Style Counsel
HAVING suffered through BBC Three’s recent adaptation of Conversations With Friends (I realise that it is almost heresy to criticise any of Sally ‘voice of a generation’ Rooney’s output but I found it dull and selfindulgent), I was apprehensive about diving into Everything I Know About Love.
Dubbed the TV hit of the summer before it even landed on our screens, it is based on the bestselling book by journalist Dolly Alderton and, like CWF, is an exploration of love and friendships among millennial women.
Despite being a huge fan of Dolly’s podcast The High Low, which she presented with pal Pandora Sykes – a show Piers Morgan once dismissed as “braying posh girls talking gibberish” – I struggled to connect with her memoir when I read it.
Then again I am a decade and two months older than she is.
I came of age in the partymad Nineties, not the recessionravaged, angst-ridden late Noughties.
But, in need of light relief after seven episodes of ‘mustwatch’ true crime drama The Staircase, I put aside my misgivings and dived on in this week.
Any doubts I had about whether the show would resonate with me were discarded within two scenes.
I may never have smoked in a train toilet with a bloke called Street, like lead character Maggie (based on Dolly) but I did own the red floral Kate Moss x Topshop dress she was wearing when she met up with the Pete Doherty wannabe again in a bar in Camden.
That I stopped wearing it because I didn’t like the way you could see the lining on the turnback of its frilly collar exemplifies how different me and 25-year-old Maggie are.
I sold the dress on eBay in the end. For more than I paid for it. Given that Everything I Know About Love’s costume designer
Matthew Price said he created the looks by scouring resale sites, that might actually have been my frock.
Ploughing on through the series, the memories from my own closet came thick and fast.
The skinny ‘Jamie’ jeans – Topshop again – the faux-fur jackets, the red tartan coat that I returned because it looked too much like a dressing gown, the sparkly mini dress that wouldn’t zip up and also had to go back, the stripy knit...
Who knew I bought so many of the ‘must-have’ items of 2012?
Everything I know about love you could write on the back of an All Saints wallet but when it comes to fashion, it turns out I’m the voice of a generation.
Sadly it’s just not my own generation...
■ In other TV-related fashion news, the return of The Flight Attendant to our screens could spell disaster for my hair.
After rocking choppy layers in the first series of the frothy HBO comedy, this time around, Kaley Cuoco’s eponymous air hostess is sporting the sort of sex-kitten/Brigitte Bardot fringe that has me making desperate calls to my hairdresser.
Not since Kate Moss stepped out on the arm of her mate, celebrity crimper James Brown in 2007, her honey-blonde bangs brushing her brows, have I felt such a desire to lop off a load of hair.
Now I come to think of it, Maggie in Everything I Know About Love has a fabulous fringe too. As does Dolly Alderton.
Given the wailing and gnashing of teeth my Mossyinspired cut brought about in the Noughties – mainly from my husband who got fed up of hearing me cry ‘...but I just need to fix my fringe’ every time we were about to go out – I think I might need to take a break from the TV... for all our sakes.