah!
