The having or not having of a personal style has bothered me for years. Why am I not one of those people who sort of looks basically the same every day? Why one day do I want to wear a tea dress and the next day want to dress like Evan Dando circa 1994? This is clearly not okay and I need to have a personal style and stick to it.
Then I came across a picture of Susie Bubble on her blog and she said “Today I am dressed like a 1930s heiress who’s been to the Caribbean and come back via Rio de Janiero” – or something. Not exactly those words. But what she was saying was: I’m dressing up. I am inhabiting fantasy creation of my own through my clothes.
“Yeah, god,” I thought. “Why the hell not?” And so I started fully inhabiting invented creations. Today I would be an Edwardian wild child stowaway who has been stranded on a desert island for two weeks, in a high-neck lace blouse and ratty cut-off denim bermudas. The next day I would be lesbian architect. The next, faintly Sloaney mum. The next, possible drug addict. You get the picture.
A brand that has always occupied that half-light in my mind’s eye of who I would like to be, a creation I would like to inhabit, is Three Graces London. I do not live the correct life for this brand – the dresses are voluminous and floaty and fragile. Not really dresses for shouting at your children in, or making kid’s tea or taking out the bins. They are also insanely expensive. I came across a Three Graces concession stand in Selfridges in 2017 and the material is like dreams. It’s like the feeling between sleeping and waking when you’ve woken up naturally and actually had some sleep. It was the material iteration of that.
But of course I am not going to spend £500 on a cotton nightie – not even I am that much of a credulous bone-head. But I have haunted the Three Graces website for years and always check for Three Graces in the sales and the other day !!! oh my god…. there is was. A single pale blue cotton Three Graces nightie in a size 10 on the Outnet. The very one I had stroked in wonder in Selfridges all those years ago. Still a whopping £160 at half price but hear me out: this isn’t just a nightie, it’s the physical representation of my best life – do you see?
Even now my children are older, and especially now here in the situation we find ourselves in, there is so little left for you, as a parent. I would say “as the mother” but I think dads have it rough, too, really.
And so if it’s only £160 for me to occasionally sit in my bed, wearing my hard-won nightie, sipping my first cup of tea and thinking “maybe I won’t run away today”, that’s got to be value for money.
I would definitely pay £160 to not feel like I want to run away today.
I totally understand that desire. I have been searching online for approximately 175 years for the “perfect” kimono style, wafty, cotton not silk, navy blue but with floral design robe to sling on after my bath, to become instantly glamorous in a slightly undone way. It clearly doesn’t exist. However, if you find your dream nightie, reduced on The Outnet (I’ve looked there for my heart’s desire) it’s clearly worth every penny. This is me trying to justify the inevitable over budget kiomono I shall eventually purchase with hideous guilt.
That sounds like an amazing kimono, I’d like one, too
That sounds like something that would be relatively easy to sew as kimonos are just based on rectangles. Of course then you’d go down the rabbit hole of searching for the perfect fabric but that could be fun.
I like Poetry Clothing for wafting about!
“Maybe I won’t run away today”! Brilliant. Elaine x
Yes, totally agree. Brilliant post Esther x
Wear it in the garden too,!
It’s good that you’re just thinking about running away. My children are teenagers now but when we were knee-deep in the sometimes hellish early days I would regularly say out loud how lucky they were that the circus wasn’t in town, because if it was I’d be leaving with it. They seem to have come through relatively unscathed. Fabulous nightie!
You haven’t bought it! We’ll all put a fiver in to help you get it!!
I like the concept of dress as who you’d like to be…today. I think I have more pajamas and cardigans than I do any other type of clothes, so I guess deep down i’d like to be elderly Hugh Heffner? I’ll own that 🙂 Although Victorian ragamuffin holds appeal as well.
if you can afford it, Esther, why not? You’re not depriving your children of food. I always enjoy your writing. You’re much too hard on yourself!
Listen there is nothing wrong with switching up your style depending on how you feel that particular day. It’s all about picking the outfit that reflects that, and it keeps your look interesting and you can stave off fashion ruts. Sometimes I want to be a Victoriana goth in lace blouses and button boots, sometimes a biker chick in ripped jeans and leather, sometimes an English eccentric in a tea dress and cardi, sometimes fashionable and with the crowd in jeans and shirt and trainers. There’s also nothing wrong with, in these current times, mostly wearing scruffs, sweatshirts and leggings to sit around the house in eating crisps. It reflects how I feel which is mostly “Screw Covid bastard virus wanna go out hmph.” No regrets
“Not really dresses for shouting at your children in”. I adore you.
This is really random, but the night before my 5th birthday my sisters were putting me to bed and my mum wasn’t home. My sisters, who would have been 13 and 14, told me that my mum had run away with a sailor and I didn’t believe them so they went and got my dad, who confirmed their story and I became hysterically upset and it was genuinely a defining moment of my life. Anyway, sometimes when my kids annoy me I say I’m going to run away with a sailor but they just laugh in my face. Elaine x