‘Looking in the mirror, I was transformed’
Consider yourself a girly girl? Or is androgyny your bag? Maybe it’s time to take a risk, says Lucy Foley, whose style was turned on its head by one purchase
HAVE YOU EVER HAD a eureka style moment? An item of clothing that transforms the way you think about getting dressed? Perhaps you have a kind of daily uniform – an outward manifestation of who you are. Or is it? Could it be that it merely represents just one of the many selves you contain within you? That you’re simply waiting for that special piece to come along and electrify your style identity?
My moment arrived a few years ago. As the admin assistant (yes, it was exactly as glamorous as it sounds) of a literary agent, it was my job to go to the bank each day to pay in publishers’ cheques. On the way, happily, my route took me past the shops of Kensington High Street. Occasionally, if I felt I had walked fast enough to buy myself some time, I’d pop in for a browse, sneaking any purchases into the office under my coat. My favourite stop-off was a cabinet-of-curiosities style charity shop. I’d found vintage silk scarves, a Victoriana blouse and a couple of carved elephant bookends, which I still have today. But the momentous discovery, the one that
trumped all the others and revolutionised the way I dressed, was an Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking trouser suit, in mint condition. The wool was so fine that it reflected the light with an expensive lustre. You could see how beautiful the cut was even without a body inside it. It wouldn’t fit, I decided – because that would be too good to be true. Besides, I had never knowingly worn a suit before. I had thought of them as mannish. Up until that point, my ‘uniform’ had consisted of dresses and occasionally jeans. But, to be honest, I was a dress girl. They were flattering; in them I felt prettier, more relaxed. At work they conveyed a vague sense of having made an effort, without seeming too ‘done’. As day became night, with the addition of lipstick and heels, they could quickly change gears to become sexy. Dresses are an easy equation. Witness the enduring power of staples such as the slip or the LBD. They work because they convey an immediate sensuality. And they are fabulous – don’t get me wrong. But they aren’t the only way. Androgynous sexy is a much more subtle and complex beast. It is Katharine Hepburn in her beige slacks versus Marilyn Monroe in that white dress. It is Jean Seberg, Marlene Dietrich, Tilda Swinton, Ruby Rose: an allure that is more challenging, less immediate. One has to look twice to puzzle it out; it doesn’t yield itself up in one glance. And this conveys upon its wearer an air of refinement. It is sexy because it isn’t easy.
Katharine Hepburn was doing it in the 1930s, but there is still a subversive frisson to androgynous dressing today, even – or perhaps especially – in an era in which rigidly defined notions of gender are being questioned and blurred. I felt that frisson as I changed into the YSL suit. With the logic of a fairy tale, it fitted perfectly, and it only cost £45. Looking in the mirror, I was transformed. It was sleek lines, sharp angles, and I seemed a different shape, suddenly: my shoulders widened by the cut of the jacket and, by contrast, my waist in the high-rise trousers seemed slimmer. The reflection that confronted me wasn’t a woman trying to look like a man: it was something more complicated than that. As Saint Laurent himself put it, ‘A woman in a pant suit is not masculine at all… a severe and implacable cut only emphasises her femininity, her seductiveness all the more.’ And this was true: I looked at once more feminine and less girlish. Even as I mentally deliberated over whether I could dare to wear something like this ‘in real life’, my reflection in the mirror looked back at me levelly, confidently. This was a woman who knew herself.
This is what I find in the iconic Helmut Newton images of the suit shot for Vogue Paris in 1975. A woman stands in a hazily-lit alleyway in tailoring so sharp it makes your eyes water, rakish, with cigarette aloft and hand in her pocket. In some of the photographs another model, completely nude save for her stilettos, appears too. And yet the figure the eye remains drawn to is the suited woman, the enigma of her.
A quick scan of my photos from the last few years shows how much of a watershed that suit created for me. Androgyny has entered my style in its many forms: in masculine-cut silk shirts, patent Church’s brogues, sharp-shouldered blazers and high-waisted peg-leg trousers… even in the scent I wear, which is technically a cologne. And, of course, in my beloved YSL suit, awaiting suitably glamorous occasions.
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Le Smoking: half a century since it made its debut to censure (it was banned from restaurants) and condemnation (many critics despised it). A Saint Laurent suit is still smoking. In a world in which sex is offered up at the click of a button, the sensuality of androgyny is undiminished. Perhaps it is even greater.
n ‘The Invitation’ by Lucy Foley (£12.99, Harpercollins) is out now
I looked more feminine. my reflection in the mirror stared back at me confidently