Hangover

I was going to do a humblebrag and tell you that I wore an outfit that I kinda sorta liked yesterday, but I’ve decided to outright brag: I had an amazing wardrobe day yesterday.

I was going to be coy and not tell you about it, but I’ve decided to spill: a turquoise linen shift, indigo cropped cardi, lime green ponyskin ballet flats, orange and tan leather bag. Topped off with a heavy tan leather belt, a soft pink-and-indigo cotton scarf, and a couple of carats of diamond studs (real, I don’t fake it). It went off.

I was going to write something positive and uplifting and philosophical, but I’ve decided to just be honest: I have the worst wardrobe hangover in the history of wardrobe hangovers.

If you don’t know what a wardrobe hangover is, then LUCKY YOU, because they are awful, and there’s no vegemite-toast-and-a-big-mug-of-coffee cure. A wardrobe hangover occurs when you find yourself, crushingly, returned to the realities of having a limited wardrobe after flying a little too close to the sun of sartorial perfection. It’s an awful feeling, similar to how Lucy felt in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, when she opened the wardrobe doors expecting to show Peter, Susan and Edmund the magic land of Narnia, but instead revealed a pile of old coats.

Sister, I feel your pain. Because yesterday, when I opened my wardrobe, all was magical, enchanted, and glistening, and today, it was so much sham and drudgery.

The worst thing about a wardrobe hangover is that whatever you wear, even if it’s objectively decent or even rather lovely, will be coloured by the deep shadows of your amazing wardrobe day.

Today, when I awoke in the grips of my wardrobe hangover, I put on my most soothing outfit (geometric-print pleated skirt, black wool long sleeved top, black cardigan, tan suede ballet flats, black belt, lucky mermaid broach, pink and red scarf) and hoped for the best. Surely, I could stave off the worst of my wardrobe hangover by placating my raw nerves with the simple and the good?

No, I could not.

OF CORUSE the pleats of my skirt were an exercise in arse aggrandisement. OF COURSE my top had a million little pills that no amount of lint-rolling could remove. OF COURSE my cardigan fell at the wrong point and obscured my waist, my belt was either too tight, too loose, too high, too low - never just right - my lucky mermaid pin sat bizarrely on my left boob, and my shoes made weird slapping noises when I walked.

The only solution was to rip the whole sorry mess off as soon as I walked through the door this evening, mope about my apartment in leggings and an old tee shirt of my brother’s, and write about it, in the hope of shaking off the last of my wardrobe hangover.

After all, I have to get dressed again tomorrow, and who knows what surprises my wardrobe might hold for me?