No More Smart Casual.
“Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.” Henry David Thoreau
The “enterprise” in question was the private view in London-for which right up until the day before, I had not the faintest idea of what to wear.
“What are you going to wear?” I asked my husband “Oh, smart casual I expect.” Smart casual, no one does it better than my husband and indeed, his father before him. They seemed to have the knack of appropriate dressing in any social situation.
“Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.” Quentin Crisp
Later that day I was party to a conversation about branding and personal style with the need to first to identify who you are and how you wish to project yourself. (Thank you Beverly Hills actress extraordinaire) Further reflection began a fault line of new thinking that ended in a seismic shift, disrupting old and embedded thought patterns.
“I put a bird on my head.” Carrie Bradshaw Sex in the City
For most of my life I have found social dressing challenging, my contrary nature means that I bend over backwards to wear the “right” thing while completely resenting the restrictions. Bareheaded at a recent wedding I saw a group of girls and women wearing fascinators that seemed to me like a shoal of decorated angler fish-I am so not with the programme.
“Give a girl the right pair of shoes and she’ll conquer the world.” Marilyn Monroe
So-hours before the private view I decided to wear a very old second-hand, properly vintage Laura Ashley suit from the 1970s, unfashionably brown and tweedy, but as soon as I put it on and garnished it with boots and lavender earrings it felt instinctively right…for me! “It’s always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting.” Jean Paul Gaultier
So… at the private view, surrounded by ubercool people sucking gallery lollipops, who wearing scruffy taken to an art form, instead of loitering in the corner, I stood up straight swung my shiny Pantene hair and talked and engaged with people. Of course uncool things still happened like one of my tree pieces falling over and narrowly missing a guest, and my neurosis about the gallery dog who kept up a sort of canine country dancing around my best piece covered in kid leather, expecting any minute that it would be weed up-fortunately it turned out to be a female a dog after all.
“Never wear anything that panics the cat.” P.J. O’Rourke
Later, inspired by a drawing made by (the man who jumped out of a balloon) Felix Baumgartner aged five: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/shortcuts/2012/oct/16/felix-baumgartner-kids-drawings?CMP=twt_gu as a sort of positive projection of confidence into the future, I tried hard to express through drawing, the feeling of serene confidence embodied in my suit. It was a disaster I made myself look like a Bratz doll. So instead I went back to ink, brush, quiet meditation, and consequential mental drawing and mark making, a bit like practising musical scales. Interesting results. Figs.1.& 2.
“Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your autobiography.”
Linda Grant The Thoughtful dresser
*Last quote especially for Sophie Cullinan-but don’t worry I shan’t make a habit of it.
