Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Purple Prose for a Purple Jacket

It can strike at the most unexpected times.

Walking home from a late night movie, the stars twinkling in the sky, a cool breeze lifting your hair and leaves crunching underfoot. You see it - in a shop window. That purple velvet blazer-cut jacket you’ve been waiting your entire life for.

You edge closer to the shop window – it’s night-time, the shop is closed. You press your face to the glass to get a closer look at the object of lust. Your breath makes a cloud of condensation on the cold pane of glass.

Days pass. Life conspires to keep you apart – meetings with academic supervisors, classes to attend, work – and you fill the time pining after your love, torturing yourself with thoughts of how it’ll never work. The jacket is too impossibly perfect for the likes of you.

But what if – what if – it did work? You allow yourself – reluctantly at first, but the fantasy gathers its own momentum - to imagine the life that you and the blazer will share. The smart casual functions. The trips overseas. The late night rendezvous. The boots, the bags, the dresses.

You imagine your future together. It is fabulous.

You work up the courage to approach the shop and try on the object of your affections. Your soul is in agony – will it, won’t it, love me back? You take it off the hanger. The moment on consummation approaches. The velvet caresses your fingertips, the shade of purple enticing you. You slip it on.

And that’s when it all goes hopelessly pear shaped.

It slumps around your shoulders. Its buttons are wrong. The sleeves are too short. Its too hot. It makes you look like Austen Powers.

Your castle in the air has been blown apart by hurricane of hideousness. How can something so right, that works so intuitively with your innermost sartorial desires, be so…wrong? Is it me? Is it the jacket? Is it both of us? Is the timing wrong?

You take off the blazer. You put it back on its hanger. Your hand lingers on the velvet, a parting caress, but the magic has gone. You walk out of the shop without a backwards glance, and you banish those evil questions from your mind.

Because there are plenty more jackets in the world, which will repay the love that you expend in equal measure. It’s not this one. But there are plenty of jackets in the world that will love you back – and will worship you exactly as you are. And it’s worth holding out for exactly that.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A Manifesto For Recessionistas: The People’s Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

A friend of mine from college – lets call him Captain Burns - supplemented the minimum wage he earn as a burger-flipper at Maccas by pirating. DVD’s, CD’s, anything you wanted burnt, slashed, or ripped in breach of copyright, could be supplied by Captain Burns with a couple of day’s notice and an extra large parcel of hot chips with chicken salt – the standard fare of modern day Pirates, I was lead to believe. Confronting the captain one day with my ethical reservations about the stack of pirated CD’s he’s burnt for me, Captain Burns turned my newly minted lefie politics against me:

Captain Burns (munching on soggy chicken salt chip): ‘Peg-Leg you’re a socialist, aren’t you? And you think that capitalism is wrong, morally, socially, and spiritually?’

Peggy (accepting offered chip from packet): ‘Of course’

Captain Burns (washing chip down with bourbon and cola, sneakily hidden in regular cola bottle so as to escape detection): ‘Well, it’s simple really. The capitalist social structure commercialises resources – ie music – when music should be free - for and of the people. All I’m doing is giving these resources back to the people who rightly own them. Redistributing the wealth of the state, if you will. And I will. Now, how about some Smashing Pumpkins to go with your Cranberries?’

Peggy (worries about morality of cd’s negated): ‘Yes please!’

Clearly, I was into 90s revival before it was cool.

Years after the fact though, my friend’s rather cynical interpretation of adolescent socialism sticks in my mind, as an example of how we should always look for ways of making our everyday lives less indebted to the capitalist system. In light of the fact that capitalism as we know it is crumbling, or at least flaking at the corners, perhaps it’s time to revolutionise and adopt a utopian position of a new sartorially socialist state…

What’s Mine Is Yours, What’s Yours Is Mine: Here’s a simple five stage plan for implementing your very own Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

Stage One of Implementation: Buy clothes. See prior posts for handy hints on this, but I think that if you like clothes enough to bother with this blog, you’ve probably fairly well along with stage one. Moving right along to…

Stage Two of Implementation: Wear clothes. Again, see prior posts, but I think you’ve got that bit worked out too…

Stage Three of Implementation: Decide you don’t like clothes on you. Whether it’s because you put on/loose weight, or change your hair colour, or decide that it’s time to grow up and get an office job and abandon your cowboy boots and floral dresses look (it’s never time for that in my book but if you’re comfortable with that then go right ahead). It’s a fact that for many reasons, happy and sad, we sometimes have to get rid of clothes. Putting aside the emotionality of the decision, you are now faced with the dilemma of what to do with them: rubbish bin, Vinnies bin, or…

Stage Four of Implementation: Share your clothes with various friends and admirers. Seems like a simple enough idea, right? You bought the dress, you wore the dress, you’re over the dress and it’s time to move on, you give the dress to your friend.

Surprisingly enough, it took me a good several years to cotton onto this. Whilst I could never bring myself to throw perfectly wearable clothes in the bin, I still didn’t think there were many other options than Vinnies for my cast-offs. Until my dear friends MiMi Goss and Rosie Bon Jovi gave me bundles of their respective hand-me-downs. Being of a larger size, I’d never really received hand me downs from fabulously stylish friends before – but having done so, I found that my wardrobe was reaping the benefits. MiMi Goss had undergone a change in aesthetic, moving from boho to refined chick one summer, and generously put her florals and paisleys out to pasture in my welcoming closet. Rosie Bon Jovi, being of a similar size but different colouring to me, found that some of her most flattering dresses didn’t do her beautiful hazel eyes justice – but they would work a treat with my brown ones. Thus, the path to the glorious revolution was lit for me by these venerated prophets of style. I consequentially did my half yearly wardrobe cull with a new ‘friends’ pile along with my standard ‘bin’, ‘vinnies’, and ‘mending’.

Like all socialist projects, though, there is potential for calamity in undertaking a Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution. As you’re swapping and casting off clothes amongst your friends, there’s a lot at stake. Here are a few guidelines to give you an idea of what can go wrong, and ways around these problems to ensure that your revolution is most glorious. Not that I’ve ever encountered any problems, but, being the responsible revolutionary I am, I can’t help but feel compelled to warn my comrades of potential threats.

• Always, always, always have an open door policy when receiving shared clothes. And, always always always don’t expect to be able to ask for clothes that you’ve given away to come back. Paradoxical though this may seem, if both parties have these expectations at the beginning of the arrangement, things will go smoothly. If you are the recipient of a bundle, you should make sure that the original owner of the clothes knows that they are welcome to ask for the clothes back if they change their mind. See, that’s the beauty of sharing. If you give something which you later realise is fabulous to vinnies, you can’t exactly ask for it back…so there goes that fabulous denim jacket and French navy wrap dress I threw out in a fit of pique two years ago. Whereas if I’d given them to a friend, there may be a slim possibility of getting them back. Although, I would caution against giving clothes away with the idea that you may be able to recall them in any situation other than a dire one. When you give clothes that you’re out of love with away, you need to fully expect that the recipient will fall IN love with them, and may not want to relinquish. Or she may have modified it, or damaged it, or passed it on to another friend. It may be a little bit tricky negotiating at first, but it’s well worth establishing this understanding before you share clothes.

• Be open to the idea that people will not like what you want to give them – and let them know that it’s okay if they don’t want to use a particular garment, and that you won’t be offended. Likewise, if you are a recipient, be honest about what you would and would not like to take – tactfully, of course, but honestly. After all, if you don’t want to use it, maybe another friend of the giver’s might like it.

• Tell the recipient of your clothes about any ‘issues’ the particular garment has. For instance, if you are giving your friend a skirt that rides up, tell her about it. Forewarned is forearmed, and she will thank you for it when she realises you’ve saved her from the dreaded crotch creep – you know, that thing that happens when you get dressed, run for the bus, then realise as you’re walking through the interchange that there’s a strange creeping going on about your nether regions – that’s the crotch creep. The recipient may happily take the garment with ‘issues’ – perhaps she may know a trick to fix gaping buttons, or sticky zips – or she may gracefully decline. Either way, full disclosure is necessary.

• Lastly, and most importantly, never swap anything that comes with an ‘eeewww’. By this I mean any garment that is just a bit gross. Imagine you were a friend of Ms Lweinski’s in the mid 90s. She gave you this neat little navy shift dress that she’d got too porky for. You wear the navy dress about town, and grow to love it. And then you realise that the very dress you’ve now taken under your wing as your own has a history that is rather infamous, icky, and just a wee bit sticky…I don’t think you’d feel too good, to put it mildly. That’s why it’s a bad idea to swap or share any item of clothing that has come into contact with nefarious bodily fluids. Even if it has been thoroughly cleaned, you don’t want your friend to show up at a party wearing your old Vomity Veronika Maine.

Comrades, there you have it. Most great revolutions are born out of the suffering of the people, and the Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution is no different. In times of financial difficulty, the solidarity of Recessionistas is our style’s greatest strength. Swap with your sisters in style and viva la revolution!

Friday, April 17, 2009

The Area

A few weeks ago in the David Jones change rooms, I was eavesdropping whilst I had my head stuck through the armhole of a particularly confusing dress. The conversation went something like this.

Customer (to salesgirl): Excuse me, but can you give me a bit of an opinion on this dress? I’m just not sure…

Salesgirl: Well, I think it looks great. It really brings in your waist and your legs look fantastic.

Customer: Yes, I know, but it’s just my upper arms. It’s The Area, you know?

Salesgirl: Ah, yes, The Area. We’ve all got one. Honestly, it really doesn’t look that bad. But if it bothers you, would you like to try the dress on with a cardi for a bit of extra coverage?...

The salesgirl and the customer continued to trade musings on their various Areas while I wrestled various bits of myself into the corresponding parts of the dress. Although the rather complicated frock was occupying a lot of mental energy, I couldn’t help but be enthralled in the areas that these women were listing – body parts I would never have even thought could be a problem, apparently, were. Whilst I was buttoning up, thinking how silly it all was – I mean, who would be upset about their shoulder blades, honestly – it occurred to me that the salesgirl and the customer had touched upon a peculiar and pernicious truth. No matter how beautiful a woman is, no matter how confident and flatteringly dressed, there will always be The Area – the part of one’s body one simply cannot stand.

Our beauty culture is built upon the premise that women – and, increasingly, men – always have to be working on changing something about themselves. Even if you go the whole hog – the botox, the lipo, the nipping, the tucking – our beauty culture increases the magnification on the lens through which we look at the body so that things which we weren’t aware of before are suddenly bought into focus. I’ll never forget, a few years ago, reading an article about shoe-crazed Manhattanites having surgery to reduce their ‘toe cleavage’. That’s right folks, toes ain’t just toes anymore – there’s good and bad toes, bad toes having a crease of skin between your big toe and the next toe along, creating a line similar to a busty woman’s cleavage. Anyway, thinking that was a load of bollocks, I promptly went out shoe shopping. Lo and behold, when I tried on a pair of darling red patent pumps, I had the dreaded toe cleavage. The salesgirl commiserated with me, and suggested I wear them with socks.

Of course, I bought them, and I still wear them to this day, toe cleavage and all, without the coverage of a sock (which would look daft anyway). But, for a moment, I got to feeling that perhaps I should get something done about my toes because they’re just not right. I got suckered in, momentarily, to one of the most ridiculous myths our beauty culture has created.

Not to blow my own horn, but I’m a sociologist – I study this sort of thing – and most days I think I’m pretty good at being a critical reader of the messages our culture constructs. I’m steeped in literature that is critical of the demands women are coerced into placing on themselves. Yet the messages are so pervasive that, even as I’m laughing at them and deconstructing them with my sociologist’s cap on, I still look at my toes – or my breasts or my ankles, or my ears – in a slightly different way than I did before. Every time, it’s an intellectual and emotional fight to remind myself that my body is fine as it is.

It’s a fight that I’m not alone in, as the conversation I overheard in the change room illustrates. Be honest – you probably fight a similar battle most days too. Indeed, in the UK, fighting with one’s Area is the subject of the reality TV phenomena of the makeover show – Trinny and Susannah, and Gok Wan, have made careers out of working with women in their battle with The Area(s). How good these shows actually are for women’s self esteem is a discussion for another post. What is pertinent about these televisual forays into women’s deepest insecurities, however, is that there’s a market for watching women struggle with, and eventually accept, their bodies, their Areas, as they are. Anyone who has done first year film studies knows that we like to live out our fantasies, the lives we can only imagine for ourselves, though what goes on on-screen. I think the most useful thing we can take away from these shows is how very much we are fighting, and how very much we want to win the war.

As alluded to above, for all the talk that I talk, I still can’t always walk the confident walk. I don’t think I have developed the secret weapon that will, once and for all, end all the battles we fight with ourselves over Areas which are more imagined than real. If I do find that secret weapon, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, though, we can take comfort in the fact that this is something we’re all fighting. As I finally arranged myself into the rather confusing frock, with a bit of help from the salesgirl, we both looked in the mirror.

‘It’s my knees,’ I said, ‘they’re my Area.’

‘They’re mine too,’ she said, ‘but you know, if you hadn’t of told me, I wouldn’t have known.’

Sometimes, all you need to vanish an Area is for someone to be your mirror, and to let you see more clearly through their eyes.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

A Manifesto for Recessionistas: Trannies in the Closet

One of the great tragedies of my life is that I can’t buy as many clothes as I would like. In financial, ethical and spatial terms – my closet is groaning - I have to think very hard before I’m willing to make a purchase.

As the mornings in out delightful nation’s capital crisp up, and the leaves start turning, chain stores and boutiques begin rolling out the new season’s stock. I’m sure that every fashionista looks forward to seasonal change over as much as I do – it’s like the beginning of the fashion footy season, working out which styles have been pensioned off to the backbench and assessing the merits of the upcoming stars. Financially, though, all these new goodies artfully displayed in shop windows can be rather a hazard to those of us on a budgetary shoestring.

Enter the Trannie. Now, I’m not referring to a transvestite or a transsexual – although I feel that both of these social groups have significant aesthetic contributions to fashion and our understandings of gender. But that’s a homily for another time.

What I mean by Trannie is a Trans-Seasonal-Wonder. It’s a little trick I discovered a few years ago and it’s made my life so much more fabulous. Some pieces of clothing, with careful styling, can cross seasonal boundaries with the right accessorisation, effectively doubling the amount of times you will wear them with a little bit of careful planning. When you start to think in Trannie terms, it makes sense to purchase that lovely summery frock – because you know that you’ll be wearing it right into May and starting again in August. Likewise, you’ll be able to assess what you need to buy this season in a more rational light – being aware, for instance, that that woolly long sleeved dress at three hundred dollars isn’t going to give you much of a return on the purchase price unless you are planning to wear it every other day from May-August. But that short sleeved Galaxy dress on the hander next to it will certainly earn its keep in your closet.

To illustrate this point, I’m offering some seasonal descriptions of Trannie dressing, to show how the same dress can be worn throughout the better part of the year. For arguments’ sake, I’m specifically thinking of a rather brilliant yellow and orange sixties-print cotton wrap dress that the ever-amazing MiMi Goss passed on to me. It’s the quintessential summer dress – cheerful and floaty – which just serves to illustrate my point all the better: that even the most ‘seasonal’ of clothes can be reworked in such a way as to give them multiple possibilities.

On a forty degree January day…I would wear the dress completely by itself, with a pretty red bra underneath so that I could wrap the front more loosely. If you’re going to bra flash, at least be self-aware here and make the bra a part of the outfit’s aesthetic. A narrow eighties gold stretchy belt highlights the waist, without being so thick and so tight as to impair air circulation around the waist. Big gold accessories – oversize earings, layers of bangles, a few rings, gold Melissa tote – draw attention away from the body, which can look a bit bloated and engorged when the dress isn’t held in by a wide waist. But when temperatures are so hot you can cook an egg on your front step, it’s time to take a more relaxed approach to your body. People won’t notice your upper arms or other parts you prefer to keep hidden if you look cool and chick in the heat, and if you employ some clever visual tricks to move the eye away from the parts you don’t like. Flat leather Jesus-type sandals with cute tooled-leather detailing is my footwear of choice – heels are unthinkable with my propensity to swollen feet. Massive square shades and a dash of sandalwood essential oil complete the look – regular perfume, in this heat, reacts badly with my skin and the floral fragrances I tend to favour can become overpowering in the heat.

On a twenty eight degree February day…not quite hot enough to justify exposing my flabby upper arms, so it’s time for a little cap sleeved cotton cardi and a wide belt in a similar colour to the cardi to pull it all in and give that flattering wasp-waist look – wrapping the dress as tightly as possible helps here too, and makes the fullness of the skirt more apparent. Because it’s a bit cooler, the wide belt won’t be an issue, particularly if it’s leather, and the cardi will provide some welcome coverage. A nifty pair of heels lengthens the leg line and gives a lovely curve to my ankles. A quick stroke of some shimmering body crème of highlighter along the front of my legs highlights the summer colour my skin’s picked up. A neat Glomesh purse adds to the retro-styled feel and, if I had the time, I’d put some soft waves through my hair. A dangly necklace that draws attention to some fairly spectacular cleavage – generated by the tight wrapping and wide belt – and draws the eye in towards the parts of the body I want to show off. As it’s still quite warm, I’d finish with a spritz of something light and summery. As a child of the nineties, Tommy Girl is the clear winner for me, but something else light and sweet would also do a treat – Clinique Happy or L’eau de Issy would work nicely too.

On a nineteen degree April day…I need a little bit more warmth. In come the black opaque stockings and boots. Keeping the stockings and boots in the same shade – black, most usually for me – helps make your legs look long and slender. Choose boots that hug your ankles, further showing off the loveliness of your legs. A burnt orange silk camisole – technically it’s sleepwear, but who cares when it’s so pretty – under the dress adds an extra layer of warmth without too much bulk. A long sleeved cardi – probably not in wool, the sun’s still shining after all – held into the waist with a wide belt adds warmth, covers my arms, and again creates that wasp-waist which is so appealing. On days like today, it’s my great pleasure to raid my scarf collection – as I have a rather long neck, scarves look lovely on me, and also have the advantage of breaking up the large expanse of my chest area – I choose a pretty silk one and wrap it several times, as a full pashmina would probably be overkill. A cute pair of suedette gloves is a must, as someone who suffers from cold hands. Finally, jewellery. As I’m wearing a scarf a necklace would be lost, so some fun earrings and a funky brooch pinned to my scarf is the bling of choice. A large red leather tote harmonizes with the autumnal hues in the landscape. Perfume comes into its own in autumn – the cooler temperatures make it easier to wear on the skin, so feel free to wear whatever suits your mood on the day.

On a ten degree June day…now here is where you really have to pull out all the layering stops and rug up. Start with a couple of pairs of tights – to keep it interesting, layer an open lace or net tight over a solid opaque stocking, in the same colour for a textured effect or go for contrast – eg red opaque stocking, grey macro-nets. It’s up to you how much attention you draw to your legs – but I’d be inclined to go bold as we all need a bit of a boost in winter. Boots with a thick pair of woolly socks to keep your toes tosty warm also helps. Then it’s time for your top half – layer a long sleeved scoop-neck tee shirt under the dress. My layering items of preference are usually fine gauge wool or silk/cotton blends because they’re comfortable to wear, warm, and don’t add bulk. You can then add a cardigan over the top and belt the whole thing together if the cardigan is fine gauge, or, if it’s chunky, I’d be inclined to belt the dress only and leave it open. This is the perfect weather for scarves, so embrace it and bundle up – you can wear more than one scarf twisted together to give extra warmth and a bit of a colour burst too. Gloves, again, come into their own here – I’d leave the suedette ones at home though in preference for fine cashmere or leather, which will keep your fingers warmer. Finally, a coat should top the ensemble off. I have several coats of varying weights, and I find that, as many building are heated in the winter, a super-bulky coat can be a pain to lugg about the office or the library when you don’t need it – depending on what you have on in your day, it might actually be better to go for a lighter, more transportable coat than that super-bulky number appropriate for the arcitc. As there’s a lot of layering going on already, I’d keep the jewellery and the bag simple – perhaps a brooch on your coat lapel and that red leather tote that’s got a nice clean line.

As you can see, layering is the key to the Trannie look – dresses with cardigans, skirts with tights and boots, polo necks under summer tops – which means that the Trannie aesthetic finds its spiritual home with those of us who embrace the more bohemian look and lifestyle - a shout out to all my perpetual students while I’m here. Having said that though, I firmly believe that Trannie-ism is for everybody, versatility being its defining characteristic. If you’re an office worker, like my dear friends Clementine Kemp and Kitty Gilfeather, and MiMi Goss, the Trannie can work just as well for you too. In professional situations, clean lines and layering under your outer clothes rather than over, keeps you looking sharp while making the most of your existing wardrobe. So, for instance, if you want to extend the life of that gorgeous Veronika Maine summer office dress, pop a fine-gauge wool polo neck underneath for extra warmth, along with a pair of opaque stockings and some boots. With a couple of tweaks, you’ve just doubled the wear you’ll get out of that dress. Indeed, if you encounter some really chilly weather, you can further layer with a neat cardigan – again, in a fine gauge knit to keep the look professional – over the dress/polo neck combination, and hold the whole thing together with a wide belt. So long as you keep everything in fine gauge, you’ll look fabulous and keep warm. Come spring and summer, you’ll gradually be able to remove your layers, and enjoy another season of wearing that little shift dress or that floaty frock. Because, let’s face it, we’ve all got a bit of Trannie in our closet, and there’s not time like the present to bring it out...

Friday, April 3, 2009

Loving to Hate but Hating to Love

Vintage.

It’s a term I love to hate and hate to love. Being one of the most influential and prolific terms banded about in popular and highbrow writing on fashion, I feel that it deserves a blog post in its own right.

As generations to come look back on all these crazy things we’ve worn and are wearing in the naughties, the aesthetic which will be most enduringly associated with us will be the vintage look. Of course, there is nothing new in fashion borrowing looks from the past, re-imagining a particular period in history in a new time and a new place. Take, for instance, the ‘grecian’ styles popularised in the regency period – all those lovely, cottony, jane-austeny frocks were modelled on what was imagined and understood to be the ‘classical’ mode of dress.

What makes our modern notion of ‘vintage’ radically different is that it’s not referencing a single style or era, like the neo-classical look of the regency period. Rather, it is the idea that anything old – from any era – is fair game, fashion wise. ‘Vintage’ looks, as we know them now, borrow stylistically from every decade of the 20th century, and take some flavours from earlier still. It’s all a bit of a hodge podge, one that can result in some rather baffling looks. Just see Alana Hill for a pictorial representation. Girlfriend sooooooo went through granny’s closet after one too many disco biscuits, let me tell you…

The other interesting thing in the way that we do ‘vintage’ nowadays is the privileging of ‘authentic’ vintage over ‘reproduced’ vintage – at lest if you are a TRUE fashionista (whatever that is supposed to mean) you are not supposed to wear reproduction pieces from Diva, but unearth them from flea markets, preferably in Paris or Portobello. Of course, if your travels tend to take you more to Penrith than the aforementioned ‘P’ destinations, you may have a problem with this. Historically, this penchant for the genuine article is something quite unique. Whenever any trend in the past has referenced another period, it has almost always done so on its own terms – ie by remaking and remodelling new versions of old looks, rather than actually ferreting about finding the old and crusty relics in their original format. Perhaps the popularity of ‘real’ vintage is a response to our throwaway culture – that, because mass produced goods are so widely available, we value the unique, the old, and the unusual.

As anybody who has read any previous post on this blog knows, I will always be a champion of all things daring. And vintage, worn well, is often is just that. However, I feel that we’ve forgotten something very important in our quest for all things authentically vintage…that sometimes things from the past should stay there for very good reasons. SOME THINGS ARE HIDEOUS AND SHOULD BE FORGOTTEN. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s okay to wear it, even if the lens that fashion is looking through is framed by a pair of vintage ray-bans. Case in point: at a terribly groovy house party last year, a terribly groovy young man was wearing a terribly groovy ‘vintage’ Kathy Day-Knight jumper. With appliqué koala and eucalyptus leaf detail and authentic moth holes. Need I say any more?

I think the prevalence of hideous vintage blunders like Koala Boy indicates a very real truth about vintage, particularly the quest for authentic vintage: that it’s really challenging to find good stuff. Aside from raiding the wardrobes of relations, which have yielded some wonderful finds, in particular mama-k’s glomesh bags and a couple of romantic eighties wonders, I have very few vintage pieces in my wardrobe. Of note is a fantastic rust-coloured seventies shirtwaist with a charming mini maple leaf print, courtesy of my fabulous friend MiMi Goss who unearthed it at a local boutique’s closing down sale, as well as the fantastic blue enamel choker I found one day at Landspeed in amongst all the dross.

My wardrobe’s paucity of vintage is not for want of trying. It’s simply because, if you’re after truly fabulous vintage, you have to look long, and you have to look hard. There’s an awful lot of wallpaper coloured mui-muis and very few rust coloured shirtwaists in the world, more’s the pity. Although it does make sense when you think about it. When you’re looking at an antique or vintage clothing store, you’re looking at a random sample of the clothes that people wore twenty, thirty and forty years ago. If you took a similar sample of what people on the street are wearing today, and time capsuled it, you would find a similar ratio of chaff to wheat that you find in most op shops or vintage stores. Therein lies the reason why the quest for the perfect vintage dress/bag/coat is rather akin to that for the holy grail – long, arduous, and with no guarantee of a reward at the end.

To a certain extent, this just makes it even more wonderful when you unearth a gem. But it can also be incredibly frustrating – if you love the idea of wearing authentic vintage, for the stylistic cache it carries as well as for the environmental benefits of recycling, it’s hard not to get disheartened by the amount of crap that is out there. If you tend to be of the curvier persuasion, this problem tends to be exacerbated. Due to the fact that we’re better nourished and/or larger than our female ancestors, be prepared for vintage clothing to be in a narrower size range. Another factor going against the larger sized fashionista is that vintage clothes, particularly vintage clothes from the fifties, are so wonderfully flattering on a curvy figure that those rare larger sized pieces in good condition are either a) handed down to grateful granddaughters who should thank their lucky stars and their mamas for what they gave them or b) are snaffled up by the dedicated vintage shopper or merchant. Tough but true. A final word on vintage sizing: clothing was often fitted quite different in eras gone by. Even up to the nineteen seventies, it was common practice for women to wear restrictive girdles, and clothing, even that designed for curvier women, operated from the assumption that the waist would be nipped in and supported by a tight girdle. Breathing and eating being two important and pleasurable bodily experiences, I think it best not to attempt to recreate the girdled waist at home, don’t you?

What all of the above means for the curvier vintage fashionista is that she’s just going to get a bit more creative. For instance, I very rarely expect to find clothes that fit my size fourteen frame, or shoes to fit my size ten feet. Even when I do find clothes that fit my body, they are often too short, particularly in the arms – we often forget that women were not only smaller, but also shorter in the past than they are now. What I can do, though, is get the vintage look through non-sized accessories – costume jewellery, bags, hats, scarves, and sometimes coats – or take a vintage piece that I adore, but doesn’t fit, and customise it. A longer vintage dress can often have enough fabric to cut a simple skirt. That requires some skill with the sewing machine, and some confidence in drafting a pattern, but even the most undomesticated of the female species can and should be able to sew on a button, right? So, if that’s you, and you find a wonderful vintage garment with fabulous buttons, snip them off the vintage piece and replace the existing buttons on a cardigan or a coat with the vintage ones.

The other thing to be aware of is that, although authentic vintage is wonderful for so many reasons, there’s actually no shame in fauxing it. Just so long as the fauxing is done well – ie, you choose pieces that look genuine – no one will be any the wiser. This can also be a more cost effective way of doing vintage if you’re on a budget, as most of the chain jewellery stores stock vintage-style pieces at pocket-money prices. A word of advice though – if you are fauxing it, embrace the fact that the most successful faux vintage pieces will be more aligned with the kitsch rather than the classic. For instance, don’t try and faux vintage diamonds, pearls and other precious stones – the poor workmanship will be obvious and will give the game away. Instead, faux it up all the way to town when it comes to imitation enamel, Bakelite plastic, gold or silver tone jewellery and no-one will know that that fantastic red flower ring which is so mid century is actually $9.95 from Diva.

One final word of advice on vintage. I said above that I loved to hate and hated to love it. That’s because, when styled well, vintage fashion is brilliant and will set you apart from the pack, but, when styled badly, it looks like what it is at the very heart of the matter – old clothes. Some of you may beg to differ, but my attitude to wearing vintage – either genuine or faux – is to pastiche, and not to parrot, a particular era or feel. There’s something quite sad in seeing someone who looks like they time travelled walking down the street. Again, it’s a lack of creativity – to parrot the look of another era is to negate one’s own creativity. Rather, what is fantastic is when you see vintage items pastiche into a look that is completely the wearer’s own – so, for instance, a vintage dress, contrasted with uber modern but stylistically sympathetic Melissa heels, and a bold colourful bag, looks fantastic because we can see that the wearer has put their stamp on the outfit. And that’s when I can say, without reservation or qualification, that I love vintage.