9 November - Skirts & Nigeria

I’ve tried to get rid of this Kenzo suit from the 80s on various occasions but it’s just too corporate to interest any vintage shop or friend and so it’s survived in the wardrobe/trunk for all these years of un-usage. Clearly I’d never wear a suit, have no compulsion, even when I had jobs that welcomed them, the jacket always lived on the back of my chair. I admire suit wearing women, it makes life so simple. You just stick a thin top/shirt underneath, and you’re sorted. But I can’t do it. But neither can I see a good suit go to waste so today for the first time in probably ten years, I’m wearing the skirt. It’s a pencil skirt so it’s perfectly fine for every year but maybe last time I tried it, it was a bit tight. Not now. The zip goes up smoothly all the way to the (high) waist. So it’s with a certain satisfaction that I announce to the female colleagues that I’m wearing something that I bought in ’85 or ’86. To which one pipes up ‘I wasn’t even born then’. Sigh….

And I instantly remember a flight back from Cannes where a woman I worked with dropped some coffee on it and I had to dry-clean the jacket. What a fun working trip that was. TV stuff, great celebratory dinners, exciting new people and parties, firm friendships formed, that particular one lives in Toronto now, I went to her wedding 7 years ago and she’s divorced already.

I have been working for the entire life of my young colleague who wasn’t born yet in ‘86. It’s not right. I feel tired, I want to go home. I have worked for over 20 years non stop bar a sabbatical which I’m hankering to repeat, only double in length. We’re not meant to work this long and the female life expectancy in Nigeria is 43 years which means you do stop working earlier than I am/will. But it’s not on my list of favourite countries, no matter how vibrant its chaos and how friends from there point out that only people from Lagos are the Nigerians I can’t stand on account of … many things, mainly arrogance and overpowering body shapes. I digress. Mr Kenzo, where is he know? I bet he’s still selling skirts like this one…. Time for google.