Because you can't have depths without surfaces.
Linda Grant, thinking about clothes, books and other matters.
Pure Collection Ltd.
Net-a-porter UK

Saturday, 19 July 2008

More politics!

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Politics

It has always been my intention to keep politics well away from this site. We are here, regardless of nationality, religion, or what we vote, because we are interested in clothes. I may relax the rule slightly as we get nearer to the upcoming US elections, but certainly not at the expense of alienating readers who come here to get a fashion fix. There is nothing I dislike more than the flame wars of the political blogs (though I am sometimes guilty of indulging.)

But from time to time I have something to say about something in the news and I prefer to park those as guest posts at the site of my good friend Norman Geras, who first introduced me to the very concept of the blog, as it happens.

So if you are interested in my views on a recently released murderer, you will find them here. And find out what I do in my spare time when I am not being irritated about people who won't dress up at parties. Or writing books.

Ebay corner


I have up for sale a pair of barely worn Marni shoes, size 39 (UK six, I believe) if you can take walking in another woman's shoes.

Every time I take them out of the box I hope that they will have grown a quarter of an inch since I wore them last, but they never have.

Which is odd, when you consider how many clothes shrink in the wardrobe.

The woman who spent £3000 to get a flat stomach . . . read on

from the Times

I remembered an article I had read by a journalist whose similarly stubborn belly was “melted away” by Smartlipo; she'd had it done in the lunch-hour in New York. Two weeks later, she wrote, she was patting her “concave” belly and flaunting herself in a new bikini. After a week's deliberation I booked a consultation at a private clinic in London, one of the top British places for Smartlipo. While waiting for my consultation I was handed a cuttings book full of similar testimonials. It was going to cost £3,000, but even before I saw the expert, I was sold. Yippee, I thought, I'm on my way to a concave belly.
. . .

One would have thought that after not one but two sessions of Smartlipo, and fat removal, my stomach would resemble Keira Knightley's. Alas, no. Perhaps it is my age. Perhaps it is my lifestyle. You know how debauched journalists are. Well, maybe, but I spent six months training for, and ran, the London Marathon this year. In under four hours.

What a silly waste of money

Perhaps it is my genes. Anyway, what a silly waste of money; and what a potential risk, having an intrusive procedure done to my healthy body that was deemed necessary because I deemed it thus. I put the experience behind me and resigned myself to loving my tummy. Then I went on a press trip to St Tropez, where, lo and behold, I bumped into the journalist who had written the original Smartlipo testimony that had so encouraged me. And do you know what, she wasn't wearing a bikini.

“Oh, Smartlipo! It didn't work for me either,” she laughed. After I had picked myself off the floor, I asked her what she would suggest instead of Smartlipo. “There are cheaper, less invasive ways of getting a flat stomach. Do Pilates and yoga, and stop eating so much sugar and drinking so much. Then spend the £3,000 on a holiday!”


How to make yourself look short and fat


This girl called Alexa Chung went into Russell and Bromley and bought a pair of black loafers and now Agyness Deane has a pair too and so we all have to wear them.

In my own quest for shoes I could walk in, I tried a pair on a few months ago was too depressed by the vision of myself in the mirror to buy them.

My legs+flats=low self-esteem.

Jess Cartner-Morley has also given them a whirl. She points out that if we must suffer to be beautiful, we also have to suffer to be fashionable. With sky-high heels the suffering is physical, with loafers, its psychological. Which is worse? The pain of heels is temporary, mental anguish can scar you for life:


If ballet flats can feel a bit twee and mousy, loafers have about them a strident air of the fifth form prefect. They make my legs and feet look about as delicate as hockey sticks. But this season, fifth form prefect has come over all sixth form common room cool. Hey, you have to suffer to be beautiful; you have to ditch your vanity to be comfortable. For once, it all makes sense.




Pass.