Pears in pants

I have never quite forgotten the sage advice of Ogden Nash on this matter:

Sure, deck your limbs in pants,
Yours are the limbs, my sweeting.
You look divine as you advance . . .
Have you seen yourself retreating?

Come again?

Can anyone explain the link between the following two paragraphs from the usually accurate Lisa Armstrong?

Trousers. They’ll be everywhere – and not just the old fall-backs of jeans, straightlegs and drainpipes. The tailored trouser is back. The most modish are high-waisted, short-legged (they stop at the ankle – it’s a must) and need to be worn with heels and neat, tucked-in tops. YSL’s are the template, but Gap will have good versions, so will Joanna Sykes at Matches and, under the expert eye of Jane Shepherdson, the new, rebranded Whistles should be your first port of call. These are worth stalking, I promise.

For the first time in ages, we have genuine fashion statements that flatter pear shapes. Time to stock up.

Is your wardrobe bad for the planet?

You can have someone come round to the house and tell you.

We begin by analysing everything I've purchased over the past year. With laptop in hand, the screen presents an exhaustive list of clothing types to chose from, from cotton socks to jeans to silk shirts to wool suits. Having been in maternity clothes for 12 months, it's easy enough to remember what I've bought, although I need to think hard when it comes to household linen. I can count on one hand the number of clothes my husband's bought this year, even though he's a style-conscious Italian.

Admittedly, this is what differentiates us from the "average" household where a woman buys 34 new items of clothes a year, a figure that has nearly doubled in the past decade. What makes this possible is that, in that same time, the average cost of clothes has dropped by 36 per cent, with £1 in every £4 now spent on bargain fashion. Retailers exacerbate our obsession with "newness" by producing up to 20 different clothing collections a year. In this constantly revolving carousel, getting on the clothing treadmill has become too easy.

The next part is where I get into trouble. Over the following screens, I answer a rapid-fire set of questions. How many clothing washes do I do a week? About one wash a day. At what temperature? 40 degrees (I don't have a 30 degree setting). How many times do I tumble dry a week? None, we don't even have a tumble dryer. What about ironing? About seven hours a week. Phil gasps...

A couple clicks of the mouse, then a figure appears at the bottom of the screen. Our household EDUs is 1,282. A breakdown shows that our actual clothing EDUs is quite low at 558. But then there's the laundry, which at 724 EDUs is slightly alarming. It includes 324 from washing and a whopping 400 from ironing.

The ironing is what did us in, more environmentally damaging than our washing. "It's like having the kettle switched on for seven hours straight," says Phil. But more shocking, if we add seven tumble-dryer loads a week. The figure more than doubles.

My Generation

One of the more intelligent and perceptive clients I once worked with gave a paper on marketing to the older consumer.

He observed that as a boy he was aware of senior citizens in his northern home town all looking rather similar. Waiting outside the pub ( those were the days when enjoyment was rationed) or chatting outside the Co-op ( no cafe culture back then). Their fashion tended toward sturdy shoes , baggy trousers, tweed jacket and waistcoat, and flat cap.

As a child he assumed that this was what you ended up wearing when you got to a certain age.

It was only after having been in marketing for a while that he revisited this assumption. And his realisation was that these chaps were simply wearing the clothes that had become them many years before. Given the period, this was probably similar to the de-mob outfit that those lucky enough to have survived to the end of 1918 were issued with.

The clothes were signifying the wearer's age by referring back to their youth. The time when they dressed up for Saturday nights, and strutted their stuff on the dance floor.

He invited his listeners to dispense with any preconceptions about what older people currently looked like, or ought to look like, and prepare for marketing to pensioners in denim jackets and Rolling Stones t -shirts. If marketers don't understand that people identify most strongly with their youthful selves they will end up making wrong assumptions and being clumsily patronising.

I think he was remarkably prescient.

Now I am of a certain age I wonder if I have become set in my ways. And in contemplating this I wonder if I have a choice of what ways to be set in.

It's true , I do seem to hark back to earlier periods in my life. I am currently growing my hair ( yes, I know I am lucky). This references student/ hippy days ( but I will forego the crushed velvet trousers and cheesecloth shirts). I am also drawn to the slightly earlier mod ethos. A bit of tailoring with a slightly fitted jacket , or a casual Harrington. Sharp shoes . A well pressed shirt. And then the career era. Suits and shirts of distinction. This isn't a big deal. But at least I am avoiding nostalgic rock and roll merchandise. Or fake vintage / post modern garb.

It means that I look for stuff when I am shopping, not really knowing what I am looking for, but having to think whether it resonates in the way I want.

And of course there doesn't seem to be a single shop that caters for me.

Where is Lord John when you need him?

Readers' corner

I have just discovered an excellent new site, The Book Depository which will ship books worldwide for free. While its discounts aren't always quite as good as Amazon, because there are no shipping costs the price often works out the same (and they give you a price comparison). It's extremely useful for books not available in the US.

You'll find The Clothes On Their Backs there, though they don't seem yet to have a pre-order facility for The Thoughtful Dresser - and my limited posting at the moment is down to my rushing to meet the end of the month deadline for delivery of the MS of that book.

Ethics in the boardroom

This Guardian piece pinpoints the problem with the with ethical fashion labels, that they still favour the young, ethnic look of the people who run them and have little to offer anyone who needs to go to work in an office every day. Do they have anything to offer someone who needs to to work in an office every day? Apparently not. A reader writes that she'd like an ethically made suit with pencil skirt, and they fail to find one:

The ethical fashion industry is still, despite huge growth in recent years, such a small part of the gigantic fashion behemoth that more specialised requirements can sometimes be tricky – and in ethical clothing, smart workwear definitely counts as specialised. A good suit requires sharp tailoring. Companies working in a genuinely fair trade way will not simply outsource to skilled workers but work to support local weavers and tailors and develop their skills over a long period of time. This is one of the many reasons why setting up an ethical fashion company is a long-term investment and not a route to a quick buck. And it means that while it is perfectly possible to find sharply cut ethical clothes, it does sometimes require a little patience and a lot of hunting.
. . .
Finally we must tackle shoes. Ethical shoes are always tricky – is leather always the least ethical option when plastic is often the alternative? It's a question I'd like to come back to in the future but suffice to say that the jury is still out. At any rate, most ethical shoes tend towards the casual – trainers, flip-flops and the like

Fashion v Sport

The Thoughtful Dresser thoughtfully invited me to accompany her to the V&A last night. For the launch party of the new exhibition Fashion v Sport.

We had both agreed, over a civilised drink beforehand, that sport was not our forte, and hence not an area of the highest  interest when it comes to clothing. But the catalogue to the exhibition maintains that

'sports styles are adapted to make fashion statements , both on the high street and through high fashion'. 

To be honest the clothes on display didn't engage me. But then I am of a certain age. Some examples of what I would call art school experimentation seemed  designed to provoke a John Macenroesque response (' you cannot be serious'). Then there was the opportunity to exclaim ' Oh look, some more retro Nike high-tops'. And , to be honest, I find it difficult to believe that people are still trotting out Keith Haring as being a stylish or contemporary design motif.

They did have Paul Smith's bicycle, but strangely not the range of cycle clothes that he brought out last year.

Of course the venue was captivating as ever ( as someone once said, 'the best place to lose yourself in London' ). The fizz was in plentiful supply, and the attendant throng were well decked out ( with not much sports influence in evidence I am pleased to say).

Truth to tell, I do actually own some sportswear. Because that's the appropriate thing to wear to the gym ( not for me the faded old t-shirt and distressed baggy shorts look). I was in Lanzarote earlier this year and made the mistake of taking one of my gym shirts, dark blue micro-fibre. The one day I chose to wear it my dapper host Bill looked at me somewhat askance and enquired ' Harry, is that synthetic by any chance?

Guest post: On Beauty

My (real life) friend the poet George Szirtes, has responded to my post on Misogyny:

I wrote three posts at my own place in response to the misogyny blog by Linda, that ended with a comment by a certain Stephanie who suggested men die first because they're stupid. My contribution was: fine, I am quite happy to die first.

I am not altogether stupid. I am a writer and that gives me certain advantages. But I want to discard the advantages here. I'd like to speak, if such a thing is possible, for Mr Normal, Mr Nothing Special. I want leave the gender wars out of this for now, as far as that is possible.

Beauty is something most people seek, and most men seek it, first and foremost, in women. There are many other qualities they seek but beauty is there somewhere at the core of it. And beauty is far from simple: it is not merely the ruddy glow of health or voluptuousness (what Eliot called 'pneumatic bliss'). It is not merely fleshly, though it is that too. Nor is it proportions drawn up according to a secret formula. What I said in my post was that it was "not to be owned by either the beholder or the object. And partly, because it cannot be owned like property, because it remains an elsewhere and, notionally, eternal, it is something that has always to be sought." It is in that way a spiritual yearning. We are not elsewhere and eternal. We are here and fugitive. That sense of life as something fugitive may go a little way to explaining why women's fashions change so frequently, why last year's fashion is ridiculous and no longer beautiful. Clothes are part of the beautiful, as are changes in clothes.

Next to the essential though, the momentary always looks a bit ridiculous, particularly when it is actually a product of labour. It takes considerable time. Humour is incongruity. And while, no doubt, the attitude Linda's blog refers to is part of the package, it is neither entirely a patriarchal plot nor gross stupidity. It is part of the tragic ludicrousness of life. Men and women often appear slightly ludicrous to each other. And women are far from reticent or decorous about what is ludicrous in men. In fact they are furiously critical – which is something I have never experienced among men regarding women. But we can be adult about this, can't we? Shall we, we thoughtful ones, try?

The £200 plastic shoes

But they are not Crocs, they are designed by architect Zaha Hadid and are ecological and only available from Dover Street Market in Mayfair and will be launched at Fashion Week. They come in eight colours including silver.

Too many questions arise, such as how the sweaty-feet question is dealt with (and will your tights slip around inside them?) Or am I being a philistine? At least they have a good heel for walking.

Hommes en Jupe

working this summer's florals

I often daydream about time travelling into the future, just to see what people are wearing, and if there is anything new to come in fashion.

A small revolution in France might give a clue:

Dominique Moreau is a trailblazing freedom fighter, a man battling for equality and recognition in a world of prejudice and gender-based stereotypes. At least, that is what his supporters say. To others who may be less aware of the socio-political implications of his sartorial habits, however, Moreau's heroism is less apparent. To them, he is just a bloke in a skirt.

"Today, millions of men around the world wear skirts, like the sarong in Asia or the djellaba in Africa, without being bothered," he insists. "Why not us?"

Moreau is the president of Hommes en Jupe (Men in Skirts), an association of about 30 men in Poitiers, western France, who don skirts to go about their everyday lives. For them, getting dressed in the morning is less about style and more about political substance: they are fighting to reclaim an item of clothing last worn by Frenchmen more than 500 years ago.

"We're fighting against prejudice and cliches," says Moreau, a 39-year-old civil servant who quotes Virginia Woolf as a gender-bending inspiration. "Women fought for trousers; we're doing the same with the skirt."

And yet trousers are more functional. If you're a man and don't have does-my-bum-like-big-in-this issues, which on the whole men do not. What with their lean legs, an' all.

Hobbs, unexpectedly

At a dinner on Wednesday night, at which the hostess, as ever, was in one of her proper designer dresses (she doesn't do high street, and nor of course would I if I were rich) I wore, after a lot of hesitation, a two-year-old purple silk dress from Hobbs, which is a British mid-range chain. And was gratified to get an email the next morning remarking on my 'beautiful dress'.

For years I simply ignored Hobbs, the epitome of English rose ware (what you wear if you can afford better than Boden) dull and dated, until I actually saw the purple dress in the window of the Kings Road branch and bought it. Last year I bought an excellent pair of wide-leg black trousers. This summer I bought a plain blue unlined linen jacket to wear with a simple white very hot weather dress. (We have to cover the arms). The range was not exciting but you could find the occasional useful piece.

I now read, from the pen of the fabulous Polly Vernon in the Observer, that Hobbs is hot:

We did not see this one coming. Hobbs – previously the spiritual home of the uninspired day-dress, the enduring-but-dull crew-neck knit and not very much else, let's be honest – has come up with a storming collection of clothes for autumn/winter 2008. These pieces are brilliant: sharply tailored, totally dramatic, with significant fashion edge. We're especially enamoured of the silken cocktail frock with the feather ruff (and why wouldn't we be? It's exquisite!); but we'd be pretty happy with any of it, really.

The Hobbs revelation compounds Observer Woman's strongly-held theory (first expounded in the mag, by me, in the December '07 issue,) that mid-market grown-up lady fashion is going to rule the world, any day now. To wit: Whistles totally rocks under Jane Shepherdson, Banana Republic's had such an amazing inaugural season in the UK that it hasn't even bothered getting itself into a dirty summer-sale scenario, and Jaeger's incoming collection is blowing our minds. We love it when we're right.

I already have one piece from the Jaeger collection and plan to buy more.

Misogyny defined

. . . one of the great rhetorical tricks of patriarchy, which is to define women’s value in terms of appearance, and simultaneously to define appearance as something so utterly trivial that only completely shallow and useless creatures — like, say, women! — would care about it.

writes Kate Harding,

A fashion resurrected

Looking for something to wear last night to go out to dinner on a hot night, I glanced once more at a very beautiful sea green long dress I have had since 1999 for godsake. Long has been out of style for fashion decades, even fashion centuries. I could still wear that dress, but where to? As Lisa Armstrong points out,

For years now we've all been wearing short cocktail dresses in the evening, on the assumption that only Swedish royalty and Oscar nominees still wear long.

But the return of the maxi dress may presage the return of long. Here's how to do it:

Where the maxi dress blazed a trail, the long dress now floats along in reflected glory. Far from looking stiff and formal, the long dresses that guests wore at the Wood-Macdonald wedding looked fresh and uncontrived. Suddenly, asking friends if they are going long or short for an event sounds like a sensible question rather than satire. After years of being force fed acres of over-bronzed, over-plucked, overexposed, punishingly high-maintenance flesh, covering up looks neither oppressive nor puritanical, but chic and - paradoxically - simple.

Inevitably, there are a few tricks to making it all look effortless. Pale colours are fine, but not sickly pastels. Dirty pinks, faded greens or a retro print are the ideal. The right kind of cover-up is another trigger to achieving the desired effect - nothing too bulky, or too coat-like. A vintagey lacy cardigan is a sweet option, but a velvet wrap or a pashmina works too. Outsize shoulder bags are hopeless - this is a look made for clutches, or something antique on a chain. Hair should be simple and uncontrived - a loose ponytail or chignon would work well, the better to show off those big dangly earrings. Shoes don't have to be clumpy or aggressive-looking, although a platform keeps the look from being too early-Nineties.

How to get Kissed

The papers today are full of a new line of make-up for men. Predictably, they're not keen. Harry has not yet advanced beyond the soap and water stage of metrosexuality and was horrified at the price of a Boots sunscreen. £10!!!

Guyliner, a £6.50 kohl pencil, will be in stores this week, closely followed by Manscara, a clear gel for lashes and brows. If they sell well, a lip balm and cover-up will follow.

But are Britain's men ready to start the day by enhancing their eyes or concealing their bags? Not according to 17-year-old Damon Aston, a jeweller from Watford, who agreed to try Guyliner, but couldn't wait to get it off. "I would never wear it. It's not manly, it's just gimpy. I'm not that kind of boy. I don't think girls would like it. It depends on the girl, but not the ones who like proper boys," he insisted.

Barry, who runs a London market stall selling cosmetics, agreed. "I don't know anyone who would wear it. I heard Jean Paul Gaultier is selling lip balm, but it's not for me. I don't think I could sell it on my stall."

Bill Jones, who works as a French polisher, said that his partner might like him to wear it, but he refused to try it on. "It takes too much time to do when you are going out and when you get to my age the less you look in the mirror the better," he said. "She might like it and think it makes me look better, but I'd only try it in the bedroom."

However, financial assistant Iain Robertson disagreed. "It looks good. I think most men are a bit metrosexual these days. It's just makeup and women may traditionally buy it, but it's not set in stone. You could be in the office with a hangover and cover it up with concealer."

After struggling to apply it, drama students Andrew Bate and Tom Done were pleased with the way the Guyliner brought out their eyes. "I would wear it to some events," Tom said. "But I wouldn't wear it to work or to have a pint with my dad."

Tattooist Graham Carlton, 45, admitted he was no stranger to makeup: "I wore it many times when I was growing up in the 80s with the New Romantic scene. It was almost a uniform and the girls liked it. I don't think it would have the same effect now - I have gained 4st and 30 years so I'm guessing I would look like Danny La Rue."

Such a perfect day . . .

It is lovely when you are longlisted for a major literary prize and people send you flowers. But Anya Hindmarch sent me this.

And a very nice email.

Booker Prize longlist

Man Booker 2008 longlist

The ‘Man Booker Dozen’ 2007

The longlist for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced on Tuesday 29 July 2008.

A biography and synopsis for each title will follow on shortly

• Aravind Adiga

  The White Tiger

  Atlantic

  read more »

• Gaynor Arnold

  Girl in a Blue Dress

  Tindal Street Press

  read more »

• Sebastian Barry

  The Secret Scripture

  Faber & Faber

  read more »

• John Berger

  From A to X

  Verso

  read more »

• Michelle de Kretser

  The Lost Dog

  Chatto & Windus

  read more »

• Amitav Ghosh

  Sea of Poppies

  John Murray

  read more »

• Linda Grant

  The Clothes on Their Backs

  Virago

  read more »

• Mohammed Hanif

  A Case of Exploding Mangoes

  Jonathan Cape

  read more »

• Philip Hensher

  The Northern Clemency

  Fourth Estate

  read more »

• Joseph O’Neill

  Netherland

  Fourth Estate

  read more »

• Salman Rushdie

  The Enchantress of Florence

  Jonathan Cape

  read more »

• Tom Rob Smith

  Child 44

  Simon & Schuster

  read more »

• Steve Toltz

  A Fraction of the Whole

  Hamish Hamilton

  read more »

Judith Krantz remembered

I'm researching a piece on the 30th anniversary of the publication of Judith Krantz's first novel, Scruples. Do any of you have any opinions about her, as a very early chick-lit writer?

Mutton dressed as lad

In the piece Harry links to, there is the following observation:

"I'm not sure our readers are clinging to their youth," says David Hepworth, co-founder of The Word with Mark Ellen. "The point is, they don't believe they've ever got old. They'll do what they like until they fall down. Women, for all sorts of body clock reasons, always know exactly how old they are; but men, in their own heads, are perennially 37. What's more, they're blessed with a magical ability to look in the mirror and disregard all the evidence to the contrary."

Is Harry a Groovy Old Man?

In today's Independent John Walsh casts a spotlight over what, as far as I am aware, has been a previously unidentified cultural demographic.

As he says mid-way through the article:

'The Groovy Old Men' started out as the children of post-war rock'n'roll, growing up in the forties, fifties, and sixties. They're probably the most fortunate generation in history. Lucky to have missed the war, most of them also missed rationing, national service, and austerity. But they witnessed the initial stirrings of rock music-Elvis, Bill Haley, Cliff (?) Buddy -the benefits of the pill, the apotheosis of the teenager, the rise of satire, the counterculture, the expansion of screen -based culture into the global village, the first wave of computers....No wonder Groovy Young Men turned out the way they did.' ( read full article here)

Well, apart from the absence of any mention of the Grateful Dead , recreational drugs , and tab-collar shirts, do I see myself reflected in this definition? Well, truth to say, yes. I have an i-pod, I go to the gym, and I did go to the Latitude Festival with my sons last year ( but not this year because I thought the music line-up was dull).

As for the other observations that Mr Walsh enumerates: they are well made and we get the picture- it all serves pretty well as a journalistic approximation.

But what reading this rather engaging article on- line won't show you is two things. Firstly the pleasing absence of any photo of the ghastly ego on legs that is Mick Jagger. It's about time that he wasn't trotted out as the icon of our generation. He never was. In Harry's opinion he is a shallow show-business construct of his own making, and he fronts his own tribute band. Which is sad , rather than impressive.

Instead the article in the paper is pleasingly illustrated with photos of Terence Stamp, Bill Nighy, and Paul Smith, amongst others. Each, in their own way, with an admirable degree of style, and, I would surmise, a mature and idiosyncratic take on, well, getting older.

Harry Goes To Paris

Just for three days. But time enough for art, shopping, dining, and good conversation.

My very urbane and charming host James suggested either the Richard Avedon or Annie Liebowitz exhibitions currently on in Paris.

I plumped for the Avedon. I had had a dose of Ms Liebowitz at the Vanity Fair show at London's National Portrait Gallery earlier in the year. There is only so much contrived celebration of celebrity one can take I feel.

The Avedon was splendid.Of course much of his early fashion work was located in 50's Paris. And very captivating it was. But the aesthetics and glamour of the fashion work were pleasingly juxtaposed against the later, mesmerising, portraits. Samuel Beckett in Paris, the Beatles caught in that moment when they were growing from boys to men. And the Monroe shot. How over-played and overused her image has become. But here was one I had not seen before, almost without artifice, finally looking like a real person.

In the last room there were just shots of real people. Some of the current dispossessed of the USA. A memorable show.

The only disappointment was that they had made the wrong choice in terms of the show poster. It's always good to finish a cultural expedition with some shopping.