Lust Stalks The Fitting Rooms
The Age
Wednesday February 9, 1994
Adoration followed by desertion is normal in love affairs of fashion writes FIONA WHITLOCK.
PRE-loved school textbooks like `Ibsen for Young Players' and yellow Toyota Corollas with towelling seats are definitely second-hand. No one in their right mind has felt their heart-strings jump at the sight of either.
But a dress, even if it's made from yellow towelling, will probably have been loved, if only for 10 minutes. Something mysterious in its threads makes us fall in love with it from the moment we see it in the shop.
After a brief, but sophisticated, skirmish with our conscience _ ``Gee, um, I don't know, gosh, um ..." _ we wave our credit cards or real money in surrender at the sales assistant, take the bag and float away from the shop with our prize.
The bliss lasts until that mortifying moment when we suddenly realise the dress looks weird _ not delightfully original, but oddball, as in several weeks out of step with fashion. And, horror of all horrors, it makes our bum look bigger.
Life can be so imperfect. Until the next time you fall in love across a crowded clothes rack. ``Gotta get something new," was Sportsgirl's clever summer slogan, aimed through its shining windows to go straight to the shopping nerve.
Because, other than having an old pet, like a tortoise or a husband who adores you _ and with your ghastly habits, like eating Twisties in bed, who else would? _ the most desirable thing is newness. Even if the ``new" things are just new to you.
Women can be so promiscuous. Our lack of fidelity to clothes is scary.
Lustful one moment, adoring the next, and then, whoomph, throwing that skirt/dress/jacket, now judged to be hideous, right out of our lives.
Of course, every second fashion magazine has a feature about love affairs between women and the ``investment piece" in their wardrobe, invariably an Armani jacket, which Edwina, the merchant banker/interior designer, bought in Milan 10 years ago, but she's really got her $10,000 worth out of it because it has ``worked hard" for her.
When you've paid that much for something to put on your back, it should go to the office to do your job for you. Or at least keep you informed as to whose backstabbing you in office politics.
Previous generations of women, who wore hats and gloves to town, became ``matrons" (men like to be nursed) by the age of 30, and prided themselves on the qualities of sensibleness and thriftiness.
They would faint at the idea of spending lumps of money the size of a year's mortgage repayment on clothes.
They replaced worn collars on their husband's shirts, darned socks over those bakelite spuds, sewed for the kiddies, and made frocks for themselves that they wore for years.
These were the last generation of women to believe that money doesn't buy happiness. The generation of reprobate women who in their 40s wear jeans to town are inclined to buy happiness. They find you can have a much cheerier attack of depression at a cosmetics counter.
I've only heard one man say he loved shopping, and it made him feel ``yummy," he said, but then he used to make costumes for Princess Panda. On the run from the HSV-7 wardrobe department in the 1970s, he was one of many Australian queens _ ``And, sweetie, we're screaming queens!" _ baking their bods in Mykonos.
Non-screaming men almost have to be dragged into shops to buy new clothes. They can't understand why they need new ones. Try separating him from a pair of corduroy dacks that have joined him drinking in the Chelsea Potter in swinging London, had sober moments at Lenin's Tomb, and been to so many Grand Finals they could almost stride their own way to the MCG.
These blokes don't buy the notion of ``the joy of shopping". Women, however, have been seen to smoke outside shops in a style that suggests a post-shopping ciggie after a particularly exhilarating purchase. Hmmm, that was wonderful! Unless you set out to get an earth-shattering dress for a soiree that night and it's eight minutes before the shops shut and you can't find a blooming thing _ and no, you don't want to try on a size eight white satin mini-dress _ shopping usually produces that feel-good sensation in the shopping centre of the brain.
Black moods can be lifted. A mate is always so enraged by her manipulative, bitchy mother, that after every tortuous visit she has to tranquillise herself with retail therapy. Mother, who thinks that only the finest quality is good enough for her, always gives her daughters cast-offs for Christmas and birthday presents.
She tells her daughter that the handbag she has given her is Italian, of ``lovely leather, darling". But somehow the labels inside read ``China" instead of ``Italy" and ``vinyl" rather than ``leather".
Old tram tickets and handbag fluff are tell-tale that the goods are Mother's or ``Kathy Dearest's", rejects. Bikinis that would be tight on Nancy Reagan, and extra large pantyhose in turquoise and an argyle pattern and the 49 cent price sticker still on them, are some of the treasures this magnaminous mother has bestowed in pre-wrapped wrapping paper.
As fast as her car wheels will take her away from mother dearest, my friend heads for the Salvo dump bins with the frightful presents.
Unfortunately, as a child, she didn't have a car to escape in, or an alternative to the clothes that Mummy sewed her.
A pink velvet empire-line dress is one particular horror outfit she remembers from a time when her classmates dressed as Rockers. Now 44, Pat is still allergic to pink. She has to have an antidote of a strong drink and a cigarette and is fond of black leather pants and biker jackets.
The outfit she'd save if her house were on fire is a black catsuit, a la Diana Rigg. For Pat, it's not recycled fashion because she's wearing 60s stuff the first time around.
To our mothers and grandmothers one of the bitchiest things you could say about a woman was that she was ``mutton dressed as lamb". Well, mutton is very unattractive, so why not hang out with the lambs? The latest English `Elle' proclaims ``The Return of the Real Girl".
The magazine says the epitome of eternal girls are Jane Birkin, Francoise Hardy and Marianne Faithfull, (although poor old Marianne has done it hard and at times wouldn't have known whether she was Arthur or Martha), who could never be described as ladies, women or wimmin.
Girliness is about being a free spirit and being confident enough to behave girlishly in public, says `Elle'. If we do happen to be caught sounding ``girly" talking about clothes is it any more fatuous than blokes hammering on about footy? Hey, as Emile Zola said the other day: ``I am here to live out loud."
© 1994 The Age