Digging through the (sartorial) archive

50 to 50: week 40

I had a simple idea for this week: experimenting with outfits, mixing old and new. It started out promisingly: monk shoes I still liked but hadn’t worn for the best part of a decade, paired with patterned tights. The next day I went for something even easier: a silver tree pendant, designed after Matisse, that my husband had given me.

But then I stalled. I thought it would be fun, and creative. I love clothes, and only neglect items out of laziness. It’s just so much easier to reach for the same combinations of top and skirt, and the rings and ear cuff I wear every single day. It’s also, however, a little dull, and I used to enjoy styling things more imaginatively.

Shoes and jewellery were one thing, but when I dug out a few dresses I hadn’t worn for a while, I realised that I felt uncomfortable, not just in them, but in most of my clothes.

Clearly, this is not a serious problem, and it feels very, very frivolous to write about. But I’ve always expressed my creativity through my clothes, before anything else, and yes, for me what I am wearing can make all the difference between a good and a bad day.

I came quite late to figuring out how to dress in a way I liked. I was a bit of a clueless teen, trying to fit with the current fashions but never quite getting it right. Wearing a back brace for scoliosis from age 12 to 15 didn’t help, and neither did being too tall for pretty much all the trousers in shops at the time. This changed after I left school, and to my surprise I even developed a bit of a reputation for dressing well. This still takes me aback now, though I sometimes suspect being French means people assume you are a good dresser, whatever you actually have on.

The peak of my focus on clothes was probably in my early 30s, when I became fixated on 1920s style. I didn’t quite wear costume, but there were drop-waist dresses, gold heels, cloche hats and faux fur-trimmed coats alongside less obviously period-inspired outfits. I’m still influenced by all this despite having moved on from the complete obsession.

In my early 40s I switched to an aesthetic that was probably pervasive at the time, at least in my corner of the internet: long linen dresses and denim pinafores, paired in my case with desert boots in winter and sandals in summer, as well as the occasional pair of clogs. This coincided with a time when I got a little heavier and a lot busier. I thought the loose silhouettes suited me, and the outfits were practical: easy to slip on in the morning and to rush around in, including when dealing with medical emergencies.

I’ve had to renew most of my wardrobe since then, more than once, after losing weight. It started after my husband died, probably from a change in eating habits living on my own. Then lockdown led me to adopt a daily ballet practice, and I shrank even more. Anything fitted had to be replaced, and while I still have some oversized clothes, they don’t work so well on a thinner, older face, and make me feel swamped, so I have been letting them go too.

Replacing clothes however is not proving all that easy. It is not an unusual experience of course, whatever your body shape, but nothing seems to quite fit. Hence… feeling uncomfortable in pretty much everything, because it’s either too tight or too loose. Or too scratchy: my skin is more sensitive with every year that passes.

Now, if only I had made any progress at all with learning to sew… but I very much haven’t. The other option, I think, is to focus on the things that do work for me (high-waisted skirts, slim-fitted dresses, non-scratchy knits…) and go back to where I’d started with this week’s idea: styling. Perhaps that could be another challenge: one or two minimal outfits, to be styled for a week…