You are what you wear: an undemanding read
AS she points out in her new memoir, throughout her career as a Vogue editor (25 years at the helm of British Vogue), Alexandra Shulman was featured in interviews with headlines such as ‘The Vogue editor who is size fourteen… and happy!’ The description didn’t bother her, she writes in Clothes…and Other Things that Matter.
Put the offensive body-shaming aside, and the fact that Shulman was contrary to what we expect of a Vogue editor stands. Few of us might be able to afford the clothes featured in the magazine, but most of us have an idea of what being a typical Vogue editor involves. Thin, confidence tantamount to armour, in possession of a wardrobe of designer clothes and a social life full of celebrity friends.
Shulman (below) is none of these things. A journalist first rather than a fashion person, in her non-fiction writing (this is her second memoir, her first was Inside Vogue: My Diary of Vogue’s 100th Year), she often appears in the role of outsider, as intimidated and at odds with the world of high fashion as the rest of us imagine we would be.
It makes her an endearing narrator, as she confesses to worries over back fat, being a single mother, or looking the part of a Vogue editor. Clothes…and Other Things that Matter is a memoir told through her wardrobe.
It begins with a list of the clothes currently in her day-to-day wardrobe. Chapter titles include Red Shoes, White Shirts, Trench Coats, and The Perfect Dress. The narrative, non-linear, covers both incidents in Shulman’s own life, and aspects of the history of clothes.
Shulman is at her most compelling writing about the challenges and intricacies of her own life, her relationship with her mother, her own desire to become a mother and the subsequent end of her marriage, less so when she delves into the history of clothes.
Her first novel, Can We Still Be Friends, was set in 1980s London. It’s an enjoyable read; buzzy, atmospheric, engaging. Shulman perfectly captured the scene and the sense of three women in Thatcherite London, revealing herself to be an empathetic writer good on detail, and capturing an atmosphere.
The same could be said of this latest work, in regard to the scenes from her own life. “If you were in your 20s, well educated and free from domestic responsibility, you could breeze into this world in your Joseph suit and your black opaques with a sense that if you played the right cards it was all there for the taking.”
Although power dressing, she notes sharply, may have given the impression of gender equality, but “real life power-dressing role models were relatively few.”
Given her position as a former fulcrum in the world of high fashion, and her own empathetically observant nature, Shulman is perfectly positioned to investigate the psychology of our clothes, to forensically examine the meanings behind our purchases. The “thrilling potential” a new purchase offers, and “how intricately clothes are bound up with our roles.”
This is an undemanding read, for times when concentration is challenged; each chapter an individual vignette, peppered with Shulman’s trademark gently perceptive reflections. London of the 1970s to 1990s is a world that feels sufficiently far away from our own to provide the sort of gentle escapism so necessary right now.