Dry January should apply to clothes shopping too!
JANUARY is a terrible time for buying clothes — don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. The old season’s leftovers are on sale, the new season hasn’t arrived, and besides, who actually needs anything new other than a pair of wellies and a replacement umbrella in this hideous weather?
As far as I can see, it’s far better to put the wardrobe equivalent of dry January into action, a detoxification exercise where you consume nothing and get rid of excess rubbish to reveal a rationally streamlined you. Thus, decks will be cleared, and by the end of it you’ll have directed your shopping hunger towards something that will really fill a gap and serve a purpose.
That, anyway, has been my plan: keep out of shops, stay off the internet and concentrate, ruthlessly, on sorting everything into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ piles.
And if you’re going to do sober fashion month properly then your wardrobe must be rationalised to the point where everything goes with everything and each item is deemed worthy of active service.
FRANKLY, like most women, I wear only a fraction of what I own so the ‘yes’ pile has turned out to be shockingly small — which is no bad thing when it all has to fit into a suitcase of a size I can haul onto the Eurostar. The fashion shows start tomorrow in Paris, so we’ll see if my editing has worked.
It’s been telling how many things I have in rotation this winter which are old favourites — some of them really old. These are the pieces that were well considered when they were bought and thus have stood the test of time. I don’t think anyone should have the slightest fear of recycling things or ‘re-wearing’.
I overcame the cringing worry about being repeatedly seen in the same thing by asking myself two simple questions. Number one, do I myself notice when colleagues do it? Answer, rarely.
Question two, on the occasions I do notice a wellloved thing worn again and again, do I judge the wearer poorly for it? I do not.
On a more subtle sartorial note, when you edit down your wardrobe to the quintessentially right pieces, these become integral to you — your style, something above fashion. In fact, accumulating an archive is one of the great satisfactions of age.
Of course you must consider old stock in the light of where fashion is heading. This winter, I’ve figured out it all flows from having the right set of coats.
Last year and several before that, the knee-length crombie automatically went with skinny trousers and jeans, and that was that. Now, with midi skirts and dresses and wider trousers in the ascendant, crombies have suddenly stopped working. If you can delve in to your hall cupboard and find a long, belted coat which has been languishing there unloved since the Nineties — which bingo! I did — you’re in luck. That’s the shape which compliments all under-layers now.
As far as top halves are concerned, my ‘ yes’ pile contains one retrieved Victoriana ivory crepe blouse with billowy sleeves, one blue cotton shirt with a frilled front by Bella Freud, an old Argyle sweater (provenance forgotten), a black, silk, Forties blouse and long, slinky-knit jumper I bought from Prada three years ago.
In terms of trousers and skirts, I’ll be rotating a bias-cut midi and three pairs of tailored trousers that tend towards fluidity. All black. One way or another, the tops and bottoms all co-ordinate for day or evening.
Other than that, I’m packing two pairs of boots, some Christian Louboutin platforms (back in service from 2003), and a variety of scarves — silk ones to tuck into shirts and long woolly ones for the cold.
That’s about all the kit a woman should need — to get through the next couple of weeks anyway.