8 posts tagged “shopping”

(Title inspired by my current interweb obsession)

The nineties were not such a good moment for me, fashion-wise. Nor were the first couple of years of the noughties, to be honest. From around the age of 14 to, I'm not joking, the age of 22 or so, I was galumphing through a style wilderness with no compass or map and no-one tactless enough to shriek "take that off!" as they ought to have done.

The permutations of my fashion non-sense can be conveniently divided into chronological stages, which are, briefly:

Age 14-15: The unsuccessful grunge kid. Pulled between R Kelly and Nirvana, I couldn't work out whether I wanted to be wearing plaid shirts and floor-length crushed velvet skirts, or baby tees with inappropriate slogans. So I wore both, and also smeared grey eyeshadow under my eyes, in order to look like I had been, like, waaaay partying, or something. I've never admitted that before, and it's embarassing.

Age 15-17: Just.... not enough fabric. Skirts were much too short. So were tops. I must, however, give my little self credit for the baggy jeans, clumpy trainers and tiny tee look. It was a moment of clarity in a troubled era (still trying to work that look now, as it happens).

Aged 18-20: The night dweller.This was a real clanger. During my clubbing years I actually wore, in public: furry "boots" which consisted of swathes of fun fur wrapped around my calves; angel wings; lycra hotpants; sequinned bikini tops as acceptable going out clothes. Sometimes I simply decided not to bother wearing a top when I went clubbing, and wore a bra instead. The daytime look for this era was character by cheap man-made fabric with bits cut out.

Aged 20-22: Still not quite able to bring myself to wear a top which covered my navel, including shirts which I wore to work. I wasn't so bad at this stage, but there were moments, such as the black satin man's tie which I wore with a navel-revealing yet strangely baggy red shirt. To work.

Now, age 26, I finally feel that I have found a style which I am reasonably happy with, despite being somewhat heavier (no navel-bearing here any longer). It seems a little late in proceedings to be finally buying (on the whole) the right clothes for me. But really I think it's often the case that it takes years of experimentation and disasters for people to finally find their niche . It's partly to do with feeling more comfortable in one's skin, and a lot to do, in my case, with getting my colours done at Colour Me Beautiful. I now have to do a red/orange wash alongside the usual darks, lights and colours- oh the colourful glory of it all!

The benefits of being paid a regular salary definitely help. I'm not at all wedded to the idea of expensive or designer clothes- in fact my only weakness therein lies in my obsession with (slobber) Kurt Geiger shoes. (I'm telling you ladies, they are the most comfortable shoes around. Even the knee-high stack heel boots! Even little pointy-toed stiletto numbers!). Other than that I am perfectly dandy with Topshop and its ilk. I've even been known to brave the rancid portal of hell that is Primark in search of a bargain.

But.

BUT.

I will not be buying my clothes from Ethel Austin, as this week's edition of weekly women's glossy Grazia suggests (I've mentioned Grazia before- in my previous post, in fact). Apparently EA is the new Primark/Peacocks/George at Asda. Whatevs. Ethel Austin is beyond Primark. Beyond Primark, even!

Ethel Austin- a clothes shop which used to exist only in Northern England, but has now opened branches in London, according to Grazia, so it must be fashionable- is the shop where we used to buy cheap, really cheap, t-shirts from as kids when we had no money. It's the shop in which my thirteen-year-old self cringed whenever she entered its doors, shopping there through economic necessity rather than any free will. There was a branch round the corner from me, in what was then a rather hum-drum suburb of Manchester, which says it all really, and the branch is still there. In fact, just the other day, I looked at it and shuddered. The clothes were flimsy and frumpy. I would bet my bottom dollar that all the jeans are still mum-jeans (you know what I'm talking about).

And it's called Ethel! Grazia cannot, truly, be serious. It is just wrong to be shopping at shop which I rejected when I was eight, throughout the under-eye eyeshadow years, the plaid shirt and crushed velvet years and the sequinned bikini tops era. When a girl in a pink cowboy hat and chaps turns her nose up at a clothes shop, you know it's bad.

I can't help but feel it's a case of the emperor's new clothes. I envisage an office of glossy, nattily-dressed media snipes in the Grazia office, tittering over which dreadful shop they are going to send their readers to this week. "Like, oh my god, Betty", they might giggle, "let's tell them to buy their clothes from Woolworths! It's so hot right now! Like, right".

I won't give in.

And yet I might.

At this point I have a confession: mere days after denouncing clown clothes the other week, I hied hence to French Connection and bought, um, a billowing bright blue dress with a seam under the bust and large, fabric-coloured buttons. The essence of clown. And I love it.

I've done this before. I'm sure I've also condemned leggings on this blog. Yeah. Bought some of those too. I'm sorry. I am cantankerous and fickle and often wrong. And I only rage so now because, as loudly as I declare that I will not be shopping at Ethel, it is written in the stars and on the wall and on every other premonitive surface, that before April goes out like a lamb, I will have found myself magnetically drawn through Ethel's doors on my way to the supermarket.

So I'll see you next time, when I will be sporting the £10 Ethel Austin gunmetal blue strapless shiny swimsuit, worn under denim shorts, "for that clubkid look!", according to Grazia.

ps. I will not.

Show us something you did, made, saw or bought this past weekend.

More consumerism this weekend. I am writing this post sitting in our new tubby chair which we bought on sale at a bargainous price, from my best friend's partner's dad's company (still with me?). Click on the link especially if you live in north-west England, because Lounge Lizard's stuff is really very fine and handmade and beautiful, plus it's a family company. Buy!

Also, we got wifi. I just walked across the room to the tubby chair, carrying the laptop, whilst on the internet. I could run up and down the stairs, carrying the laptop, whilst on the internet. I could blog in the bath! Or perhaps not, after the white wine/laptop incident of 2006. Me + electricals +liquid = not so much.

Glancing back over my blog of late, it's all shopping and hair and braces and silly jokes. A whole heap of frippery. But I like it! I am not obsessed with shopping/looking in the mirror/brushing my teeth. But I am wholeheartedly glad that I am generating such flippant and materialistic, um, material. Because I can, and because my heart feels able.

My best friend has noticed it : I'm more upbeat these days. Grief has't got me by the balls quite as tightly as it did before. Now it's kind of hanging round my neck and sticking its claws into my heart from time to time. I was prompted into considering this when I saw yesterday's Question of the Day: What were you doing one year ago? I made haste to my diary, only to find that, one year ago, I seriously thought I was insane and was about to seek professional help for said madness. I didn't really want to carry on without my sister H (who died in July 2004) but knew I had to.
I decided not to blog about what I was doing this time last year.

Depite rather than because of the professional help (he wore a belt with a scorpion encased in the amber buckle, and hyptonised me without warning one day), these days I know I am not mad. I know I can carry on. Damn, I wish she were still here. But I really do exist much more in the real world these days. I can talk about, and care about, my teeth and my hair and clown clothes. I have fun. I laugh, I dance, and, unfortunately for those nearby, I sing.

In the very early days after we lost H so suddenly, I would search the faces of my family as we sat paralysed by shock and grief. "It won't always be like this", we would tell each other, not believing it for a second. "We won't always feel this way". The thought that we might made us desperate.  Even six months later I scribbled in my diary "help me please somebody or I will die of a broken heart". Each month for at least a year and a half, the 10th of each month would trip me up and I'd be sent sprawling back into the pit. Now, 32 months since she died, sometimes the 10th passes me by without that realisation.

I don't know what it is, because I'm not any less sad that she died. I don't miss her any less. I just... this is hard for me to say... I feel a lot better than I did.

And now I feel horribly guilty for expressing this. Part of me still feels as though I should spend my life not just grieving for, but in mourning for, the sister I have lost. And there's the difference. To me, grief is the emotion, the missing of her, the memories, the wishing, the love- pure and fierce.  Mourning is the physical symptoms- stomach ache, migraines, fatigue- and the inability to concentrate, the workplace breakdowns, the paralysis, the dread of company and the total loss of self-esteem, the being stuck in one awful moment and not moving forward.

 I'll always be grieving for her. How could I not? She was amazing. But am I still in mourning? Tentatively, although I dread posting this and admitting it, I would say I am not.

My life just got better. For months, years even, I've been after a) a contract phone to replace my pay-as-you-go regime, which often leaves me incommunicado due to no credit, and b) an MP3 player. This week, I achieved both those aims, when I signed up for a Walkman phone, as part of a fairly reasonable deal from Orange. I'm a Dolphin, apparently, whatever the hell that means.

After a few days of the obligatory delivery cock-ups and wrangling with patronising call centre team managers (I mean you, Adrian!) , I got my hands on my new mean machine. The G helped me to download some albums this morning, in preparation for my shopping trip to town today.

The bus journey to the city centre was ten times more enjoyable than it has ever been, with the Killers to accompany it. Even Huge Fat Smelly-Hair Woman, who sat next to me and took over 3/4 of the double seat, couldn't curb my enthusiasm. Nor could Crazy Bible Holding Man, who regularly delays that particular bus route by leaping aboard and cheerfully beseeching the driver to let him ride for free: "Please, sir, eh? Sir, huh? Please?". In fact, the only thing that  held me back was not being able to bounce and sing along like I wanted to. After all, I don't want to become known as Loopy I've-Got-Soul-But-I'm-Not-A-Soldier Girl.

The shopping trip itself fell short of the dizzy heights reached by the bus journey. This was partly due to the fact that I had to turn off my music as it competed with the (far too loud) sound systems inside the store. But mostly, I had a failed shopping trip because I could not find what I was looking for: a nice daytime dress, with a cinched-in waist and maybe one of those tulip shaped skirts.

I started at Topshop, with hope in my heart. When that yielded nothing, I moved on to Warehouse, Wallis, River Island, French Connection, Zara, Mango. I also tried Selfridges, where I felt saddened by the sight of the 15-year-old Wags in Waiting: young girls who, rather than making clumsy attempts at being alluring to that guy in Year 11 with short skirts and cheap lip gloss as we used to, are far too aware of their value as sexual commodities in an adult world. Their style is expensive, self-aware. They are mini women, and too knowing for their own good.

In short, I looked everywhere for a natty little dress. But what did I find in every shop?

Clown clothes.

Great billowing balloons of brightly-printed fabric, designed to flop over and swamp the body. Dresses with seams under the bust, like raggy doll costumes, cascading in clumsy tent shapes to disguise any hint of a waist. Romper suits- romper suits!- in primary colours, with big clowny buttons covered in fabric. Jersey and crinkled cotton and not a hint of sophistication. Tees with neon stars all over,which would hang down to the knees of the wearer like a kid in their dad's t-shirt. Childlike collars on smock tops, and big bows on necklines. And a Mac counter in Selfridges gaudily promoting their latest look: Barbie.

Maybe I'm old and don't get it any more. But I was only a year younger last spring, and I remember pencil skirts and slinky tees and shift dresses from that season. Or maybe, as I read in a fashion magazine, these voluminous shapes are designed so that Size Zero limbs look extra twiggy poking out from therein, and so that little slips of girls with big eyes look extra child-like and vulnerable swamped in their clown clothes.

I honestly don't have a vendetta about very thin women or the clothes that might suit them. (I just remembered that my last blog post had a similar comment in it). Honestly, I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I would quite like to be very thin. But I still wouldn't wear clown clothes. And I'm not ready to resign myself to full-time M&S-dom for at least a decade. It's just that, I've been trying very hard to spruce up my look over the last year or so, and I feel I'm being scuppered by the latest crop of clothes.

I know what happened. There must have been a mix-up somewhere in Fashion Heaven, whereby a fashion overlord appeared one day and shrieked to his/her minions: "I'm thinking Coco!".  And current fashions are channeling Coco. But they must have got the wrong end of the stick, because we've ended up The Clown, rather than Chanel.

Primark, Sunday afternoon.

Woman with two small children on reins, to friend also hauling two youngsters on reins:

"That's the last time I come out without me pram. Me back's killing, me feet are aching, and all I've bought is a tonka truck and a fifteen quid pair of knickers from TK Maxx".

chocolate
banana
christmas
shopping
ipod
bike
edith piaf
laughter
weekend

I just opened up this "compose" page and gazed at it blankly. As The G wandered through from the kitchen, where he had been stirring delicious red cabbage and checking on the chicken legs roasting in the oven (oink, slurp), I announced "I am totally without inspiration". Resting his chin on the top of my head- which was not entirely comfortable, it has to be said- G typed the above list of words, presumably for inspiration.

So here goes:

Chocolate
Not a huge fan, can take it or leave it. It makes me fat, and I would much rather get fat by drinking gallons of wine. And that is not mere lip-service, as am currently demonstrating.

Banana
A good energy boost, granted. But bananas are sneaky. They are secretly fattening.

Christmas
I can't decide whether it fills me with joy or makes me want to weep. I love all the paraphenalia and projects though. We're buying our tree tomorrow.

Shopping
Perhaps this was a hint from The G that I really ought to buy his Christmas present, and soon?

Ipod
I want one. I would download "Don't Leave Me This Way", as it is my humming song of the week.

Bike
We're cancelling our gym membership and I'm getting a bike. And a hula hoop. No seriously, hula-hooping is the way forward, it gives you abs of steel, or at least wire wool.

Edith Piaf
Has just been hooting and honking into my ear canals for the past hour or so. Distinctly un-relaxing

Laughter
I plan to make some, this weekend.

Weekend
Yes. Yes. Yes!

And remember folks:
Bananas: don't let them get away with it.

ps I have become obsessed with Frasier. I shunned it when it was on originally, but now Channel Four show it at breakfast time. Never mind that I work in current affairs and ought to be watching Natasha Kaplonky delivering simpering, insecere news items-  I can't get enough  of  Nialls' love for Daphne, the cringeworthy snobbishness of the Crane brothers, good old Marty, a diamond in the rough.... I even think about it at work sometimes.
I'm not late (five years or so late) to catch on. I am retro.
And it's on cable TV, right now! Must dash.

Thanks to Alex and his linking wizardry, here's yesterday's post restored to its former "glory". The mystery of its disappearance, however, remains a, er, a mystery:

How did you pick your Vox name? Does it mean something? 
Submitted by LeendaDLL.  

 *Whispering* It's my boyfriend's pet name for me. And so yes, it does mean something *coy, twinkly smile*

Speaking of nauseating (just kidding), I have just had my first Primark shopping experience. I have so far in my life resisted Primark Fever, but the cold snap has gripped me with the need for tights and lots of them, so I set forth this lunchtime to pop my Primark cheery.

(I'm sorry, I meant to write "cherry" there, but upon proof-reading, cannot bring myself to correct my typo, given that it is even more ironic than rain on your wedding day.)

Primark was sheer, unparalleled hell. The shop was full of pushchairs going very very slooowly and stopping in the aisles, carrying small children high on MSG with their chubby, grubby fingers buried in packets of wotsits.It was teeming with harrassed office workers grabbing their friday night glittery tops on their lunchbreaks, with ambling students looking annoyingly stylish and with nothing better to do but STAND IN MY WAY in their trendy bargain ballet pumps (it's November, students!).

The queue almost stretched out of the shop. I stood in it for 20 mins, to the screams of "NEXT PLEASE!" and the gruff shouts of "come here for a slap" as tots strained to be released from their wheeled prisons to go in search of additives.

I'm not being a snob. I have friends who put together fabulous outfits from Primark. Genuinely fabulous outfits over which I gasp and coo and enquire where they were bought from, without knowing they were issued from the very bowels of Satan, as I now know Primark to be. I am in awe of these pioneering women who can pick out the gems without pulling their hair out, fistful by agonising fistful. And to be honest it wasn't so much the merchandise which bothered me. I confess I snapped up a rather natty tomato red thing (which is either a very short dress or a comfortably long top)  which eased the pain a little. I bought that, and an array of hosiery for winter in various colours, weaves, lengths and deniers, for only £18.

The clothes were actually quite nice. Maybe it was the chi of the place that was all wrong. For me, Primark was a migraine entrapped in the confines of a building. It was the Mcdonalds of the retail world, with piles upon piles of high-calorie clothing offal shouting "guzzle me! consume me!", garments leaping off the rails of their own accord into my basket as fast as I could fling them out again. It was a dizzying, seething mass of humanity, an every-woman-for-herself cattle market that left me sweating, traumatised and 20 minutes late back from my lunchbreak.

But I made it. I waited in the queue, every 30 seconds or so using the universal sign language of nodding, eyebrow-raising and arm-flapping, to signal the person at the front that yes, there is a till free, can you not hear the screams of NEXT PLEASE? Why I ended up being Enormous Queue monitor (that's the queue that's enormous, cheeky), I don't know. But slowly we trundled forward and I broke for freedom towards an available till. I handed over my dirty money to the nice Polish lady, grabbed my loot and staggered, gasping, towards the exit, as fast as I could go given that I was stuck behind the world's slowest pushchair which ommitted a high-pitched squeeeeak, squeeeeak on every revolution of its wheels. 

I am a little bit broken. But I have hosiery. Very cheap hosiery, and for that I thank the evil gods of Primark.

**************************************************************************************************************************************

AND! I haven't had a drink for a whole week. Aren't I doing well? It feels fine, and I swear I have lost a couple of lbs.

Do you remember your first flight? Where did you go? Why?
Submitted by Laurel.

I was quite a late bloomer, in flying as in most things. Childhood holidays for me were camping in Wales- four kids, Mum and Dad squashed into a tent which would always blow down in a raging storm, every single time. Transport was by means of our very dilapidated VW camper van, which I found totally embarassing at the time, but now I see how cool it was and how much my Dad's dream. That van... you could hear it coming about 10 minutes before it rumbled into view.

We would holiday with families who lived on our street, and once or twice with Pei's family. I have many happy memories of wide sandy beaches and secret coves in St David's (Britain's smallest city); mums doling out brown bread sandwiches with the discipline and authority of Army majors; dads showing off their sporting "skills" with blow-up beach balls; toddlers ferreting secretively in salty puddles; boys diving into huge waves; the day after one particular storm when the beach was teeming with washed-up jellyfish. And then there was the time when the VW nearly rolled off a cliff with all six of us asleep inside.

When I was about thirteen, we upgraded to Eurocamp in France, which was, to us, unparalleled luxury. There were swimming pools, with slides! Proper (camp) beds, a fridge and a cooker in the tent. Bars at the campsite! And sunshine, every day. It was great.

So I didn't feel I missed out by not flying. When I did eventually make it onto a plane, I was thirteen years old- that was a year of luxury for me, you see- and I was going to America on a school choir trip (look, I keep reiterating that I was/am a geek, so no sniggering allowed).

The flight was from Gatwick to Boston. Our coach broke down at a service station, delaying the flight for three hours- there were around 200 of us so they couldn't really fly without us. When we eventually got on the plane, I remember being surprised at how small and beige it all was.

In those innocent pre-9/11 days, it didn't occur to me to be scared. It was all rather exciting and seemed incredibly posh- and I have to say, no flight has matched it since. Virgin Atlantic is a good experience for the flying virgin. There were little menu cards from which to choose your meal, and the food wasn't completely disgusting. I found the little bags of nibbles quite glamourous, almost as glamourous as the red-suited stewardesses, whose hearts must have sunk at the sight of 200 geeks marauding rowdily onto the plane in a blur of braces, spectacles and doc marten boots, as rowdily as choir geeks ever maraud.

I was brought up in a home where board games were encouraged and computers were not, TV was limited and I wasn't allowed to watch Grange Hill, and we didn't own a satellite dish or a VCR. So it goes without saying that throughout the entire flight, I simply gorged myself on electronic goodness. I could watch unsuitable films and American sitcoms, and play Mario Bros for seven hours flat, without any intervention. Never mind the fact that due to my games console deprivation, I didn't have the blindest notion of how to play a video game, and my Mario spent 20 minutes running frantically on the spot, being repeatedly bonked on the head by flying baddies with sharp teeth.

I'm terrified of flying now, but so much that I haven't managed to go to New York (work), Tokyo (holiday) and Greece (holiday no 2) this year. So, not that terrfied, clearly.

In other news: 

Ha! I just ordered a Magicwear dress from M&S, which I have been hankering after for months but which sold out as soon as it hit the shelves. I've been waiting for them to come back into stock for weeks, and kept missing my chance. Being ill at home pays! Ha, bitches! It's going to make me look thin.

I really need a haircut. That is all.

Obviously that is a lie and as usual, I have an awful lot of waffling to get through. So let's get cracking.

I need a haircut, for a start. I have been feeling pretty crap about my physical appearance really. The Aguilera/Von Teese Look that I planned to showcase this winter has been so far scuppered by copious filming days/weeks which require great big parkas and no hair grooming and trainers, to enable me to scamper from the scenes of despair and trauma extra quickly at the end of the day (I am still working on the terrifically depressing project, because it never ends, and it never will, seemingly). I have bought a lovely soft caramel sweater dress from H&M, and of course the mary janes, and a very cute winter coat which a waitress has just thrown coffee over, perhaps in a pique of jealousy over its loveliness, or perhaps not. But goddamit I am just not working the ladylike vibe I am aiming for. Next week, next week....

I am decidedly squidgy, also. The aformentioned depressing nature of the project I am working on requires plentiful glasses of wine and many comforting and fatty snacks to be consumed. I don't pretend that I am saying anything new when I acknowledge that I am a totally emotional eater. ie, I feel an emotion, any old emotion will do, and I eat.
And there is no time for yoga in these days of hard work filming. So I am in Not the Zone, still. And larger than usual.

AND I just look tired and sallow; and one DIY pedicure six weeks ago does not a pretty pair of feet make; and please don't ask me about the nails on my fingers because I haven't done them properly since I got a full set of falsies in New York in January (see, I told you I was hard done by); and  feeling crap about work stuff does not give a girl a glow.

Jesus. Get your violins out, please. Is there no end to my wallowing?

So it was with great relief that I went to get my colours done this morning (my birthday present from Mum). For those who aren't familiar with the magical world of Colour me Beautiful, it's basically a service which tells you which colours suit you, and which look like crap. The nice lady took all my make-up off, and once she had come round from the shock, starting brandishing colour swatches next to my face. Admittedly, some of the colours made me look as though I was actually dead, and some sucked the colour from my face and brought out my dark circles beautifully. The self-deprection poured awkwardly from my mouth in an almost constant steam- neither funny nor comfortable for those around me. But ultimately I have come away with a whole palette of colours which do suit me. And I now know that I am deep (not light), clear (not soft) and warm (not cool), apparently. So I can and should wear lots of bright, vivid colours in contrasting shades, because "Clears" have contrasting eyes, hair and skin. This is exciting indeed. Truly it would be rude not to shop, now I am armed with this new information. Especially as I have a leather wallet of colour swatches which I can whip out and hold up against prospective purchases in Shopping Boofus fashion.
The lady did my make-up too, and I have ordered a very bright lipstick called Strawberry (I tried to eat it but it didn't taste like strawberries...).

I have an image of myself taking the whole experience a little too literally, and turning up to work wearing an item of clothing in every colour in my CMB palette, or a huge sweeping technicolour dream coat with multi-coloured scarves swathed round my head. But they said these colours would suit me.....

The Colour Me Beautiful experience made me feel a little better about myself and spurred me into taking steps to make myself more presentable to the general public instead of being a repugnant old tramp. The first step was eating an enormous lunch of steak, eton mess and Irish coffee (much of which is on my new coat now) and lots more wine, with mum. It was lovely.

Now I am at home and no longer drunk, and chomping on a piece of Big Red chewing gum, which The G got me for my birthday (it's only available in the States), which I love. The G is painting the spare room, and I have just watched an episode of SATC, and am tempted to watch another. Honestly, it's like smoking, is SATC. Once you get the itch you just have to scratch.

Work is making me feel sick at the moment, and I truly dread Monday. I'm on the point of exploding and just backing out of the whole thing. I had a massive bawl last night because H's birthday is approaching fast too. But between the people I love, the Colour Me Beautiful lady, and the fact it is only Saturday, I'm feeling OK at this moment.

Also, some lovely friends from uni are coming over for lunch tomorrow. I haven't seen them for yonks so I am really looking forward to it.

And we had a really fun evening with S and M last night (ew, not that kind of S&M... pervert), who made a gorgeous dinner and were most entertaining as usual.

Mmm, and we're having squid for dinner. And chilling out with a DVD or something tonight. Or maybe X Factor. Mwah ha ha, if I get my way.

And best of all, according to Colour Me Beautiful, I can still wear black.

Hurrah!