Your wardrobe!

some reminders

A cry for help from one of my favourite readers, Suzanne:

Esther, you have to help us. What to wear? I feel like I’m in an eternal rut of jeans, long sleeved black tops, Uniqlo jumpers and maybe a shirt. DM zip up boots or white trainers. You always are a great source of what to buy. Obvs I’m massively reducing what I buy so it’s quality and sustainability. Appreciate you are massively busy but as a blogpost these are golden. Still using bath oil [Olverum]. Will never not.

I’m not at all busy and never am and even if I was busy I would claim not to be busy because I can’t stand people who say they’re so busy, busy, busy all the time.

I used to write a lot about clothes, but stopped. Because a) I lost interest in getting dressed and b) I think shopping for clothes can really become a kind of illness and I don’t want to encourage this. Oh, and c) I got to the point where I just had enough clothes. Oh, and, what suits me probably won’t suit you.

But a cry for help is a cry for help. All I can really do is describe in detail what I am doing with my clothes right now. You may find inspiration in this, you may not. I will try to tell jokes along the way to keep us all awake.

First, sort out your basics. It is so annoying when people say this but it is true. You need multiple white t-shirts that fit and flatter you, then one black t-shirt and one grey t-shirt. If your underwear is 400 years old and resembles wet newspaper, change it up (I know this is hell). You also need to update your denim.

Your denim. This is controversial because a lot of you are dog walkers and for most of the year you need narrow-legged jeans that you can slip inside a gumboot. That’s fine. But you also need a pair of wide jeans. This is the item of clothing that will modernise you the quickest. The current silhouette is big on the bottom and small or cropped on top. You will have to shuffle this all about in order to suit your particular shape.

Wide jeans - there’s more! - they are everywhere at the moment and I have seen ladies of 70+ wearing them around Soho so nobody has any excuse not to sort this out. The lady I am thinking of had a sleek salt and pepper bob, wide white jeans, a leather jacket, a jaunty scarf, little round sunglasses and red lipstick - she looked great. The thing about jeans is that you need to try on 10+ pairs in order to find the right one so just get on with it. If you are buying clothes online my top tip is to get a tailor’s tape - one of those material tape measures available in all hardware shops. Actually take your measurements and read the size guides on the shopping site and it will cut down on returns. Other top tip: if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no. Don’t think “maybe" and keep it. If it doesn’t set your pulse racing IT’S WRONG.

Forget about occasion wear. Occasion wear ought to make up 2% of your wardrobe. I loathe occasion wear. And handbags. What you need to do is think about how you actually live your life rather than how you wish you lived your life. If you spend most of your life walking the dog but despise your raincoat, fix this. If I had a dog, I would wear a huge rain cape and a waterproof bucket hat with one of those Uniqlo sling bags for miscellany and then go striding about looking mad but undeniably modern.

I wear stretchy clothes a lot because my day goes like this: walk Kitty to school. Walk back from school via the grocer’s, tidy the house, write for three hours, make dinner, walk to fetch Kitty, walk back via the grocer’s for all the things that I forgot during trip 1.

I have 3 x stretchy outfits made up of 1 x legging, 1 x longline stretchy bra and 1x long-sleeve top and they are all the same colour. One set is black, one is navy and one is khaki. I wear white New Balance running shoes, white socks pulled up to mid-calf and over the top of this I wear a khaki bomber jacket. Sometimes I wear a beanie and sometimes I wear a bucket hat. If I am feeling angry, I chew gum as I walk.

In old age my eyes have become light-sensitive and I hiss like a vampire if it is any more than very dark and grey outside - one of the reasons why I am okay with winter as a season. If it’s just too dark for sunglasses but my eyes are still uncomfortable I wear crazy tinted glasses like these as also sometimes it’s important to add one very ugly item of clothing to your outfit to make people understand you do not give AF what they think.

When it comes to gym-wear, matching your top to your bottom will make it all feel much more on purpose and not like a dodge. A woman once told me that she could never wear gym gear if she wasn’t going to the gym because she felt dishonest all day long. I still laugh to myself about what a dumb attitude this is but feeling on purpose will halt the feeling that you are “rotting”.

When I am not wearing gym-wear, I am in a pair of wide Dr Denim jeans, a pair of Axel Arigato trainers, a t-shirt (from Hush, as discussed in a previous post) and if it’s cold a zippy top that zips right up to under the chin in a nod to Damon Albarn. I have been spending a lot of time in this hoodie recently, too. Over the top of this I wear a camo-print raincoat I found in Sue Ryder for £15 or the bomber jacket. Or perhaps my ancient brown leather jacket from Mango.

Trainers. I am wedded to my Axel Arigatos and my New Balance running shoes because I am a little peculiar. But the trainers du jour are Adidas Samba or Gazelles. Good luck tracking down a pair as they are always sold out. Personally, I think they are already a busted flush, but what do I know?

When I go out for dinner, I wear a pair of black cropped, kick-flare leather trousers I got in the sale from J Brand, a black shirt and a black blazer. I wear the same thing every time. People say, “No, you were wearing something else the other night,” and I say, “No I wasn’t. It was this, with different earrings.” No-one notices. It’s like being a man and it’s very liberating.

Looking forwards to the summer, I spend most days in white or black racerback vests and these Colette trousers in various colours from Maeve via Anthropologie with my dirty hair tied up in a scarf. Sometimes I wear big white jeans from H&M with a cropped shirt from Me+Em.

Top tip: to remove yellow sunscreen or deodorant stains from white clothes you need distilled white vinegar and Ecover biological powder. Spray the stain with the vinegar and then mix 1tsp of the bio powder to a grainy paste with some water. Spread this over the stain. Leave for 30 mins and then put through a quick wash.

I can’t imagine any of that was helpful but it is the honest truth and that’s all I’ve got.

When it comes to clothes you must above all ask yourself this: do you really need new clothes, or are you just bored with your life and/or hating your gut?

It is important to look up to date, but no amount of new clothes will fix ennui. Not long-term anyway.

How about you? Is there an item(s) of clothing that you have found that have instantly updated you recently? Please share with the group via the handy box below.