Dressed up and dressed down

Having cast doubt in an earlier posting on the current British ability to do formal wear really well these days, I’m very cheered by much of the informal clothing I’m seeing around in London this summer. Good colour combinations, comfortably cut (but not scruffy) garments, some imaginative mixes, above all, people actually looking as if they’re enjoying what they’re wearing. I think we’re getting better at this sort of clothing instead, perhaps – and in future commentators will say things like “Oh, yes, that sort of badly put together casual look is typical of 1995–2005, before people learnt to be happier about what they wore”.

Maybe it’s partly because although there are fashionable elements, there isn’t really one distinctively fashionable look any more – you know, more people may actually be wearing what they prefer and what suits them – we can hope so, anyway. Yes, of course there are always some fashion disasters to be seen, but they can be amusing, apart from the fact that if you really want to wear bright orange tights, or your clothes (apparently) inside out, or stick wooden wedges in your shoes (all of which I’ve seen recently) it is your right to do so.

And of course, some fine weather helps, although everybody still seemed to be putting a good face on it on Tuesday, when the heavens opened and all those summery clothes got soaked. I should have known better than to comment to my colleagues as we left work that evening “Oh look, it’s more or less stopped raining…”

Costume Curator’s Holiday

I couldn’t better Keith’s description of yesterday afternoon’s Garter Service at Windsor Castle (at Zen Mischief), but have to say that I did have a wonderful time pursuing my lifelong habit of looking at what people are wearing.

Fashion commentators tend to agree that the British do formal wear better than casual. Maybe. There were certainly some nice effects, and they weren’t all on the young and slender, either. On the whole I thought the simpler female outfits and hats were the better, like the plain pink linen suit and matching hat on a woman about my age four or five seats to my right. Men had the choice of morning dress or lounge suit – there were some top hats, but not many.

As to the fashion victims, there were some exceedingly irritating pieces of ditsy headgear – I don’t think they merit the word ‘hat’, although one older woman was wearing a frothy confection which looked like vintage 20s or 30s court dress to me, the kind worn with a long dress in the daytime – and it really suited her. There was one hat which had coy veiling effects but did nothing at all to conceal the constant smirk on its wearer’s face, and one which had all the appearance of being decorated with a dead Yorkshire terrier! Frills and feathered hair slides do better on the under-thirties and best of all on the under fifteens, I feel. I’m old-fashioned enough not to like bare arms in a formal religious setting, especially when the dress looks like underwear, like the example in front of me. And one female across the aisle seemed to be having a size competition between her hat, her bosom and her knees!

The official stuff was the most eye-catching, of course. There’s no competing with the likes of Garter robes, Heralds’ tabards, Yeoman Warders' ruffs (glory be, they still prop them up at the back with a piccadill, of which no genuine 16th or 17th century examples survive!), and the like. I look at the band of the Household Cavalry and marvel at the sheer amount of gold braid and wire worked on their outfits – apparently a skill which is now in very short supply.

Apparently the tradition of an annual Garter procession and service only dates back just over 60 years. You’d never think it, is all I can say!

Clothes shopping

I decided to devote some energy to clothes shopping yesterday afternoon. While I did actually spend some money – which is far from always the case – I have seldom seen such an acreage of things I would never want to wear.

Apart from a lot of horrible synthetic fabrics and unflattering colours (orange, mustard, chartreuse) a number of my pet hates were visible – frilled T-shirts, tops ornamented with beads and paste ‘gems’, cropped trousers, jackets with ‘skirt’ cuffs. And I especially dislike holding a garment up to the light and being able to see through it (and we’re talking T-shirts and cardigans here, not nighties). Yes, I look better in substantial stuff anyway, but to me flimsy equals bad value. Some of these things are going to look wrecked by the time they’ve been worn twice, and even worse if they’re washed.

K and I are going to a formal occasion (ladies are requested to wear hats!) tomorrow, and I think the newest thing I shall be wearing are my sandals, bought last year. If I could wear shoes at the moment then it would be courts, and the newest thing would probably be my evening jacket, which is about four years old. My dress is circa 1989 Laura Ashley, and I haven’t yet seen another one I like as well – but then contrary to what all the marketing types in the fashion industry would insist, I like my clothes so much (when I do buy them) that I want them to last for ever.