In praise of glamour - with only the merest backward glance to lost youth

Dressing the person who, without you quite understanding how, has achieved a certain age is no doddle. It can be hard sometimes to walk that tightrope between looking past it, beyond contention, an indistinguishable part of the amorphous grey mass, or ... sorry, but there's no more apt expression - mutton dressed as lamb.
For instance, last year in a fit of excitement I bought this red skirt from one of my favourite second-hand shops, Ziggurat.










I thought it would be perfect for tango, and indeed, as I twirled before the shop mirror, it looked great. I was delighted too to see that it came from Etam. Their branch on Watford High Street was once my touchstone for all that was cool and desirable and almost certainly beyond reach.
When I put the skirt on again at home, I realised my mistake. In the shop mirror, I had surveyed only the garment, the hips holding it up and the legs beneath (of which it revealed quite a lot). Now I saw that, when incorporated into an overall view, the effect was borderline grotesque, and pointing dangerously in the direction of what Linda Grant has dubbed the 16-61 effect (think front and back views).
I lay the skirt on the spare bed and over the next couple of weeks, cast it longing glances, even trying it on a couple more times. But I knew the game was up. Months later I gave it to Astrid, who sometimes does my housework. She's 21.
One current trend I like but know I can't adopt is the shorts-plus-black-tights look.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
There's also the flowery shorts option.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Although these aren't nearly as cute as the ones I saw a youngster wearing at the cafe this morning - again with black tights. Hers were 40s style, with a buttoned front panel. She looked adorable.
I owe to Grant's The Thoughtful Dresser the insight that while young women have the corner on ... well, youth, we older ones must go for glamour. Never forgetting that, as fashion writer, editor and doyenne Diana Vreeland once put it, "A little bad taste is like a splash of paprika." 

Diana Vreeland (1903-1989)

Grant is talking about the same thing - an edge, an element of risk - when she calls for glamour to exhibit a touch of vulgarity. And it's no mere consolation prize for lost youth. Just look at Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon. I've noticed increasingly that, gorgeous as they can look, young women can't do glamour - they're just too damn young. Glamour belongs to us older women.

On the joys of vulgarity (1)



Linda Grant



The Observant Reader might have noticed that my last blog flourished the word vulgar. It's one I haven't heard, let alone used, in decades, possibly since I left England, and I'm grateful to Linda Grant for reminding me of it.
I'm re-reading her The Thoughtful Dresser. It disappointed me rather when I read it for the first time a few years ago because, although (or perhaps because) I'm vitally interested in the topic, I found its defensive stance frustrating. Her exploration of what dress means, aesthetically, socially and psychologically, was aimed not at the likes of me but at those who believe anything fashion- or appearance-related is demeaning and trivial, if not downright criminal and immoral.
Her website of the same name bears the epigram, "Because you can't have depths without surfaces." A declaration she uttered defiantly down the line from London when I interviewed after her 2000 Orange Prize win for When I Lived in Modern Times.
It's a cute slogan but not a convincing one. Because the plain truth is there's nothing more incomprehsible than other's obsessions - whether it's kicking, hitting or throwing balls around, devoting years to your family history or hours to cooking dishes containing 37 ingredients that are eaten in three minutes. 

Lois McMaster Bujold

Or writing science fiction, in the case of Lois McMaster Bujold. She has apparently said that, "When you can't do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing."
I sympathise with Grant's irritation at the assumption that smart women aren't interested in how they or other people look, and its infuriating inversion: that if you do care you are, ergo, not smart.
It's just that intellectual argument for our own obsessions will always look thin and is in any case beside the point. We're interested/obsessed because we're interested/obsessed. And, so long as it does others no harm, surely that's the end of the matter.


Elizabeth Bowen















Grant quotes the stylish Elizabeth Bowen (who was herself no intellectual light-weight) at the front of her book: "On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do."
Which is probably the only riposte worth making to the "serious-minded" brigade.
But look - my defence of the position that an interest in personal style needs no defence has taken enough of this morning's time and energy. I'll have to get to the joys of vulgarity another day.