Beautiful shirts in literature

Dave Hill quotes Daisy in The Great Gatsby on the appeal of a beautiful shirt

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

Can you dress well at any size? Poll results

The Thoughtful Dresser poll this week asked the question whether it is possible to dress well at any size. The results - 67 per cent said yes, only 32 per cent said not at my mall - show that most of you believe that style does indeed come from within. However a simple push button poll of this kind does not do justice to the complexity of the question.

The first thing to say is that being catwalk size is little guarantee of good taste. You can have Kate Moss' body and still look a mess if you have no eye for colour. Still, if you are size 0 and wealthy you can have a stylist do it for you, and every department store these days will have an in-house service to help you shop.

proportion

The first problem anyone above the so-called normal size range will confront is finding something to buy in the first place. The UK size range found in most high street shops is 8-14 (US 4-10) though of course the actual size of clothes will vary from store to store with a Top Shop 12 being considerably smaller than a Jaeger 12 because they size from a much younger fitting model. For purposes of disclosure, I'm in the top end of that range. I couldn't get into a Top Shop 14 but I do fit a 14 from M&S and Jaeger. This means that theoretically I should be able to walk into any high street shop and buy what I want. But take yesterday, when I saw a dress I rather wanted to try in Zara. There were plenty on the rack but they were all small and medium; when I asked a salesgirl for a large, she said they had sold out. Because the larger sizes always do (thought it is the opposite situation at M&S, I've frequently been told.)

good legs

Now if you are outside that 'normal' range life will become much more difficult. M&S' regular range goes up to size 22 and its Plus range to size 28 , increasingly on-line companies are getting much better at carrying a wide range of sizes, but if you want a choice of clothes, you'd better live in the USA. Gap and Banana Republic, both brands that I rate for style, go up several sizes. Until it opens its doors at the old Dickens and Jones building on Regent Street in 2008, we in Britain have never had access to Banana Republic, and their online site does not ship internationally. We've had Gap for several years, but recently, having bought a pair of jeans in their Friendship Heights branch in Washington, I asked in the flagship Oxford Street store if they had another pair. I was told that the stock was somewhat different, and one of the differences being that they did not sell larger sizes in Europe. Ask any plus size expatriate about buying clothes in France where no-one appears ever to gain any weight, and you will be told to go west, young woman, to America.

attitude!

As for clothes above say, size 22, there are fewer opportunities outside the US, fewer still at the higher end. Italian women will not stand for being badly dressed, and so it is Italy which has produced some of the better designer clothes in large seizes, such as Marina Rinaldi, one of MaxMara's labels. But it goes without saying that a larger woman will never be able to wear any of the major houses: no Chanel, no McQueen, no Dior, no Philip Lim, no Lanvin. Armani Collezioni goes up to UK 18, but I don't think its younger line, Emporio Armani does. Whenever I see Suzy Menkes, she seems to be wearing the expandable Issey Miyake Pleats Please or the now sadly defunct label Jean Muir.

That is not to say that larger woman do not look fabulous, or as the Manolo would say, superfantastic, of course they do, but it is my observation that larger women who look amazing generally have the characteristic of having bodies in proportion. It is far easier to look good if you are an hourglass than if you are a pear. Dressing really well is having clothes that fit you properly. In my case, a pear, (or as Trinny and Susannah now tell me, a skittle,) with a pronounced waist, big hips and narrow shoulders, I take a larger size in trousers than in tops, and dresses and jackets are often tight around the bum and loose on the shoulders and under the arms. Not a good look.

the right shoes

I have also noticed that larger women who are tall, and who carry the weight on their shoulders, chests and stomachs but who still have great legs, can look more elegant than the petite woman who carries it on her stomach, hips and thighs.

Nonetheless, having said all of this, it is the truth that if you can find something to buy, and if what you buy fits properly, it is the woman with the strong sense of inner style, with the iron self-confidence of a Beth Ditto, with the insistence that she will be seen, the woman who knows colour, who understands accessories, who has a sure feel for fabric and who will have no truck with the fascist nonsense that fashion is not for big girls, who will outshone the size 10 woman in an oatmeal fleece, beige drawstring trousers and Crocs.

UPDATE

My sister telephones to point out that one of the most heartening experiences is being at the gym and seeing a woman with a perfect, toned body and then watching the transformation in the changing room when she covers it up with boring, badly fitting clothes.

Thought for the day

Fashion is a craft, and an expression of a period of time, but it is not an art. Bill Blass

The importance of good hairdressing

The poll on whether you can dress well at any size closes early tomorrow, and I will be disclosing my own views on this subject.

Meanwhile I'm off to the hairdresser's. When I was talking to Louise Chunn about the mutton question, she remarked that she thought my hair was so much better than when she was commissioning me back in the 90s, when she was women's page editor of the Guardian. I think that the one thing you should really throw money at as you get older is the best possible hairdressing you can afford. The salon I go to, Richard Ward, does the make-overs for Trinny and Susannah, and indeed my own team of Mario (colour) and Roger (cut) do the hair of Trinny and Susannah themselves. The key to colour as you get older and greyer is to soften it and bring it in line with your changing skin tone. The original colour of my hair was dark brown, it's now warmer and redder and I rarely go a week without someone asking me where I have it done. Roger has also persuaded me of the importance of a more structured cut and of not doing the whole Anna Wintour thing and having a signature look, but changing it with the seasons. See my cousin's guest post on the matter of changing one's hairstyle.

It costs an absolute fortune and I must buy fewer clothes, but you wear your hair 24/7 and you can't say that of a dress.

Consumerism

In the Guardian today Madeleine Bunting writes:

[US psychologist Tim Kasser] argues that our hyperconsumerism is a response to insecurity, a maladaptive type of coping mechanism. Over the past few decades, the sources of insecurity have multiplied: in addition to the manipulation long practised by advertising, there are new sources of insecurity in highly competitive market economies, ranging from identity (who am I and where do I belong?) to basics (who will look after me in my old age?). This relationship between materialism and insecurity helps explain why countries as diverse as the US and China are deeply materialistic; they are places of endemic insecurity.

The brilliance of this economic system built on insecurity is that it is self-reinforcing. The more insecure you are, the more materialistic; the more materialistic, the more insecure. As Kasser has shown, materialistic values (which are on the increase among teenagers on both sides of the Atlantic) make you more anxious, more vulnerable to depression and less cooperative. Studies show that people know what the real sources of lasting human fulfilment are - good relationships, self-acceptance, community feeling - but they face a formidable alliance of political and economic interests that have a vested interest in distracting them from that insight to ensure they work longer hours and spend more money.

My mother, being the youngest of six children, the oldest three born in the region of Kiev, was proud to be one of the few children in her class to wear shoes to school, having all those older brothers and sisters in work bringing wages into the household. Later in life she would become a world-class shopper. It is my observation that those who have known poverty take pleasure in luxury.

Shopping may well fill the God-shaped hole in our lives, but it may also be that some of us have a highly developed aesthetic, and just like nice things.

UPDATE
Norm adds:

One thing the merry-making Madeleine fails to reflect on is what her own contribution is to getting people to feel insecure. I mean, when did you last read a column by her that cheered you up? Hmmm... come to think of it, I suppose some of them might have, unintentionally.

Anyway, remember: don't hang yourself in the stairwell; you can always buy something.

The Great Mutton Debate reaches a climax

old age pensioner waiting for bus with cat food in string bag

Regular readers will recollect that a recurring theme of this blog has been the vexed question of what you could away with wearing over the age of 50. See The Great Mutton Debate in the labels for the other pieces

The debate has now entered the pages of the Guardian where I have written a piece drawing on the discussion here and with quotes from yourselves, good readers.

There are also reflections on the matter from Alexander Shulman, editor of UK Vogue, and Louise Chunn, former women's page editor of the Guardian, former editor of UK In Style, and now editor of Good Housekeeping:

I asked two fashion editors, each over the age of 50, how we could dress well without looking ridiculous. Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, turned 50 in November. "I didn't do a wardrobe edit the moment I turned 50," she says. "I really believe it's how the individual looks and feels. I happen to think that you are hugely helped if you have great legs as you get older, and if you have a sure sense of style there's no reason to get into a navy suit. The danger is that you have to tread a middle ground between looking boring and a bit tragic. If you don't watch out, you can wind up like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree, but on the other hand you don't want to be in a black shift for the rest of your life."
. . .
"You don't want to show too much flesh," [Louise Chunn] says. "It's just not as firm and luscious as it was. The other day I went to an awards ceremony, a black-tie do and, in spite of my fairly rigorous fitness regime, at 51, my arms are not that hot. I wore a Burberry lamé trenchcoat over a dress and didn't take the coat off. Too much flesh makes you look a bit desperate -like you're not acknowledging that you look older - though decolletage is fine. I'm also not keen on seeing people's knees. A really short skirt with no tights is crazy. Why would you risk it?"

You can read the full piece here

On another note, I had dinner last night with some friends, one of whom was 40 this year, will be 41 next month. She arrived at the restaurant looking absolutely sensational, wearing a short camel skirt over thick patterned black tights and black suede boots, and a camel coloured long-sleeved v neck sweater. The whole outfit (which was from Gap, by the way) worked so well because the shortness of the skirt and the sexiness of the suede boots was offset by the quirkiness of the tights and the lady-like classic colours of the skirt and sweater. You couldn't get it more right. I on the other hand was in a funk because I had unwittingly matched black and silver shoes with a black and gold bag. Doh!

UPDATE
This story has been picked up by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, here, for those of you who speak Italian

Thought for the day

It is eleven years since I have seen my figure in a glass. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable, I resolved to spare myself such mortifications for the future. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 1689-1762

London Menswear Sample Sale

The Designer Warehouse menswear sample sale kicks off at Kings Cross 10 am this Friday, 7 December for three days. Knock them out on the terraces at the Emirates Stadium in your RAF Simons overcoat.

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra again, and more

I have spent the weekend thinking about the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra after watching several of their concerts on Youtube. Once the orchestra members have gone to the market, bought, and prepared their fresh vegetables, the sound they produce is similar to music produced in societies that make their own instruments. For what struck me was not that they are playing Mozart on mange tout, but rather they are recapitulating the original first process of making music using tools, that is independent of the human voice.


In my childhood, we primary school children would be taken for walks in Calderstones Park in a crocodile and would stop to pick blades of grass and put to them to our mouths and make them sing. A violin must have its origins in a gourd. Music surely begins as vegetable matter.

The urge in human nature to creativity is its most inspiring and touching quality. The mind's capacity for curiosity and invention, its elastic reshaping of reality, is our god-like property. I contrasted the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra with the demands for the prosecution, and even execution of a Liverpool schoolteacher in Sudan for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammad. This is a mind converging on a single thought, playing it repetitively, like a single note or an angry vein throbbing in the forehead.

When I woke up this morning a kind reader had sent me a link to an Australian ad for a brand of beer called Victoria Bitter, in which a conductor and orchestra had been assembled to play a brief piece of music on empty bottles. This exhilarating clip here,



and a longer one below showing the making of the commercial, with interviews with the ad agency who dreamed it up, the conductor and the members of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra who played it, reminds us that play is not confined to what you do on with an instrument. Which should all do more of it.

Thought for the day

There may be talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but to me a modest woman dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object in the whole of creation. Oliver Goldsmith

Hamish Bowles

When The Devil Wears Prada came out, I asked a certain person in the fashion world how it had gone down at US Vogue. 'Hamish Bowles told me he'd been to see it,' she told me, 'and he said of the Stanley Tucci character, why are they laughing? This is my life.'


The Times today has a long interview with Hamish Bowles, Vogue's 'European editor at large'

“He’s pure genius,” observes the photographer Mario Testino, who credits Bowles with transforming him from a Peruvian “beach bum” during their bonding at Harpers & Queen in the mid-Eighties. “He has the makings of a Diana Vreeland; he has the sharpest eye there is.” Unlike Vreeland, though, Bowles doesn’t over-compensate for a lack of self-assurance by being a grand diva. While he embraces the style of Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant and the other “Bright Young Things”, he is no snob and finds little need to appear posher than he is. He observes his various orbits – whether it be fashion or society – in an unusually inclusive way. He is often the centre of attention – not because he desires to be, but because he is genuinely the epicentre of fashion, decor and society in New York, London, Paris or, for that matter, Jaipur and Tangier. Flitting around town in lavender Gucci patent-leather loafers, Bowles – wearing his neo-Edwardian suits with a mean waist – appears frail as a sparrow, but he has a tough interior (you have to be steely to survive at Vogue).

You can hardly see him – let alone find room to sit – in his Vogue office in New York. It is a veritable rainforest of Country Life and foreign decor magazines, endless press releases, scouting pictures, and years of notebooks filled with lightning sketches of what he’s viewed on fashion runways. There are pyramids of fashion monographs, a library of books on the floor, and a white Preen mother-of-pearl sequin dress in the midst of it all. What little decor there is consists of a blown-up reproduction of a 1934 Cecil Beaton watercolour of Elsie de Wolfe and a paper collage portrait of himself swinging his quilted Chanel bag, a goodbye present from his days at Harpers & Queen. “I find pristine desks to be downright antiseptic and disquieting,” harrumphs Bowles, who admits that Wintour “would be pretty alarmed” at the sight of his office. “You tend to go to her. Despite what people may think, the door is always open.” Besides, adds Wintour, “I’m not sure there’s room in there for me.”

Thought for the day

It's always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting. Jean-Paul Gaultier

Root causes and other tuberous matters

I am not a vegetarian, or a Buddhist or a pacifist, but the sight of thousands of people marching through the streets of Khartoum today, carrying knives, axes and clubs demanding that 54-year-old Liverpool primary school teacher Gillian Gibbons be executed by firing squad for allowing her class to name a teddy-bear Mohammed, is leading me to consider applying for membership in the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. There is nothing you can do about these fired-up hot-heads, except drown out their cries for vengeance by music made from asparagus.

Citing Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power, George Szirtes once remarked to me that crowds are not really human. The lynch mob certainly is not.

How we dress in London, and LA

Emma Forrest, writing in the Guardian observes, of her return to London after a year in LA:

Riding the tube again, I feel intimidated by your outfits. You British ladies wear high heels with knee socks, pencil skirts and complicated makeup. During the day! After a year as an Angeleno I've figured out where Posh is going wrong. She looks out of place because you just don't wear fancy outfits during the day in LA, especially if you're as ambitious as she is. Dressing down implies that dressing up is a facet of your job, at which you are incredibly successful. So much so that come the awards season you are up to your ears in Valentino sheaths and are therefore relieved - no, delighted - to wear nothing but terry towel the rest of the year. Dressing up outside the context of a party/ceremony/gala suggests you need to invent your own reason to dress up because people aren't rewarding you.

It is my observation that we dress better in London than in the US, where clothes are both more casual and more conservative.

But Emma goes on to quote . . .

. . . LA actress Rose McGowan [who] thinks "that tired old cliche, 'Everyone in Los Angeles dresses down', is just that. A cliche. What people who aren't in the public eye don't understand is that you need armour, and clothing, hair and makeup can protect you against the world."

A crucial observation. In London, this vast, complicated, chaotic city, clothes are also your armour. Two fashion editors told me recently that they loved Alexander McQueen because his clothes felt like armour; they were a carapace. They felt they could do battle with their bosses in them. The rich and powerful don't need armour. Look at how Bill Gates dresses.

The puritan and the handbag

My friend Norman Geras, Emeritus Professor of Government at Manchester University and sole proprietor of Normblog, essential daily reading for those grappling with the moral complexity of the post 9/11 world, emails me to say:

Your sort of thing, Linda...

http://www.alternet.org/story/65680/

I follow the link to an article which is a nine-rule guide to buying a handbag. The author writes:

If one thinks anthropologically, handbags may be a vestigial expression of women's biological desire to nest. We need to feel that all the necessities of life are immediately within reach -- and these necessities have increased in number as civilization has grown more complex. By the same token, the handbag may only be a shrewd invention on the part of patriarchy to keep women enslaved. The dead white male who invented it knew that it was an accessory that we wouldn't be able to resist.

She follows with some some mundane observations about size (not too big, not too small), price (not to expensive, not too cheap), containing pockets for phone and reading glasses, and truly my eyes glazed over and I was skimming the rest until I came to the comments:

I know, progressives are dull and we never have any fun because we're always worrying about poverty and melting ice caps--the people who clear the room at a party. And let me say we usually don't give a f**k about handbags and the Cosmo wisdom that goes with purchasing them. The real progressive angle on handbags is how many people run their credit cards up trying to afford these $5,000 poor excuses for status symbols. Or the physical strain they're putting on women's shoulders and backs. Honestly, let's leave glorification of capitalism to Vogue. Notice, I don't need any help buying the perfect hemp backpack!

and

What kind of moron Susie Q is worrying about handbags at a time like this? Some trust fund, clueless, child of liberal money. This is worthy of a Christian Republican knitting circle news letter! This is pathetic. If alternet keeps posting this crap I'm ditiching [sic] them.

and

The fact that the richest country in the world has homeless women living on the streets ---this is funny?

You know what-we deserve Bush.

Get a bag from the Surplus store-those green Army bags last forever. Stuff it with energy bars to hand out to those homeless women you make fun of. Give the money you don't spend on a fancy bag to a homeless women's shelter.

Here is something we can all do. Don't carry a politically unaware bag. They could be the new bumper stickers.

Everything these messages contain, this site is designed to combat: the notion that only frivolous individuals care about what they wear. It is a frequent self-delusion indulged in by the self-righteous that they believe they are judged solely on the quality of their argument. They are not. They are judged also by their appearance. Regarding their physical selves as a fleshy envelope holding in their important thoughts, they roam around the world hectoring others, unaware that their listeners' minds are only half-attending to what they saying, while the other half wonders why someone with so little aesthetic sensibility, so limited an understanding of their own bodies, -its proportions, colouring etc - could be so profoundly convinced of their own correctess.

This is a picture of Mrs Jellyby in Dickens' Bleak House, a lady neglectful of her own dress and her own children, in the pursuit of causes:

Thought for the day

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. Mason Cooley.

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra

The abiding belief of this site is: The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and his right to these peculiarities.' (Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate.)

You can view a video of the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra's preparations for a concert in Huddersfield, here

I am certain that the world would be a better place if we spent our time working out how to turn vegetables into music instead of taking offence and threatening people.

When cutting edge fashion backfires

A group of Danish t-shirt manufacturers are facing trial on charges of sponsoring terrorism, a crime under post-9/11 Danish anti-terror laws that carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.

The offending t-shirts carry slogans supportive of two groups classed by the EU as terrorist organisations: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). According to the Guardian's report

F+L describes itself as "a private enterprise dedicated to the cause of freedom and hard-rocking street gear". Pictures on the company's website show the gear modelled by beautiful people with even suntans and moody expressions doing rebellious things. One shot shows a young Adonis in sunglasses scaling a fence wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with a pink Farc insignia and a picture of a gun.

However as one of the defendants, Katrine Willumsen, a 24-year-old student, notes.

". . as the person who put together the hundreds of T-shirt orders we received from around the world before we got arrested, I can tell you that the majority of our customers were fat, old men," she said. She knows the buyers were not hip young things because almost everyone asked for XXL size, and they had "old-fashioned names".

Guest post: On cutting one's hair

My cousin Marlene, who lives in France, updated her Facebook photo earlier in the week. Quelle revelation!

At my request, she has written the following guest post:

In 1975 I walked into the hairdressing salon in Harrods and had my hair cut. It was such a success that I kept that cut until last week. During this time there have been two hiccups: a pregnancy in 1986 which rendered my scalp so hot that I felt I was wearing a mink hat and then in 2001, my daughter became a weekly boarder at her lycée. On both of these occasions I had what I can only describe as a compromise cut – much shorter, but not short.

The original shape was what they call a lion cut. Short on top and miraculously layered to shoulder length. The maintenance involved was regular cuts which became progressively more challenging as the overall length grew, and regular professional conditioning treatments. This look was hugely popular with rock stars, some of whom sensibly wore wigs.

During the last 32 years two strange and inexplicable things have happened, I am no longer size 12, and most of the visible lines on my face are vertical.:

Long hair doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years and the physical habit of having this matter caressing your neck and shoulders is strong and comforting. There have been signs during the years which would have lead any impartial observer to yell “CUT IT OFF”. The fact that every time I put my hair up in the last 20 years, everyone applauded – especially my mother – made me even more defiant.

When clothes stopped fitting beautifully and my jaw-line became more rounded, I said to myself, “my hair still looks great” I have shoulders on which you could land aircraft. I also have a smallish head. This combination yelled “BIG HAIR”. A year ago, I had chocolaty streaks put in my almost black hair. Everyone loved the colour and were silent about the shape.

When many things both practical and physical start going seriously pear-shaped in your life, how wonderfully comforting to have something which has stood the test of time – something unchangeable. Sadly, or maybe fortunately, everything changes – if you don’t accommodate those changes you’re living in a permanent battlefield of ineffectual and tiring compromise.

Getting my hair cut short is nothing to do with wanting to look younger – it’s more to do with invisibility and visibility. My hair was huge and very long – it is now pixiish and very short. Instead of disappearing, I have appeared.

Recently, I looked in the mirror and said two things to myself: If this was the hair of a good friend, I would take her to one side and with great love and firmness, tell her what she must already know: “It’s OVER. Get it cut off. Marlène, you never were, nor will be a member of a successful 1980’s rock band.”

There was neither hesitation nor agonising; just the knowledge that the time had come to move on. This is not unlike the feeling when you end a long-term relationship which has not been working for many years. You had a dilemma, you agonised, you wallowed in guilt, you bored your friends rigid and then finally, you float out into the calm waters of indifference, free of all hesitation and fear.

Thirty-two years go, wearing tight jeans, no bra, a black t-shirt and black pearls, I let Nick McLean in Harrods salon work his magic on my hair. Last week, Thierry at the Jacques Dessange salon in Divonne-les-Bains in France, did likewise, leaving ten inches of my mane and my useless baggage on the floor.

The acid test of a radical change in hairstyle is your first sighting of yourself in the morning mirror. Hair crushed out of shape, face plump with repose and eyes like two peeled prawns. So far my reaction has been identical every morning – “why didn’t I do this years ago?”

I

Sins of omission

Stephen Moss in the Guardian has an amusing piece about books one has never read, after A.A. Gill confessed that he had not read Cranford, currently the BBC's Sunday tea-time serial (I've read it, nya nyah.)

Stephen's erudite list of books he has either not read or not completed is:

Gilgamesh
The Bible (I've dipped, no more)
The Koran (ditto)
Saint Augustine's City of God
Dante's Divine Comedy (more blind, braindead dipping)
Boccacio's The Decameron
Vasari's Lives of the Painters
Thomas More's Utopia
Proust (several failed attempts)
The Brothers Karamazov (several failed attempts, including one three weeks ago that ended in me almost shooting myself on about page 212).

And here is mine:
Couldn't finish
War and Peace (can't get past all the nattering in the opening chapters)
Dance to The Music of Time
Proust (about two thirds through, but I'm still alive, and I will finish one day, the problem is that as a writer if you are reading Proust you start to think like him)
Austerlitz
London Fields
Moby Dick
Tristram Shandy

Never read
Lolita
The Naked and the Dead
Finnegan's Wake
Almost all of Henry James
Cormac McCarthy

Do add your own embarrassing failures.