[ad_1]
After 40 years working in the media end of the fashion world, I’m having a style crisis. I’ve worn the same clothes for three years, imprisoned in a micro wardrobe of jeans and “fun” slogan sweatshirts, with chunky boots, branching out in summer to an equally limited range of brightly-coloured tiered dresses and Birkenstocks.
I am bored out of my gourd with it.
Two things put me in this fashion cage. The first was lockdown, when there was no point in dressing in anything other than the most utilitarian threads and we were all too freaked out to make any effort, anyway.
Then there was the weight I gained during lockdown, which meant there was a finite number of things in my wardrobe I could force my burgeoning blubber into.
And those voluminous summer dresses didn’t help, offering an illusion of chic, with no pinching reminder of the ever-expanding girth of what used to be my waistline. There’s a reason they’re called “buffet dresses”.
Now, I’m released from both those prisons. Lockdown is a weird memory and I’ve lost more than 20lb on Dr Mosley’s brilliant Fast 800 Keto diet (so easy to do, I can’t recommend it highly enough).
So, yahoo, I can now fit back into all the clothes I wore three years ago – the only problem is, I don’t want to wear any of them.
The past is a foreign country and all that, and after March 2020 it was more foreign than most, with the world and all of us in it completely reset from who we were before we ever heard the word Covid.
The problem is, I just don’t know what to wear in this brave new world we’re now in. And with life joyously open again, I need to dress – and well – for work lunches, actual face-to-face meetings, socialising with friends and more special outings.
It’s tough when I don’t even know what to put on for my normal working day, writing in the studio space I rent to get out of the house – only what I fiercely don’t want to wear. I’m wondering if I could heat the house by putting those fatty-bum-bum jeans and sweatshirts in the wood-burner.
Looking for inspiration, I found myself scrolling through “fashion influencers over 60” on Instagram, only to find a digital sea of women even slimmer than the newly retrimmed me, but with endless legs.
That was annoying and I didn’t much relate to what they were wearing, either.
My next search was simpler: “fashion trends”, but the results almost sent me rushing back to boho jeans. Having investigated “Regencycore” – dressing inspired by Bridgerton – and “Gorpcore” (as if about to set off on a mountain trail with pockets full of Good Old Raisins and Peanuts, who knew?), I didn’t feel at all inspired.
And 1980s, 1990s and Y2K style – strong current trends – don’t appeal, either. Nothing reminds you more of time’s harsh passage than reinserting yourself into looks you wore in your youth. The portrait in the attic in an oversized jacket.
No wonder most people give up trying to be “trendy” at 35 – according to a new survey by online personal shopping portal Stitch Fix. It also reveals that more than a third of us feel “overwhelmed” by trends, which, given the very notion of Regencycore, not to mention Cottagecore, doesn’t surprise me.
But with my work background, it is weird for me to be trend befuddled. With all those years at fashion’s cutting edge – telling other people what the trends are going to be – I’m used to absorbing the “feel” of the moment and instinctively knowing what felt right to wear in it, but my post-lockdown brain just isn’t processing the vibe the way it used to.
So, I realised I needed help – and was delighted when the person this newspaper suggested to give it to me was stylist Nicola Rose, someone I’ve had plenty of opportunity to observe at those Paris and Milan fashion shows, where she was always wearing just the right thing.
So, what did Nicola advise me to turn to? As a new staple, instead of my jeans, she suggests the Every Day Every Way Dress. A garment with the same integrity and comfort as my (formerly) beloved denim, which you can build on.
The secret to making this work, we decided, was to get such a dress and beat it into submission, by constant wearing, so it becomes as much of a no-brainer to put on as favourite jeans.
The Every Day Every Way Dress
[ad_2]
Source link