6 February - Clothes

So, only the other day was I reading a story in The Standard on clothes that are destroyed when the end of the sales comes and they have not been found a home. Something along the lines of the Gap slashing them and binning them and someone from some cashmere brand saying he works hard to keep the brand exclusive and so demands that his stockist destroy stock rather than mark down too much and if stockists don't comply he won't sell to them again. And something about the fact that when we're tourists we don't want to get to parts of the world where poor people live and find them wearing designer labels so unsold merchandise cannot be sent off to the other side of the world. So far, so ... makes sense. And presume when it's not brands it's even easier to just rag the unsold stock (i personally think half of what primark sell is actually made of plastic so am sure can be recicled to become picnic paper plates etc).

Then am in the market where I stop often enough to buy wool jumpers from the guy who sells them at a fiver for 2. I often walk away with six or eight. Allegedly most are bought as gifts for the teenage daughers of my mates/relatives but when I get home and model for Toph he invariably says that looks good on me and I should keep it. Especially when it looks like something for a 13 year old. Clearly in his eyes my age spans decades. This time we chat as he clocks that I've picked the Ralph Lauren out of the Next bunch etc. FYI I don't pick for the label but the designs I like, whilst also assuming that if was sold in a RL shop, it may well also be a better quality yarn than the Dorothy Perkins selection. He tells me he sometimes has to pay £70 for the stall so am calculating how many jumpers he has to sell (he also sells cashmere at a fiver or tenner, and other stuff) plus I don't know his margins. He buys in bulk from somewhere where recently he's being squeezed out by Bulgarians or Romanians who buy in such large bulk to sell in own country in actual shops that he is missing on some good stock. Just then a woman picks a 'woolly' dress that is sold by him at £7 and in the rest of the market at £9/10, though am sure you can barter down to a fiver. I say I don't understand why the dress is so ubiquitous and he says it was once worn by Sienna Miller and the foreigners sort of like it and... it costs him 27p. Yep for dress sold for £7. That's what I call a margin suddenly. Ten of those and the stall is paid costing him £2.70. Not bad for standing here on a drizzle day.

He's sort of worried now he's made his life sound too easy so he adds that for one day at the market he has to do a lot of driving here and there to sort out merchandise and when it snowed last month he couldn't get to his supplier nor come do the market and suddenly was in penury and considering that old adage of 'I have to get a proper job'. He's also launched a lable of recycled kiddie clothes called 'usedtobe'. I really like it. Tell him he can apply that name to almost anything he'll recycle and how lucky to have bought the domain name.

But this puts paid to my future plan of selling back to him all that I've accumulated from his stall. My entire wool jumper/cardigan/tanktop/vest collection probably cost him a tenner if that...

I go off wandering and suddenly am pricing everything I see very differently. See those haibands with feathers or netting or plastic beads stuck on them and sold by the oriental stalls. They want £10/12 for one but they must be 50p. Or the guy with all the FrenchConnection cotton items? He sells them for £3 but perhaps also pays 30p for each. The gusy with the Clarins beauty products for £3/£6? Job lot entire stall stock for £200? max? Truly, try go tell that to the Luis Vuitton women... Handbag for £1500, made for a hundred if that... Mind boggles. If you start devaluing everything this way you would hardly shop... Result?

13 March - Snags

It doesn't take long at all to plunge back into being miss angry. It's not the city, I like where I am, it's the unnecessary commuting and the fact that I don't learn any of my own lessons. Lesson #25 is either you give up loving items of clothing that snag easily or you stop wearing rings, bracelets, pick up keys by rummaging in back and therefore snag said items of clothing. To be hones I had the lover buy me a pretend engagement ring at Xmas because I like really high set classic stones and I wanted to test how I'd get on. This was a pointless exercise as I didn't need to carry it on to know that high set stones would snag many a favourite knitted missoni style dress or cardigan.

And it's happened again this morning on the way over which was a few hours before I realised I had left at home the planned outfit for later when I go see a buch of old Waggers at Chris Sullivan's new club somewhere in the Angel. I simply cannot go dressed as I am for workday tedium but I have no time to go home since I have to go to see a hot new band first. The solution would be to just go out buy new clothes but that seems silly in light of impending job throat cuts at my firm.. mmmmhhh. Yes, see, how quickly one can turn pissed off?

16 January - Shoes... again

After wriggling toes free in the sand and turf and prancing about in heels at night, it's with some frustration at self that I notice upon returning to work that I reach for the boring boots, the even more boring boots and some other regular shoes that are comfortable.
This is not on. This spells descent into not caring (the bad hair is enough, must go sort out). So drastic measures are required. I cannot throw shoes away, obviosuly, but I can make a cull and consign the offendig ie. easy ones, to a box in the storage tunnel, or to be sure in the actual storage miles away from the abode. This way I can only use them when I'm really old (assuming I have no money then or not enough money to salvage old person's shoes from charity shops). But better still if I move to Mexico or Mumbai, then I don't need any of them at all. One thing I am very envious of is the reduced wardrobes of my friends in Yucatan. Sure they need heavy stuff for when they go to Canada, China, London and so on (regularly enough), but they stick to one puffa jacket and a few sweaters and some bad weather shoes, the rest of their wardrobe is sparse as does not need to contain all the never ending winter and rain stuff we have. Additionally they're not very camp gay men so they really get by with t-shirts, shorts and some trainers and man bags. Am very jealous.

5 August - Snags & Cardies

The snagged cardie. So, am wearing the most perfect black cardie, 75 silk , 25% cotton. I ‘m loving it. Day 1 of its life in my hands. Last weekend I changed handbag to a lightweight one I use on holiday, it’s boring so I threaded a matching beaded velvet belt though the handle. Never had a problem with this as usually it’s worn in hot weather and there are no cardies involved.
I think you can already tell what happened.
I’m going to see some properties with an estate agent, so there’s a lot of getting in and out of the car requiring removal of handbag from shoulder in order to put on the seat belt. The first one is the worst. A huge snag on the shoulder. A long thread which will never be fixed, though I can catch the lose thread and bring it to the inside of the cardie, that I’m an expert at, I do it everytime is wear a silk knit and scream at the damage and thank the lord it’s not a missoni, in fact it’s worse because I tend to wear block colours and you notice it more in that case.
A little later it happens again. When I get home I notice a few more smaller snags on the shoulder and basically to me, the cardie is ruined, it is no longer favourite cardie, it’s shoddy now.
The next morning having threaded the threads back into the reverse, I put it on again because well, we always wear new things a lot in the early days and I shoulder the same bag. It is such a reflex action that by the time I move the bag, I’ve snagged it some more.

Only now, 6 snags later, do I take the cardie off. This defeats its protective function to walk out in the cold air with a sleevless top on and cardie in hand but I I have no time to revert to another, safer ie. smoothly coutoured handbag. I must be stupid. Like those people who know the monster is in the basement and forget and go down there to get a bottle of wine.

This also happens with light coloured bags who get soiled by the denim coming off your jeans onto them or denim streaking light coloured and absorbent shoes (Denim is the devil and as you know I hardly wear it but this happens when I do).

Don’t talk to me about famine and eco disasters etc. I care about my clothes.

11 June - Clothes & Kids

Dealing with clothes – when you have too many - is like dealing with kids, it all takes so much time looking after them. I need a maid as I can’t afford to put them all in a van and offload at a drycleaners to be delivered back to my house. I spent an afternoon surrounded, mired by just cardis, jumpers and tops that I had tipped on the floor in order to see what’s there. I had a system whereby they were in clear plastic boxes and filed by colour so to speak but the system has broken down as I’d need too many boxes (assuming you don’t want to mix winter with summer) and lots of stuff was in nice zipped up bags under beds, on top of wardrobes. I eliminated around 20 items but this is not even 10% I don’t think so it’s hopeless. All the washing, folding and refolding, ironing, all the while lover is doing much more enriching things like reading another two chapters of Thomas Pynchon. He’s on the home stretch, only a few hundred pages left but they’re hard work as there’s yet new characters being introduced. Where’s an editor when you need one. And I could be reading something too instead of hand-washing delicate tops. God this city is dirty, you should see the soapy water. Incidentally, I’ve yet to ruin one single thing that says ‘dry clean only’ on it by… washing and ironing myself. It’s a great con or those labels are there for people who don’t know how to handle these fabrics in the first place and would destroy them in wrong water temperature or iron. Quite satisfying this thing… the my god this silk irons easy and it would have cost £7 to dry clean this. It was also a surprise to iron a couple of things that are synthetic satin style (no, I didn’t buy them, in inherited them) and you could really turn the iron up to high and just glide the darn creases away. I can see how this was meant to revolutionise the sorry lot of housefraus, but … the fabric just doesn’t feel good.

Buy it wouldn't attract moths either. They're the bane of my life. Other people have frozen food in the freezer, I have tops/jackets so I can kill the moths' eggs. Well, some stuff can't be washed at high temperature and that's an accepted other solution. But then they come back.

And how would I cope if I had to do this whole palaver not just for my wardrobe but that of partner and kiddies? I'd have the same high standards of course for their vetiments. Or maybe my standards are not so high. After all I don't perfume my laundry... or even drawers.

Anyway, what was I saying… yeah, a maid. Wish I had one. I got a call from a friend’s cleaner asking if it was ok to wash/change sheets of my guest bed over there in her house. I said naturellement after nearly saying ‘No, don’t worry, I’ll do it myself’. It must be great to have hotel style maiden-ry every day…