Getting Dressed Brigid Keenan
‘Anything can be clothing – just as anything can be a puppet’
Margaret Atwood likes to establish which year characters in books (including her own) were born because that shows what clothes they would have worn. She was born in November 1939 and so was I and she is right: we have identical memories of what we were wearing as we grew up in the Forties and Fifties. One of her earliest is of trying to stuff her skirt down the legs of a one-piece snow suit, a memory I share, even though I wasn’t brought up in the wilds of Canada like her.
In those far-off days we darned socks and patched holes and we made our own clothes. Atwood was at a sewing machine at the age of eleven or twelve: ‘We were taught home economics and the first thing you learned to make was just what your mother wanted – another apron. Then at high school you could choose to take HE or art or secretarial services. I ought to have gone for secretarial services but the girls doing that were a bit scary so I took HE and therefore I can sew quite well, but I can’t type.’ She (and I) moved on from aprons through circular skirts to elaborate party frocks; her graduation dress (the only garment bought with her mother), in pale blue brocade, was uncannily similar to the one my mother bought for me.
Atwood also has a passion for dressing up. At thirteen she went to a party dressed as a hot dog in an outfit she made herself. ‘Why, I wonder’, she says, ‘couldn’t I have settled for a clown, like a sensible person?’ This enthusiasm for dressing up has never left her: when she collected her Red Tentacle award for fantastic fiction in London last year she wore a smart black outfit with an elegant embroidered Indian shawl – and a red plastic octopus on her head (it came from the packaging of something called Squid Soap for children in Canada). ‘ Anything can be clothing’, she insists cheerily, ‘just as anything can be a puppet’. I asked if there were anything she thought older women should not do: ‘I think they can do whatever they darn well please. They’ve earned it just by living that long. And if they make a spectacle of themselves, so much the better … What details would writers have at their disposal if everyone looked the same and dressed in downplayed Good Taste?’ I wondered about Jorrie, one of the characters in her book Stone Mattress, who dresses flashily. ‘I’m all for her!’, says Atwood. ‘Go Jorrie! If you want to look like a sequinned leather handbag, hooray for you…’
Jorrie’s inappropriate outfits are just one example of the attention Atwood pays to what her characters wear; after all, she reasons, how a person chooses to present themselves – or how those in control choose to present them, as in The
Handmaid’s Tale – is as much a clue to who they are on the page as in real life.
My favourite of all her dressing up ideas was when she and Graeme Gibson, her partner of more than forty years, went to a fancy dress party where the theme was ‘weather’; she dressed as a Cold Front with an ice pack tied to her chest, and he as a Massive Depression with painted black circles under his eyes.
When not dressing up, Atwood is usually in something black with dangly beads, her reading glasses (red frames) hanging on a chain among them, and often a scarf. She no longer wears high heels – ‘I never wore them much anyway – but good shoes and boots are a must considering the walking I do.
‘I have not gone shopping on purpose for clothes in years, except for a swimsuit and some black trousers,’ she tells me. She and Gibson have spent a good deal of time in England, where she discovered Rohan (www.rohan.co.uk). ‘I really like their travel clothes, especially the shirts with built-in anti-mosquito feature. I buy scarves in airports and while travelling. I see things in windows. And there’s a shop in Toronto called Motion where I can usually find something when in need.’
Atwood is usually up at 7.30 and at her desk before ten. She doesn’t go to a gym or hire a trainer: ‘I have a house with three flights of stairs and two gardens I do mostly myself and run around like a gerbil trying to meet deadlines.’ She has fine skin and a cloud of curls like a halo around her head. She attributes her good skin to her mother (‘so much of all that is genetic’) and to Estée Lauder’s Night Repair cream. ‘We of a certain age all swear by it – it was the first hyaluronic acid product as I recall. Also sunblock. Various organics. Dr Perricone.’
I asked who did her hair. ‘Haha. Mostly me chopping bits off with the nail scissors. But once in a while I will treat myself to a shape and trim. Maybe that time is coming up. I’m looking a bit wild at the moment.’
I asked if she felt guilty if she spends a lot on clothes. ‘Absolutely guilty! My parents were Depression-era. String savers. I “saved up” from the age of eight, had after-school jobs and was expected to earn the money for anything fancy I wanted. I also had to wear some pretty scary hand-me-downs. I still have nightmares about those. I would never dump a lot of money on, for instance, a handbag. But if there’s something I really covet, I’ll splurge. At those moments, no regrets! Better to get one pricey thing you really love than some second-raters.’
What was the worst garment she’d ever bought, I wondered. ‘Better to ask “What was the worst thing I ever made?” I’d say the yellow shorty coat with the patch pockets I made when thirteen probably wins it. But maybe the faux fur evening wrap with the white satin lining. I wore them, however. Eat what you kill.’