Thought for the day

As any fleeting fashion in dress comes to be admired by man, so with birds a change of almost any kind in the structure or colouring of the feathers in the male appears to have been admired by the female. Charles Darwin

The Thoughtful Dresser Competition

No poll this week, instead a competition. How exciting!

Here is what you have to do. You simply need to dream up a Thought for the Day - a sentence or a two, an idea, an aphorism - about fashion, clothes, style. Do not be intimidated by the brainy observations that I have run so far. 'A good handbag makes the outfit', a perfect piece of sartorial wisdom, was dreamed up by my mother who left school at 14, and the family motto, 'There's only one thing worse than being skint and that's looking as if you're skint,' by my immigrant grandfather who never even learned to speak English.

You can place your entry in the comments box below or email it to me. The competition will stay open for one week and then I will choose a winner. That winner will receive a signed hardback pre-publication copy of The Clothes On Their Backs, which can be shipped to any country, free of of charge, and of course the winning entry will become the Thought for the Day. Feel free to add a picture, if you wish. You can enter under a pseudonym if you wish, but please don't opt for the popular Anonymous as there are too many of that name. The winner will need to email me with a mailing address.

Shoes win

Three-quarters of you prefer shoes to bags, according to the Thoughtful Dresser poll. You know, I really just don't get this at all. I know shoes are significant, I know we don't wear ugly shoes, I know what high heels do for the figure, but half the time you can't even see them. Surely the eye is not drawn down to the feet first?

Perhaps my problem is that I have wide feet, bestowed upon me by centuries of shtetl-dwelling Poles and Ukrainians, but when I go into a shoe shop and ask for a apit of shoes I like a) they don't have them in my size (which is a 'massive' Continential size 39, US 9,) and b) if they do, they don't fit properly.

Bags. Bags always fit. Bags are always available in my size. Bags, if looked after do not wear out. Bags pull an outfit together, bags are the most exciting accessory.

Perfect example of shoes I cannot wear

One more reason to support the screenwriters' strike

Hadley Freeman writes in the Guardian today:

When designers start to value celebrities over actual customers, the clothes become more expensive, more impractical and seemingly more irrelevant than ever, as is increasingly the situation. Once fashion did seem to reflect the changing lives of modern women, as with Dior's New Look of the 40s, or the shoulder-padded power suits of the 80s. Now it often feels as if designers are tailoring their collections to pander to celebrity stylists and the paparazzi - which would at least explain the continuing popularity on the catwalks of crippling stilettos, minuscule dresses and other clothes designed for lifestyles based on maximum photo opportunities and minimal body fat.

When we were very young

I was touched and amused by the supermodel Erin O'Connor's short memoir of her fashion youth in the Observer this weekend. She writes:

Then something wonky happened to me at 14; my friends and I evolved a look that (we thought) proudly proclaimed: 'I don't give a shit!' The basic uniform involved tie-dye gypsy skirts, crucifixes worn upside down as necklaces, and piercing in inappropriate places (although I was never allowed to get one of those, either); we dyed our hair pink with food colouring, and developed a passion for stripy tights, Doc Martens boots, and everything purple. These grubby-looking, salvage-effect items were all shop-bought and overpriced, but - oh, how happily my friends and I wore them, and danced to the folky diddly-di music of the Levellers, or dreadlocked each others' hair, while hanging out in the back of the bus. (NB, all photographic evidence of this time has since been destroyed and I find it hard discussing such a painful and unfortunate period.)

The great joy of being young is making your first stab at a definitive style. You have no idea that you don't look good, and yet you will never take such pleasure in clothes again. For the first time in your life you are dressing yourself, and understanding the power that comes with it. The pleasure derives from the certainty: I am dressed just right, exactly like all my friends.

I'm reminded of the moment several years ago when a friend's teenage daughter came down into the kitchen in tears because, she wailed, she had looked all through her wardrobe and she had nothing to wear. Her mother took her on her knee and together she and I imparted the wisdom that only an older generation can hand on to the next: 'However old you are, and however many clothes you have, for the rest of your life you will always have nothing to wear.'

(Erin O'Connor, later)

Thought for the day

No fashion is ever a success unless it is used as a form of seduction. Christian Dior

Will you look like this, Kate?

Carmen Dell'Orefice, at 76, is the oldest working supermodel. 'How many other ladies of 76 can say that the snapshot on their senior citizen's card was taken by Norman Parkinson?' she asks.

Clearly we all want to know what her beauty regime is. And here it is:

In fact, her big beauty secret boils down to nothing more complex than a unpromising-sounding product called Bag Balm, an ointment developed by a dairy farmer for softening cow teats. Now it's mainly used for equine purposes, 'and if it's good enough for horses, it's good enough for me.' She says it's like Elizabeth Arden's cultish Eight Hour Cream, but a fraction of the price. 'Three dollars ninety-nine for a year's supply!' she exclaims, jubilant. Here is a woman who likes a bargain. When I admire her expensive-looking ring, she takes great pleasure in yelling, 'Twenty-eight dollars! Banana Republic!'

This is how we do it in the Liv

This is where I was on Saturday night:

Liverpool's biggest band - the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic - was not at home because it was here in the arena, stacked in horizontal ranks, now red, now blue. They played a chunk from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and a little piece by Shostakovich. But most of the night they were the ultimate backing group, joining almost every band on every number, with their dynamic young conductor, Vasily Petrenko, riding high on a scissor lift and joining lustily in the Lennon singalong.

The RLPO was in the thick of it at the start, a melange of Rule Britannia, Amazing Grace (with images of slave ships), Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory, with mezzo Kathryn Rudge got up as Britannia to belt out the ruling the waves bit before being joined by two more singers, the Liverpool Welsh Choir, a brass band and semaphoring sea cadets. It was a wonderfully surreal moment. Very Liverpool.

It was the official opening of Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. There was Echo & the Bunnymen, the Farm, Ian Broudie of Lightning Seeds, Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, footage of the Cavern, and Ringo Starr. A hundred minutes of Liverpool The Musical and not a cliche in it. Just when you expected You'll Never Walk Alone, you got The Farm's All Together Now. When you expected John Lennon's Imagine, you got Ringo Starr belting out John Lennon's inconic anthem Power to the People. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress across the aisle from us rattled their chains of office as they bopped along. Liverpool's imperial past, its greatness built on slaves, sugar and shipping, was undercut by Gilliam-like cartoons of Queen Victoria straddling the globe, eating ships as if they were sweets, and a woodcut of slave galley with human beings like embryos packed in a long womb.

The other star of the show was 19-year-old RiUvEn. Check him out here on the track The LIV

Why is my teenage daughter dressing like Yasser Arafat . . .

. . . Jonathan Goldberg of London NW3 (that's Hampstead) asks Hadley Freeman in in the Guardian today. I have dealt with this question before in the Thoughtful Dresser, but Hadley puts her finger on it:

Now, before I sweepingly dismiss your daughter's dabblings in Yasser chic, there is a chance that she is merely showing her unflagging support for Palestinian nationalism, this being a particularly canny cause for a north-west London girl with the surname of "Goldberg" to light upon should she want to annoy her father. [my italics] But assuming that your daughter is more fashion-conscious than cheekily provocative, then she is doing this because she would like to be fashionable.

As we know, keffiyeh chic has reached catwalks. The Balenciaga keffiyeh at £750, sold out before it reached the shops.

Surely with tens of thousands of teeneg girls wearing Top Shop copies, an end to the Middle East crisis must be just around the corner?

Thought for the day

(CZ Guest, another socialite)

A woman should be an illusion. Ian Fleming

Five things to wear so you know it's 2008

1. Belts. Every wardrobe requires a repertoire. Last year’s were wide and blingy; this year’s are thin and understated.

2. Shoes. Bright colour and chunky are the bywords here. If there’s a new way to waft, it’s to do a semi-waft by toughening up pretty dresses with aggressive-looking shoes.

3. Bags: they’re definitely getting smaller. Some could even be classified as small.

4. If you’re bored with necklace mania, take heart. Now there’s bangle and cuffs mania.

5. Not just full, but really full skirts – the antidote to last year’s drainpipes. Wear with ballet pumps.

courtesy of the usually right Lisa Armstrong

Everybody's talking about

It says here

6: Linda Grant's The Clothes On Their Back

A gorgeous fashion-y novel with incredible soul, which isn't out until next month, but we strongly advise you to buy it the moment it is, because it's well cool. The woman who bought you fashion blog thethoughtfuldresser.blogspot.com ('because you can't have depths without surfaces') delivers an exquisite, moving (and we suspect, autobiographical)* number, which describes a sensible, credible love affair with style - and the people who have it (Little, Brown).

*You suspect wrong

Thought for the day

(Babe Paley)

One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. Harriet Beecher Stowe

Revenge: a modest proposal

The Guardian's resident doctor today advises a reader who wishes to take revenge on her no-good cheating ex-boyfriend. Possessing a highly developed imagination, I particularly enjoy revenge fantasies though I have never actually carried one out. Some years ago, when discussing a particularly obnoxious ex with a friend, she told me a story which I am sure is an urban legend, but still, it shows the extent to which human ingenuity can be stretched, and far more satisfying and ethical than bunny-boiling:

Woman's boyfriend cheats on her with best friend, then leaves her, moves in with best friend. Woman finds way of getting into house. She unscrews the knobs at the end of the curtain rod and into the hollow tube she inserts, at regular intervals, several fresh shrimp. The knobs are put back on and quickly the shrimp decay causing a dreadful smell. The couple take the place apart looking for dead rats, cats etc, find nothing. Call in professionals who draw a blank. In despair they move, taking with them the curtain rod.

The ankle boot

Jess Cartner-Morley writes of this season's trend for ankle boots worn with skirts:

I have recently adopted the ankle boot trend with all the raging zeal of the late convert. I resisted for ages, because every piece I read raving about ankle boots ended with a caveat along the lines of "ankle boots look brilliant on us beautiful people, because they contrast so winningly with our adorable, pipe-cleaner legs, but they look freaking hideous on disgusting size 12 weirdos who need liposuction".

American readers please note, UK size 12 = US size 8.

Thought for the day

(Dior)

Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey. Ambrose Bierce

Pessimism for Beginners

The shortlisted authors for the T.S. Eliot poetry prize have been reading their work all week on BBC Radio 4. Make sure you listen to Sophie Hannah's sensational Pessimism for Beginners, here. I was transfixed in the bathroom this morning, rooted to the spot, listening to it.

Lingerie and burlesque

The Guardian explains the rise in sales of expensive lingerie thus:

Before then, the only acceptable way for a normal woman to blow a week's wages on underwear was to buy a pretty but practical and sturdy set from sensible bra supplier to the Queen, Rigby and Peller. The rise and rise of underwear can also be attributed to the burlesque boom: "Before burlesque exploded a few years ago, lingerie was typically seen as either functional, trashy, or lacy: you could either be the virgin, the whore, or the grandma," says Shell. "With burlesque, there was suddenly a new, confident look that was sexy yet coquettish, vintage yet modern ... I think it gave lingerie a cooler, more glamorous image."

Thought for the day

A girl whose cheeks are covered with paint
Has an advantage with me over one whose ain't.
Ogden Nash

I'm supposed to look a bit like something that's been left over in the jungle in Vietnam

Where to start to describe this BBC radio interview with Vivienne Westwood in which she describes what she's wearing and then the interviewer asks Vivienne what she thinks of what she's wearing?

'Everything's very literary with me and it's got to have a story . . .'

'My idea of sex is you've got to look important . . .'

'I'm not a women's lib person . . .'

'The more you dress up the better life you have. . .'

'I've never wanted to go around looking like a little girl who's just been raped . . .'

'I guess I've got an image of myself and I dress for the image . . .'

'I'm not interested in people who don't bother . . .'




Make a cup of coffee, settle in and listen. (and thanks to my sister for finding it)