New ripped look is working for me
As I bent down to pick up the box of empty bottles as quietly as possible so as not to alert my neighbours to my second trip to the dump in a month, a loud, ripping sound behind me shattered the silence.
The icy breeze around my bum region confirmed that my ancient old denim skirt had lost the struggle to an even greater force – my post-Christmas buttocks.
“Mummy, you’ve got a hole in your bottom,” cackled my nearly-nine-year-old daughter Jesse, as I scurried back in from my aborted covert mission.
“I’ve had that skirt longer than you,” I told her, pulling the back round to the front so I could inspect the damage. “It was like a daughter to me. But with better jokes!”
Then I realised I’d bought it back when we did double-denim the first time in the 90s. “It’s practically a millennial,” I added. “No wonder it refused to leave home!”
Having spent many years working from my kitchen table at home, putting together “a capsule wardrobe to take me from boardroom to bar” hasn’t exactly been a priority.
But this January I’d decided to shake the crumbs out of my laptop, and go and work from an office near my daughter’s school. But now it was going to be even harder to find something to wear every morning having ruined my only skirt, and I was grudgingly forced to admit it might be time to update my wardrobe for the first time in a decade.
Flicking sadly through all the drab, greying rags on my hangers, I thought about how women in their 40s are supposed to know whether they’re pear or apple shaped and what style suits them. Well clearly I am Tusken Raider-shaped and my go-to look is refugee chic. On the plus side, at least all my grey separates match, and in a tea-towel emergency, they can also double up as dishcloths.
Wearily I took myself off to the local shops in my lunch hour this week and tried to find myself a new look in the sales. But trying to unwrap 17 layers of winter clothing in the changing rooms took so long, and with only a choice of size 6 or size 18 left in the racks, I could only find a new beanie hat in my size.
I admit, it’s not quite the professional look that I was hoping for, but at least it’s the start of my capsule wardrobe.
A few more key items and I’ll be ready to effortlessly glide from “shed to squat party”.
I bought it when we first wore double denim in the 90s