My Personal Style Resolutions #6: Think What You Like

Who’s yer woman?

My blog is Think What You Like, and my name is Aisling. I’m a freelance journalist, Beyonce

obsessive and garlic enthusiast. I write the Irish Independent Weekend Magazine beauty column,

and I do a few bits for the Evening Echo in Cork. I’m most likely to be found tapping away at my

laptop, rustling around in a fridge or in bed, my favourite place in the world. Prepare for a no-holds-

barred look inside my warped mind/wardrobe.

I’m not going to lie to you. Most of the time, I feel like I live on the island that fashion forgot. If you asked my friends about my fashion sense, they’d laugh so hard they’d slip into a coma.

I never claim to know anything about fashion, and I certainly don’t claim to dress well. I go for whatever is safe, whatever suits my figure and whatever happens to fit me well.

I’m eternally jealous of those girls that can put outfits together in the dark and wind up looking like Olivia Palermo’s more stylish sister. But what makes me feel less of a fashion-failure is the knowledge that there are probably more girls like me than girls like Olivia.

In 2011, I’d be lying if I said I was going to go in all guns blazing and start buying vintage, styling myself on obscure models and wearing stilettos to Dunnes. Here’s what I’m actually gonna try.

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Resolution One: Drop two dress-sizes

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a size 12, 5’9’’ average looking girl. I see a fat mess. And I assure you, I don’t have body dysmorphia. I’m just honest with myself.

A few years ago, I was a size 8 and could pretty much work anything. But then belly got me. And huge breasts tracked me down. Oh, and double chin took a shine to my face and stuck around.

I find myself turning down any clothes that are tight on my tummy, anything with a high neck and anything that gives me the dreaded muffin top. I do this so as not to cause widespread offence to people, but it leaves me with few fashion options.

So in 2011, I want to lose weight, which I know will give me more options. I won’t have to worry about covering my belly. I won’t have to worry about looking like one giant boob. I won’t have to opt for tracksuits 6 days a week. It’ll be great.
 



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Resolution Two: Go shopping more often, and spend less

But Aisling, that’s a big whopping paradox?! Bear with me, reader.

I tend to wait until there’s an occasion, then rush out and buy a last minute outfit. Big mistake. I make hasty decisions, I don’t consider value, quality or wearability and I end up choosing things I’ll wear once and never again. Not to mention I spend ridiculous money in the process, which I cannot afford as a penniless writer.

Panicked shopping sprees don’t work, I reckon. Unless Rachel Zoe is accompanying you, it’s likely you’ll get lost in the sartorial abyss and buy things you wouldn’t let your dog wear. Building my wardrobe piece by piece in a calm, controlled manner has always been an aim of mine, and 2011 is the year it’s gonna happen.

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Resolution Three: Be adventurous, but not someone else

You’d be forgiven for thinking my wardrobe belonged to an Amish person. I play it ridiculously safe, choosing items that can fulfil multiple functions, and winding up with plain EVERYTHING. No patterns, no embellishment, no wild colours, all muted tones and simple lines.

I have a morbid fear of accessories. I wear variations of the same outfit pretty much every day. ALL my ‘going-out’ outfits are black. I’m in a rut, and I need to start taking chances or I’ll be stuck in it for the rest of my days.

I need desperately to stop being so plain. If I had an amazing figure, being plain wouldn’t be so bad, because my body would make up for it. Same with my face – if I was stunningly beautiful, I could distract people with my gaze and they wouldn’t notice what I had on. In 2011, I’m going to start buying things that I’d usually shy away from, and try to express a bit more of my personality through my clothes.

I feel like a vibrant, colourful person trapped in the body of a capuchin monk. Change is needed. So, if you’re a stylist, personal trainer or unreasonably generous multi-millionaire and would like to help a misguided, would-be fashionista get her shit together, do get in touch.

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Licentiate Column 11/11/10

If you’re up to date on what’s happening on the high street, you will know all about the new collaboration between high street behemoths H&M and the impossibly chic Lanvin, a designer label whose elaborate hand-painted t-shirts often run in excess of five hundred euros. To many people, this sounds like a dream come true, so the story of this collaboration will be written in a fairytale fashion that Charles Perrault (much more stylish and parfait than those uncouth Grimm Brothers) should be proud of.

Once upon a time there was a very lonely shop. This shop should not have been lonely, for it had all the customers that it could dream of, clogging up it’s dressing rooms and buying inexpensive snoods en masse. This shop was also magical, for it somehow managed to manufacture massive amounts of on-trend stock and sell at bottom dollar prices without any major human rights violations on the part of it’s factory workers in third-world countries.

What this store needed was a partner. Oh, it had had flings before, with all the right people. Stella MacCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Victor and Rolf, Sonia Rykiel... the list went on. This store blazed a trail in sartorial lovers, all different, all special, all extremely productive. The fruits of these labours were gobbled up greedily by the customers, but such delights were not enough. Now, with such affairs concluded, the shop was not only forlorn, but faced with greedy, happy faces all in anticipation of the next scandalous partnership, like a woman who has just picked up a copy of Hello with Cheryl Cole on the cover.

What this shop needed was a fairy godmother. And, thus, Alber Elbaz, head of H&M, appeared in a flash of tulle and couture. “Worry not!” Alber exclaimed. Together we shall make a partnership the like of which no customer has ever seen. We shall have exaggerated florals, acid brights, designer tailoring, distinctive silhouettes and more cocktail dresses than you could shake a Christmas party at!” And together, the lonely shop and Lanvin joined hands and lived happily ever after. All the customers got their designer dresses at high street prices and they lived happily ever after too...

And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

What’s interesting about fairy tales isn’t what you are told, but what the storytellers choose to omit. The lonely shop (that’s H&M for those who haven’t quite cottoned on) wants to push up profits while Lanvin probably wants to introduce young customers to the heady thrill of designer buying, making them more likely to pick Lanvin in the future. Not all the customers will get their cheap designer dresses and many will go home unhappy.
There are three reasons for this (three being the best number for any fairytale gone wrong).

1) The collaboration is only coming to 200 selected stores, one of which is in Ireland.
2) If you manage to get past the queue and elaborate wristband system H&M have devised, you will only be allowed to buy one piece of clothing.
3) Having found the dress of your dreams, you peer at the pricetag. It will probably cost two hundred euros, one hundred and fifty if you’re lucky.
Designer at high street prices? I think not. The fairytale has well and truly ended.

Licentiate Column 14/10/10

Getting my makeup done by the L'Oreal make up lady, who managed to apply liquid eyeliner ON A SWAYING BUS.  This is a life skill which I have yet to learn.

As the weather goes from summery drizzle to an intensely dirgelike autumn downpour, I, like many people, get the itch.  This is not the kind of itch than can be remedied by furtive trips to the GP and extortionately priced creams.  This is the kind of urge that compells you to make a drastic change.  Open your mind!  Save the world!  Become a better person!

The itch for change, for transfomation is so overwhelming that it’s all you can do not to spontaneously combust and emerge from a blackened chrysalis with the overall demeanour (and unnervingly smooth appearance) of Angelina Jolie.  You want to become a better person.  Not necessarily a better version of yourself, mind.  My dreams of improvement never actually involve improving on the admittedly shaky framework that is me.  It somehow involves Normal Sarah becoming a totally different, new and improved person, much like the endless parade of actors portraying Nick Tilsley on Coronation Street.

It’s at times of identity crises such as this that I do what any sane woman would do.  I don’t actually do any of the things that I plan on doing, like going to Pilates, reading Bertrand Russell, alphabetising my closet or putting the fine tuning on a skincare regime.  I reach for the hairdye.

Last week I went from a mousy brown to a pleasantly artifical looking carroty red that would make Peg Bundy nod with approval.  Do you ever feel (somewhat inexplicably) as if you would somehow become much thinner, taller and sassier once that towel wrapped around your ‘do is whipped off?  I was suitably shocked and perturbed to find out that, after slopping a squeezy bottle of gunk on my head, I was still me. With red hair.

As disappointment rang in my ears (that could have been a side-effect from the dye) I popped down to the Oasis Fashion Bus which had trundled in to town to celebrate, appropriately, the total makeover of the Patrick Street store.  Inside, I was greeted by Style Wars winner David Greene, who took me through all the fashion-forward choices for this season.

I asked him what would suit me, a very short, hourglass-ish, non-model.  David showed me a nice, lace panelled midi skirt and a flapper dress that should skim over the hips.  I’m not sure of the significance of the hip skimming, but he certainly seemed to know what he was talking about.  There was a pause and he said, ‘You know, you’re not that short.  You’re probably not as short as you think you are’, a fact that, now realised, still shocks me.  I always thought that I was a titch.  Apparently not.

"Listen Sarah, I know you think you're tiny, but it's just the camera angle"

I get home and measure myself, and he’s right.  I’m just half an inch off the average height for women.  As it turns out I barely know what I actually look like, let alone have the capacity to accurately imagine myself after a makeover.  To others, my flaws are probably not as exaggerated as they are to me.  People don’t see me through a warped lens as I (and many women) do.  They just see me.  With red hair.

Licentiate Column 19/09/10

If there ever was a decade for demoralising experiences, then your twenties would be it.  It’s not the worst decade of your life per se, but when you’re a teenager everything is so desperately unfair that you have no personal standards to be eroded.  By the time you get into your thirties disappointment is too deeply ingrained in the tapestry of your life for you to feel self-righteous or hard done by just because your jeans no longer fit (so my mother, disturbingly, assures me).

In your twenties banana skins are presented, much like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as beguiling opportunities that actually make you fall flat on your face.  The twenties is the time for auditioning for X-Factor and realising that you have the singing voice of John McCririck, getting your heart truly broken (don’t worry, that means you’re doing it right) and sobbing in various changing rooms because a pair of skinnies in your size refuses to be buttoned despite cajoling and midsection torture that goes against everything the various Geneva Conventions stand for.  

I had such an experience yesterday when my mother came to Cork for a visit and offered to buy me a pair of jeans.  I happily tootled into my favourite high street shop and tried on a pair of olive skinny jeans in a size ten.  I say ‘tried on’, but those two little words do zero justice to the gargantuan amount of effort exerted just to get the rigid denim past my knees.  It was the Kilimanjaro of jeans.

I was devastated only in the way that an shallow person like myself can be.  No-one likes to go up a dress size, so I refused to go up to a twelve and skulked out of that shop into another one across the road, where I tried on a pair of jeans in a ten.  I looked like a street urchin in a Charlie Chaplin film.  I was adrift in a baggy denim sea.   I took one step forward, and the jeans fell down, puddling around my ankles as if I’d had an indigo accident.  I sized down to an eight and miraculously, the waistband settled with nary a muffin top to be spied.

And so, an experiment was undertaken.  I measured my waist with tape to confirm that I was indeed a size ten, and went on a trek around fifteen high-street retailers to try on fifteen pairs of size ten jeans in a straight-leg cut.  Only a third of the shops had true-to-size labels.  Some chains were incredibly generous with the tailoring, particularly American brands, while other, slightly more ‘budget’ shops (no prizes for guessing which, Sherlock) were evidently skimping on material, so that any pair of jeans I tried on made my stomach look like a sausage roll making a break for the border.

Now that you’ve found out that the perfect ten doesn’t exist, what do you do?  Size up or down?  To tell the truth, it doesn’t really matter.  Eight, ten or twelve; you’ll still be the same size.  And If you feel demoralised, just do what I do and cut the tags off.  Problem solved.

London Calling; fashion-wise tourism

As you may know, I'm heading to London for a few days and, through the miraculous majesty of scheduled posts, I'll be putting up the column as usual on Thursday, as well as a couple of posts from some special guests.

Here's a few things on the itinerary.

1) The Enchanted Palace exhibition in Kensington Palace.  This combines my love of dresses and snooping around stately homes (and by extension, other people's lives) perfectly.  Several designers, including Boudicca, Vivienne Westwood and Stephen Jones have taken over a part of the palace and transformed it according to their vision and a tale of one of the seven princess who lived in Kensington Palace at one stage or another.



2)  The Fashion market on Portobello Road - If you're shopping for clothing, then your best bet is to hit the Market on a Saturday morning and focus a heavy sartorial assault on the Westway, which is where all the young designers and vintage dealers hang out on their weekends.  You'll know that you're there if you see a massive concrete motorway flyover.  Mmm, scenic.  This would also be the best time to bellow the song 'Portobello Road' from Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the top of your lungs.  Which I plan on doing.



Ah, sweet memories.  Although Portobello Market has over 2,000 stalls, I'm fairly sure that they don't have an occult bookseller (though that would be pretty great.  An impromptu multicultural dance-off would also be sweet).

3)  RD Franks



Five minutes walk from Oxford Circus lies possibly the best and most comprehensive fashion newsagent I've ever been in.  That doesn't say much, but if you're looking for anything hard to get, from Jalouse  (must get a subscription one of these days...) to obscure trend forecasting mags, then this is the place for you.

4)  London Fashion Week (cue a massive and incredibly uncool and unprofessional 'SQUEEEE!').  My press application came through today (massive thanks to Fiona for recommending that I apply), so I'll be spending the best part of Friday wandering around the exhibitions at Somerset House and doing some Licentiate reportage for The Cork Independent and this blog.  Any London bloggers reading this who fancy meeting up for a coffee drop me a line.  I do love meeting new peoples, so's I do.

I'll be in London as you're reading this, but if you have any secret hidey-holes or must-go places food (especially food), shopping or bar-wise, let me know!

Licentiate column 09/09/10

I was determined to get that bag. It was black and tan satchel (such a now combo, horrible historical implications notwithstanding) with a briefcase handle and boxy detailing. It lived in the front window of the charity shop I would often pass from my home on the walk to and from town. It taunted me from the window from it’s vintage covetability.

“Buy me”, it said. “I’m such a tart. I’ll go with all your outfits”. Totally ignoring the fact that a talking handbag was an unusual occurrence, I took its word for granted and went to the charity shop early, in order to be the first to get my mitts on it. Only to find a queue of like-minded women who had also been on speaking terms with my bag. Apparently it was a tart, after all.

There’s a common misconception that fashion obsession is some kind of fabulous disorder for people with impossibly glamourous lifestyles. In fact, fashion fans are as fanatical, cultish and partial to nerdish scrutiny and discussion as hardcore Star Wars fans or members of the Bieber Army and, with the popularisation of fashion blogs, spend more time in front of a computer screen than the average World of Warcraft gamer.

Take, for example, the recent announcement that revered fashion house Lanvin would be doing a collaboration with high street giant, H&M.

The lead up to this announcement included several teaser videos of a man and a woman, their faces hidden in shade like anonymous guests on The Jeremy Kyle Show, talking about the implications of style, a tactic which whipped fashion fans all over the world into a frenzy of hype. When it was finally revealed than the man and the women were not collaborators but red herrings, thrown into the mix to add to the mystique, H&M’s tactics were applauded (and rightly so) as genius.

Designer and high street stores alike have tapped into the love of fashion and social networking. if you generate enough hype with inventive advertising, exclusive collaborations and exciting design, then bloggers will do much of the online legwork by advertising through positive posting and public declarations on Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Networked Blogs or any other of the ocean of sharing sites that currently exists in the ether.

In a way the internet has not only democratised fashion and opened up a whole new world of information for those who see fashion as a serious interest and not just a way to get into debt. It has forced retailers to up their game. The high street must produce better designs for cheaper prices, or the consumer will go elsewhere. The cachet to clothing is its exclusivity, which is why vintage sellers are making out like bandits with overpriced goods, just because they might not be available anywhere else.

Likewise, high-street/designer collaborations inspire all night camp-outs and riot re-enactments that imagine what Altamont would have been like if populated entirely by post-pubescent girls and young women clubbing away with their clutch purses.

I bought the bag, by the way. The women in front of me baulked at the price tag and left. That's the problem with fashion obsession; you might get the bag that no-one else has, but there's a distinct possibility that you might end up living out of it.

Sonia Rykiel x H&M

The H&M in Cork is not widely regarded as the best one... sorry H&M fans. it has a great range of basics and things for tweens and adults, but the selection seems very safe. There's relatively few risks taken in the picks on the floor (and nothing from the Divided Exclusive line, which really should be rolled out in more stores). I was pretty surprised, but excited, to see a Rykiel window display slowly evolving in the shop window.

I came to H&M prepared for scrum the likes of which Donnacha O'Callaghan would would be ill prepared for. Instead, tumbleweeds. Passers-by were showing a mild interest in the knits. I felt like crying. With joy that is. More candy stripes for me...



I'm just that smug.



Love the crown emblem brooch - but I get the feeling that it'll fall apart after repeated dings off the scarf. Ah well.



The cross straps on the sundress can be worn front or back. Might make some funny tan lines though.

The knits are nice and dense and need to be dried flat because they're so heavy. Unlike some diffusion lines I could mention (AnnSofieBackFor Topshop*cough*) you can tell that it'll maintain itself and not fall apart if you take proper care of it. Unfortunately, it's all sold out now.