What I’ve learned from 25 years of dressing for fashion month
twenty-five septembers ago was the first time I had to dress for a season of fashion shows. I was a junior reporter on a fashion trade magazine with no idea about anything except that it would help if I looked the part. So I asked a friend to cut my hair into a drastic pixie crop (like Christy Turlington, or so I thought) and packed everything in my wardrobe that was black. Back then, most of my invitations were stamped with a large ‘S’, meaning I was lucky enough to stand at the back and watch – in dingy car parks in London, floodlit arenas in Milan, palaces in Paris or subways in New York. It was the ’90s. Grunge. Glamour. Wall to wall supermodels – Linda! Naomi! Christy! Claudia! Kate! – and designer superstars – Tom! John! Jil! Yohji! Gianni! Calvin! Karl! The more revered the designer, the harder it was to get into the show. Paris was the worst. It was almost impossible to get past the fashion gatekeepers who ruled with iron fists and wicked tongues. It wasn’t enough to say
‘No, you’re not invited’; I was regularly lectured on my unworthiness.
Today, I might be guided politely to my front row seat, but there is still nowhere more psychologically pummelling than the show arena, with its ingrained hierarchies – where you sit, who you sit with, where you stay, where you lunch, who you dine with, let alone what you wear. None of this mattered in my first job, least of all what I looked like, but the fashion circuit has become the pinnacle of pressure dressing. So how did I learn to dress for a world that judges quickly on surfaces?
Back in the day, I opted into every enticing trend going, from Tom Ford’s Gucci raunch to Calvin Klein’s minimalism. I was a Chloé milkmaid in flounced white cotton one day and a Martin Margiela fashion intellectual in a deconstructed brown wool sack the next. But it wasn’t just the designers who informed my early trend-obsessed looks. (Yes, I regret the club sandwich silver flatforms, the pink fishnets, cape, clogs and hats.) I took my lessons from the front row, observing how French editors dressed in uniforms that have barely changed since – strong-shouldered blazers, skin-tight jeans and always a heel. How the Americans used colourful prints and bare legs in the deepest winter to exert their status. Or how the most powerful gave themselves ‘iconic’ hairdos: Anna’s helmet bob, Karl’s white ponytail, Suzy’s doughnut. I once tried a severe, scraped-back topknot; my trademark look was that of permanent surprise.
By the time I moved to a women’s glossy magazine in the mid-2000s, dressing for fashion shows had taken on another level of seriousness. We were ‘ambassadors of the brand’, had breakfast meetings with advertisers, lunches and dinners with PRS. Fashion was business and we needed to look authoritative in lean power suits and Manolos. It was the dawn of the celebrity front row and their presence gave the catwalks a kind of awards ceremony gloss, the result of which was that we looked as if we were heading to a cocktail party for a 10am show. But by far the biggest impact on show dressing was the explosion of street style. And for a while its influence on what we wore bordered on the hysterical: multiple colours, attention-grabbing accessories, a different outfit, fully accessorised, every
day (and night) for a whole month! There’s nothing quite like a hundred street-style photographers outside a venue to make even the most resistant fashion professional up her game, filling her with confidence (‘snap-snap-snap’) or killing it dead (‘silence’). And now there’s the anxietyinducing grid to fill, thanks Instagram.
My wardrobe is a testament to all that. My fashion buying habit has revolved around the show seasons for 25 years, which means I have more ‘show clothes’ in my closet than anything else. I have clothes for camouflage – in my case, three Chanel jackets that, if worn with a sharp-toed heel, reek of authority. I have clothes for courage – never do I feel more self-assured than in a pair of slouchy trousers, oversized blazer and a cashmere sweater from the Phoebe Philo Céline archive I’ve invested in so heavily over the years. I have clothes my boyfriend approves of – any item that is fitted, any shoe that is not clumpy. (I’d never wear my boyfriend clothes to a fashion party. Just as I would never wear my fashion clothes on holiday with my boyfriend and family.) I have clothes that don’t break the bank – timeless classics I mix with my designer stuff, from Me+em (great trousers for tall girls), COS (finegauge sweaters), Arket (tailoring) and Uniqlo (T-shirts, cashmere). I have even mastered the perfect day-to-night outfit – right now it’s a black velvet kaftan worn with slim trousers beneath and black satin Birkenstocks. Black, for me, remains the failsafe and most flattering way to dress up.
Those trends I once slavishly adopted? Now they rarely find their way into my closet. Even if I can see myself in this season’s culottes or chunky gold chain necklace, I’m far too well-trained to fall for them, or anything else ‘of the moment’. Ditto nostalgia. Having seen every decade of the past century revived and rehashed at least 10 times, I know that this season’s 1970s bourgeois lady may have looked mouth-watering on the catwalk, but she has about as much relevance to my life in 2019 as a Victorian bustle. These days, I’m only interested in modern clothes that I feel comfortable in. I only wear heels if the event demands it and I never buy shoes that don’t fit (well, 99% of the time). In this new age of sustainability, I buy way more sparingly and I’m disciplining myself to ‘shop my own wardrobe’. That’s not to say I don’t hoard. I’d love to be a serial clothing killer like Marie Kondo, but the truth is I had a shoe habit and a coat habit. I have an overspill rail in my bedroom and a closet in the loft full of sentimental pieces where I can always revisit my old selves. Was I ever really as glamorous as that scarlet Roksanda gown suggests? Or as wild as that Giles silk pyjama suit with the indelible wine stain down the front lets on? Did I really go out in public in that Chalayan suit made of pink Tyvek paper?
What I don’t have, what I’m useless at, is ‘normal’ clothes. Meaning smart clothes that don’t whiff of modern fashion with outsized silhouettes, interesting hemlines, unusual fabrics and cuts. When it comes to a nice dress to go to a friend’s birthday party in, or a Sunday lunch with the family, I’m at a loss. I can do dog-walking kit no problem, or slobbing out in front of the telly in a fleece onesie, but I find ‘smart casual’ agonising. Perhaps that’s about to change.
I’m leaving Grazia and saying goodbye to all the brilliant friends I’ve made here. So, for the first time this September, I am not frantically scouring matchesfashion. com or heading into town in a blind panic for some new season armour to wear to the shows. Project number one? Learn how to dress in the real world.