Miscoated

Monday, October, Stockholm:

The rain cannot possibly be said to be falling, since it is actually AIMING at us. Hurling is a much better word for it. The world is grey, and wet with it. The only discernible warmth is hissing, in the form of steam, from the McDonald’s ventilation outlet. And the only discernible colour is the sticky slimy slick brown of leaves rotting in the gutter.

We hurry into the crowded department store. Oblivious to the reek of cheap perfume, insensible to ugly shoes, and fat ladies toting children, made it seems, entirely from snot, I elbow my way to my Holy Grail, Better Man in tow.

There it hangs, in splendour. It is bright red, and sleekly cut. It has a collar that could be turned up, were it mine, just so against the wind. It has breadth enough for my bottom, and pockets in which I vow never to jumble lumpy clumpy bits of paper and old matchboxes. It is Audrey Hepburn, and Mary Poppins, and a Toreador, and a Princess, and a Cherry Pie – all rolled into One Perfect Coat.

Yes, I know what the price-tag says. I balked at first, but have returned every day for a week to gawp, and now I am ready to take the plunge. As I slip my wet wool cardigan of my shoulders, and my shoulders into its silken inner casing, I feel my eyes grow brighter, and my back straighten (and my boobs grow and my hair lengthen). I turn with a secretive, alluring smile to the Better Man, brought along officially to advice, but secretly to be dazzled.
And he looks. And he speaks. And he says:

“Meh, I wouldn’t. It makes you look sort of pregnant.”

Tuesday, October, Stockholm:

 I have stolen his favourite sweater. I plan to wear it non-stop, and grinding the elbows against my desk, until he buys me something twice as beautiful and trice as expensive. And chocolates too.

And Hadley Freemans take:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/05/high-street-fashion-hadley-freeman

Patience Rewarded

Have been weeks and weeks and weeks in the threnches: in jeans, knee-deep in microwave food, bombarded by constantly buzzing phones, erratic mid-night post-it writing, second and third guessing, strategizing, coffee, more coffee, and printers on the fritz.

And then. Glanced over Huffington Post and the New York Times. Noted they had picked up press-release. Closed computer down, slung bag over shoulder, and buggered off.

Went straight to NK, the oldest and stuffiest of Stockholm departement stores. Picked my way through their eclectic mix of wrinkled ladies eating shrimp, narrow jeaned girls ogling Choos, and haphazardly displayed McQueens to their shoe department.

Sinking onto a pink silk couch, was brought selection of their highest heeled and most uncomfortable shoes. Out of these, chose a small black blunt nosed pair, looking rather like startled Pug dogs on stilts. Completed these with the narrowest of pencil skirts, with dull brass buttons, and a nice edition Fanny Hill. 

Shopping complete, marched over to the old mink infested bar in the cavernous depths of the Opera House. Had myself a nice big glass of nice wine, in solitude. Closed eyes, sniffing ever so often – discreetly - at the million dollar perfumes of leather and pearls about the necks of the florid patrons.

For dinner, I walked across the park to the Stockholm Grand Hotel and the Mattias Dahlgren Matbaren. Crisp bread excellent. Squid sublime. Chocolate dessert: crisp, cold, creamy, hot and slightly bitter.

The view of the quay was a deepening blue, the hulls of the white steamers coming out in relief, and when I wrapped my old faithful black wool coat around me it was with a feeling of certainty – winter won’t go on for ever.

These Boots Were Made For Loving

They say you can judge a man’s…worth…by his shoes. It is quite an easy measure to take. The lower the heel, the higher the self esteem. The less time spent buffing, the less time, most likely, spent buffing. As for inopportune coloration and sneaker softness – it is not what I want in the extremities of man. And a total lack of knowhow in the spit-and-rub department might not bode too well either.

Walking in a woman’s shoes, is all about the heels. No excuse is better than a vertiginous red suede pump, for sliding onto the soft leather seats of a cab. But that is not the only reason we wear them, the spikes. Impracticality and extravagance in female footwear serve as the crutches of aesthetics: the ten inch stacked elongates and deceives.

Do they hurt? Yes. But so does dying alone because you have the legs of a particularily disproportionate and tubby Dachshound.

There may be women whose legs and bottom could stand the remorseless truth of the flat. I am not them. I need platforms in order to reach the coffee-cup shelf, not to mention get lucky.

Which is why I took last night’s gift of shoes as the greatest compliment to date. On arriving home from the office, I was presented with the gift of acceptance – stumps and all. Waiting for me, along with a glass of wine for good behaviour, were a pair of beautiful brown leather sturdy walking shoes. 

They have no heels to speak of, and they are soft, and roomy, and they have no straps, or any preposterous peep-toes. How do I look? Half-pint of stout springs to mind. But a very cheerful-looking half-pint of stout that is.

Surely, a man who presents the gift of boots made for walking loves the inner woman.

And her blisters.

Erase

Had an out of office experience today, a business meeting in one of the fancier hotels uptown. It went quite, quite well, and I packed up my presentation, adjusted the lapels of my crisp white shirt, and made my way out into the darkening afternoon with sense of contentment at a job well done.

 

Passing the next door jeweller, or bar, or salon – something with shiny bright façade – I caught a look at myself. It was startling; a dressed in black, professional, neat haired and slightly harried looking late twenties professional. Not a smidgen of personality on the outside, and a sleek briefcase. Only I knew about the neon bright knickers and love of Le Fanu that dwell beneath the shell. It gave me a real eye opener.

 

I remember one of my first jobs, an internship at a swanky non-disclosed Parisian fashion monthly. I was in charge of glamorous tasks such as guarding the Prada shoes (then in fashion) at shoots,  buying in a size zero copy of every brown bikini then in stores, and tagging along to Channel launch lunches (were I got severe food allergies, but that is a different story).

 

The offices were very shiny and not in the least ergonomic. I had no desk and no chair but instead found a perch on a great big heap of cartons of Stoli that had been left behind after office party, two piled on each other made a seat – and bending over to another I found a place to put my pen and largely unutilised notepad.

 

Also, my French at the time was not very um, I guess good is the word I am looking for. Answering the phone had me in cold sweats, chatting to severely handsome photographers over coffee was a chore and as for the other assistants it was only their severely limited English that got us through the rough patches. My lord, I must have been the worst mishire ever.

 

Worst of worst was of course everyone’s looks. They were all manically tall and franticly thin, black of hair, cut and tailored of hair and minis. They wore reach the ceiling shoes with the faintest trace of whore, and no-nonsense black sleeves. They were all impossibly glamorous – and by anyone’s standards I sure wasn’t: barely out of school and all brown.

 

That wasn’t all: my simple brown dresses and flat shoes, fresh-scrubbed face and lack of leather said more than any inate physical shortcomings that I was in the so very wrong place. I used to fret about this something mad – daydreaming of height and waist and Chloe. In the end, when my sentence was over, I got to keep one of the bikinis and they gave me a big bottle of perfume and was on a plane back home.

 

This brief episode was followed, however, by another ten years of feeling ill at ease and ill in dress. Never again have I spent my entire days surrounded by sample size give-away clad Parisiennes, but in one instance after another I have felt not quite it. And it wasn’t until today it dawned on me that there is a terribly simple solution, though contrary to all current preachings of “individual style” sold by those mongerers of lies – the press.

 

Instead of trying to express personality – embrace conformity. Instead of wanting to be loved for inside – love your stairmaster. Instead of spending time in bed with Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance – break out the tweezers, the brush, or the insta-slim. Do not spend your time, in short, stubbornly yourself and acutely apart. Get on the bandwagon and sartorial worries will be thing of past. Freeing all the more time, I am assuming, for deep thought instead of clothes angst.

 

In short. If I were ever to have a daughter, I’d teach her one thing of the bat: be as individual as you want. Just don’t show it. We aren’t all of us blessed with aestetic intelligence, and if you can’t do chic – you’d better opt for invisible than “interesting”.

Financial Crisis

Couldn’t help myself. The temptation was there, and soon my wallet followed. Now the rest of month will be re-enactment of how to do Europe on less than 10 Euros a day. But my feet will be clad in glory.

 

I’m thinking stuff to do with potatoes and onions. I am thinking baking own bread. I am thinking I am suddenly quite glad to have a freezer full of duck.

 

I am also thinking that if I skimp on buying metro-card, can afford the dress that would go so very, very well with new heels of heaven. And the two hour daily walk to and fro work will only make it fit the better.

 

And then the links of the day. Provoking.

Naked and Torn on Floor

I suppose it was just a matter of time. That I should have seen it coming. I suppose also it is no more than could be expected in this world of strife and struggle, that the tragedy coincides with the official change from autumn into winter. Perpetual darkness, freezing rain and forelorn brown leaves tumbling lost and loosing from their perches – it is almost too precise an external illustration of my wounded, cold, and lonley soul.

Yes, you guessed right. I have run out of perfume. Pressing the last few dropps from the bottle, with a sob, this morning, I haven’t had the heart yet, to throw out the empty shell, the mocking vapid hull.

No tragedy, you say? Well I say, you know not my pain.

I’m not a girl who’s heavy on the make-up. In fact, I should probably be a lot heavier, cause then I wouldn’t be pale enough to work as own moon in these dark and trying times. In my bathroom cupboard nestle old shades and tints and if I think back to the last time I bought any paint that wasn’t plain black mascare I’m thinking back to the times of Hit Me Baby, One More Time.

Clothes? Let’s say it’s a no-frills deal. I look best in bump-and-grind-hiding black, look best in the stark and slightly pissed-off look of an office girl. Any fun I have I have with my shoes and with fun I mean that I sometimes trade in my black patent heels for the slightly more frivoulous black suede heel. As for jewels I can’t afford to send anything but the most demure of messages, as for hair I haven’t patience for more than a simple Sarah-Palin-Went-And-Stole-Then-Ruined-My-Look-For-Ever twist at the back. Add my new no-nonsense barely there glasses, and you’re looking at the poster girl for…well, no poster-girl looks like this, really.

But scent. I want it dark behind my ears, heavy on my neck, overtly sexual and rising from a white shirt, I love it smooth and slightly scary and heaving like it’s out of breath already. I want my perfume to say all that I can’t be bothered to say, and say it in a low voice to just a few. Most of all: I want it right, just right, something to identify with and feel at home in.

Finding a perfume like that can be tricky. In fact, I never have. They are too sweet, too pretend feminine, too much of a bustier, when I want something a lot more leather than a bustier. They are racy red bras, or lacy pink ones – when I want something quite, quite different, something deep blue that make your breasts look like milk. In short, they are terribly obvious most of them, and I am looking for something more -somthing instinctive rather than cookie-cutter.

So what I do? Well, only what any girl does 99.9% of the time. She settles for less. Bringing the bottle home in a bag, I short of shrug and try not to mind its imperfections, spraying it on wrists and chest daily and thinking of Brittain, or at least, of how much worse it could have been – trying to be grateful it ain’t Angel or Miss Dior that cling to my skin.

The first cut was the deepest, of course. When I was fourteen, I actually convinced myself for a while that I had found my perfect match. It wasn’t till three years later that I had the guts to admit that there was just a twinge too much of zest in the Issaye Miyake I had bestowed my youth on. After that, I got sort of disillusioned, and now I tend to change make and flavour every six months or so. You get used to it, and you don’t much think of the hollowness of the relationship. Not in everyday life anyway.

But everytime that bottle is emtpy, and you are forced to face the question: would I spend another six months with this smell in my nostrils – or is it time to break free and get on the market once again – it does hurt a bit.

And it also does hurt a bit, the next day, when you are answering your own question really, finding yourself despondently wandering the perfume department. Still with that faint glimmer of hope: maybe this time, it’ll be right.

Paint By Numbers

When I was eight, I tried to get people to call me by my middle name. I thought it would somehow make me more adult, and thus, get me closer to one of those coveted, sophisticated teenage yellow Sony Walkmen.

 

The project was doomed to fail. Once I had written that name all over my bedroom door with green marker, I myself forgot all about the project and went on being A—s: a child, and a runny nose child at that. 

 

In failing, it was symptomatic. Tying on new personaes, and discarding them rapidly, is what I do – in that I am a bit of a blank canvass, a white space, on which may be drawn or inked according to mood or conveniance. Or more like, actually, an etch-a-sketch, where the abandoned attempts at Great Art may be easily disposed of. 

 

The name-change-phase was followed by other attempts at morphing into another. The wearing all black, the few attempts at pixie haircuts, the all meat diet, the obsessive reading of any number of sub-genres, communism, the tennis lessons, religion, mountain climbing, the canoeing, the kitchen remodelling, the filing system, the long nails, the short red nails, the black nails, the blue hair, the camera, the quill… marking the merits of drawing in sand over tattooing.

 

 

 

But apparently, this slight looseness of medium is no longer to be allowed. This weekend, I found out that the slight haziness, the softness of contour that I have been used to is apparently NOT in fact how the world is meant to look. It is supposed to have defined edges, and the people around me are supposed to have expressions, too.

 

Alas, I need to wear glasses, and be damned.

 

Imagine the horror I felt as I went through the opticians array of frames, forced to make a choice, and a semi-permanent one, too, given how fucking expensive glasses are. There were black simple ones and horrible coloured ones, there were sleek metal ones and there were brown, flecked, rounded ones. There were frames of every shape and every kind. They all expressed something. And not a single of them expressed me. It was like a horrific display of every personality I have ever tried on and discarded, with prize-tags attached.  

 

The Better Man, right there with me in my hour of need, did not at all understand my angst. When I started crying, he frowned at me, and then, seeing that frowning did not stop my tears, he tried to cheer me up, saying that now I can choose what I want to be.

 

I can be businessy or librariany, I can be artsy, dorky or laisse-fairy, or sexy or sporty. I can be strictly or funnily bespectacled. I can be any word ending with y. Markedly: me doesn’t end with y.

 

In the end, too weak even to bother any more, I settled for whatever the Better Man said was right, which on closer inspection is a pair of very no nonsense, but also very distinctly there, frames. They look fine, I suppose. But I am not there anymore, on checking the mirror (and it isn’t just because I can now SEE the extent to which the crows have been clawing round my eyes). My comfortable Monet  blur of a face has transformed into something Mondrian, all stark angles and decisive. 

 

Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

 

Meeting my mother yesterday afternoon, she burst out laughing. Then she took me straight to the best optician in town, cut in line, and demanded a pair of horrifyingly expensive but more or less invisible frames. They’ll be arriving next week, and then I can go back to being if not a blurry lake of lilies, then at least move forward in smaller steps to neo-impressionism  rather than full blown abstract.

Chastity Belt

A daily reader of FUG, I have long been wary of doing a Paris, a Lindsey, or other identikit starlet and flashing the world my privates. I tend to wear skirts that are skirts, not belts, and also to stay away from hot air vents and stiff natural breezes. Recently though, I was seduced by the evil people over at H&M into buying what may be a hulking shirt, a matronly blouse, or – and this is where I tend to take it – a really pretty dress.

But as is the case with many pretty things, wearing them out on the town as opposed to prancing in front of a mirror can take some balls. Doubting the steelyness of my scroutum, I have been on the fence about actually wearing this burgundy sliver, vetoing it, for example, as dating-garb. No prude, I know you’re supposed to hike up your skirt to attract the opposite sex, but then you might actually want to wear something where hiking doesn’t imply full frontal nudity.

This morning though, fresh out of fresh clothing and running late, it was the one un-spattered thing in my closet. So, checking all the physics of girldom: (will it still look decent in heels? Can I sit down? Will I be able to stretch for a book on the top shelf?) and deciding that the answer was a slightly mumbled but still discernible yes, I left, hopping on the bike for work.

And in this seemingly innocuous sentence, “hopping on the bike for work”, lies a world of public pelvic. The bicycle you see, is constructed in a way that leaves a bit of hard leathery saddle poking out in a place where a girl normally wont be a-poking on a Tuesday morning.

This poky bit did nothing for my concealment. Instead, it worked as a sort of dividing line, a Berlin Wall of the skirt, separating it and leaving flaps flipping over thighs, instead of modestly in place over the chamber of the privy council.

Well, I can see you wonder, what did I do once I realized I was about to turn my private correspondence into a billboard? Did I engage in the gymnastic getting out of cars? Did I bend over to pick up a dropped ”can” of coke? Did I grin wildly and twirl for the cameras?

No – and here is why I will never be famous – I did not, choosing instead to solve the problem by standing up and pedalling. Which saved my modesty but not my calves. But then again, bulging lower legs might be preferable to letting out other demons of the netherworld.

All of which goes to show that what you lack in masculinity and daring can often be made up for by sheer lack of judgement.

Magic Pants

Last night, the friend I was supposed to meet came down with some rare and exotic exploding head disease, completely incapacitated from the thrumming and strumming behind his temples, leaving me with a clear schedule. Naturally, my first instinct was to go shopping. 

Winding my way through town I ran my usual course of food, reading, and clothing. First, stopping to pick up some venison thyme sausages and ripe tomatoes, then a slim volume called The Uncommon Reader, and finally, trying on some very sleek purple suede heels, discarding them as wrong height. Then, just as I was about to turn my nose homeward, I came upon a store I would normally never have entered: sportswear.

I may have taken to sports lately, but that doesn’t mean I have taken to wearing those tight lycra things and hooded tops that all the girls wear at the sportsclub. I haven’t even got a pair of proper, to the purpose, trainers: instead I do my daily repentance wearing some old street sneakers, a pair of ratty depressed looking sweatpants and whatever moderately stretchy top is currently washed.

Because lets face it: until you are one of them people in a tight fit and a band round your hair, you aren’t really a part of the whole health culture. I mean, it is sort of like showing up at masons without your…whatever it is they wear, at regiment in slacks and deck-shoes; or, for that matter, at a comp.litt. class in a pink Minne Mouse jacket (have done, almost failed entire semester). And I guess up until now, I haven’t really been willing to embrace this whole new spandex aspect of my personality: though I wear much black, it is rather of a polo- or scoop-neck variety than the cling-film variety used by the fit.  

But as I gazed up at the illuminated shop window, the mannequins all clad in efficient, steamlining material, chunky comfortable shoes on feet and a determined glint in their vacant eyes, I felt a pull. Unable to resist the combined influences of shapely legs and the SALE sign, I went in. In a way, it was very much like I image a real brain-wash would be: a swirl of pumping music, hot red walls, and gladiator style attendants. When I found myself on the street again, I was considerably poorer and carrying some suspiciously large looking bags.

At home, I ate the sausage and the tomatoes and read the book - a glimmering little bit of fancy, perfectly balanced. And then, with a feeling almost of dread, I opened the sportsbag and looked at what I had gotten away with: some proper pants, a pair of running shoes, a vest: all deliciously soft, flattering, and demanding. Because with purchases like that, I had burned the last bridges to my old life of nothing-much-doing. Trying them on I felt uplifted, but also taken over, in uniform, almost: the clothes stated certain things about me, that I had now better fulfill.

And what better way than by starting the morning at the gym? Yes, you heard me right, at 8 this morning I was there, changed inwards and outwards and ready for the treadmill. I did a twenty minute run, and then the weightlifting machines; all of it passing quickly, almost effortlessly: watching myself in the mirror and seeing someone who belonged on those contraptions, at home in all the dank air and tinny music.

The feeling grew even stronger, later, in the changing rooms, as I stood as one in the military line before the mirrors, applying mascara at the exact same pace as the ten other women in there. We brushed our hair, we perfumed our necks, we picked some lint from our blazers, we pushed the pearls through our lobes, we smacked our lips at ourselves, glossy, all as one, supremely synchronized swim team. We were all filled with the same glorious feeling of being slightly better than all them people outside the doors to the gym, all those people who eat their bagels without doing their run, all those people who take time to read the paper and have an extra cup of tea instead of stretching…all those people, quite frankly, who used to be me.

But then I noticed something: when we were all patched up and ready to go, we didn’t look the same anymore. There was a banker type and a student type, a mother type and a lady who’s next serious appointment must have been lunch: there were the tan skinnies with super tight jeans and the coiffed and suited, there was an outdoorsy type with a scrubbed face and a back-pack and then there was me: back in black and with Aspects of the Novel safely tucked in my bag, between the water-bottle and my new trainers.

And I suppose the finishing line should be something about books and their covers…

Reinvention

Lately, I have had quite a few memorable encounters with the rain: a rainbow spanning a quiet harbour, drops the size of childhood pebbles falling on fields, laughing out loud through the curtain swooshing downhill, and standing tiptoe at night, baby rivers round my feet, sharing an umbrella, watching the lights of the ferries dimmed and potential.

All very life-affirming, and, so they tell me, good for the skin. But really: enough is enough. This morning, sitting up in bed and sqinting at the window, it looked suspiciously like November outside. Solid grey wall of rain thrown hither and thither by storm, the sea frothing and churning slate. It was one of those days when putting on make-up is overkill, brushing hair pointless. All you want to do is laze around (albeit at office) in big lumpy favourite cardigan and sneakers.

So turning away from the habitual summer dresses and sheer tops, I turned for the first time in months to my winter wardrobe. And was met by madness and destruction. Reaching for that very favourite cardigan I found all its hip-hiding, butt-warming, tea-in-bed-connoted glory ruined: spoiled forever – eaten. 

I have obviously gotten some sort of wicked little animal in my closet, and it has eaten all my wool. Which is pretty much to say it has eaten a lifetime collection of security and comfort. Grey cardigan and brown mens flannel pants, red turtleneck and heavy tweed skirt, white cashmere and pleated darkblue kneelenght, a stack of twenty or so black sweaters, a brown velvet jacket, floorsweeping maxi skirts and fifties purple ballgowns and yellow eyelet wraparound cardigan: all et. Which means (appart from needing to get home asap to exterminate the buggers and salvage whatever they may not have worked their way through) that I have to reinvent my entire fall-winter personae.

At first, of course, I was devestated. And having to make my way into work in what is now effectively a lace cardigan did not help matters. I arrived cold, shivering, and slightly lost. But then, as I sat, laptop on knees for warmth, shoes off and pooling on carpet, a last drop meandering down my clevage, I thougt: there might be a silver lining. Which is clearly: now I GET to reinvent my entire fall-winter personae.

Because you see: one new job, one singledom, and one perfect excuse for changing my entire closet means that I can seemlessly adopt a new style. No man to raise an eyebrow, no colleague to snidely comment, no guilty plastic…I guess being visited by some Attagenus Pellio is the ticket to freedom. 

Ok, I guess there are a few pieces I’ll miss. But really, chucking the old hip-hiding, butt-warming faithfulls for something slightly more adult will be fun. I might even get myself a suit. Because after all, dressing isn’t all about tea and comfort, is it?