Kathleen Tessaro - Elegance

The more I think of it, the more hard pressed I am to think of any accessories I own that might be described as even remotely stylish, let alone first rate. Certainly not the collection of woolly brown and grey berets I live in, so practical because they won’t blow off your head during the windy London winters and because they’re invaluable for those days (always on the increase) when I haven’t washed or even combed my hair. I like to think of them as ‘emergency hair’.

I find myself gazing at my feet, or rather at the pair of well-worn beige plimsolls that adorn them. It’s been raining and they’re soaked through. The fabric’s worn away above my big toe and I catch a glimpse of the green and red Christmas socks underneath. (My mother sent me those.) I give my big toe a little wiggle.

My nose is running and as I fumble for a tissue in my raincoat pocket, I discover a pair of mismatched black gloves I found on the floor of a movie theatre two weeks ago. They seemed like quite a find at the time but suddenly it’s clear, even to me, that I’ve obviously not been lavishing enough care and attention on the details of my dress.

Elegance may be in the details but my situation appears to be a little more serious than that. Clearly, drastic action is needed. I resolve, in an unprecedented burst of enthusiasm, to begin my transformation with a thorough cleansing of my closet. Systematically working my way through, I’ll weed out the elements that don’t flatter me. And then I’ll be free to construct a new, improved look around those that do.

Fine, let’s get cracking! I fling open my closet door with a dramatic sweep of my arms and nearly pass out from hopelessness.

I possess a rail of items gleaned from second-hand clothing stores all over the country. Everything in front of me symbolizes an element of compromise. Skirts that fit around the waist but flare out like something Maria Von Trapp would wear. Piles of itchy or slightly moth-eaten woolly jumpers – not one of them in my size. Coats in strange fabrics or suit jackets with no matching skirts bought simply because they fit and that in itself is an event.

But that’s not the scariest thing. No, the thing that completely stuns me is the colour. Or rather the lack of it. When did I decide that brown was the new black, grey, scarlet, navy and just about any other shade you can name? What would the Colour Me Beautiful girls make of that? Or Freud, for that matter?

I stare in fascinated longing at the bold, crimson drawing room of the house across the street but my own walls are magnolia. Matte magnolia, to be precise. And now here it is: the dreadful consequences of playing it safe. I have the wardrobe of an eighty-year-old Irish man. That is, an eighty-year-old Irish man who doesn’t care what he looks like.

However, I won’t be put off.

I open my underwear drawer.

I dump the entire contents on the floor.

I sift through the piles of runned and not too runned tights (the only kind I own), the baggy knickers, the ones with the elastic showing, and the bras I should never have put in the washing machine which now have bits of deadly under-wire poking through them. I diligently make piles of keeps and non-keeps.

Done.

I go to the kitchen, grab a black bin liner and begin to fill it. A strange, unfamiliar energy infuses me and before I know it, I’m working my way through the rest of my clothes.

Piles of ugly, vague, brown garments rapidly disappear. I throw away jumpers, jackets, and every last one of the Sound of Music skirts. Here’s another bin liner: in go the worn out shoes, the natty scarves. Now the maroon leather handbag from Hobbs. I can buy a new one. Beads of perspiration run down my face and in my cupboard empty hangers clash together like wind chimes. I tie the tops of the bags together and drag them out to the garbage bins at the back of the building. It’s dark; I feel like a criminal destroying the evidence of a particularly gory crime.

Finally, I stand in front of my near empty wardrobe and survey the result of all this effort. A pale pink Oxford shirt swings from the rail, a single black skirt, a navy fitted pinafore dress. On the floor in front of me, there’s a small pile of just about wearable underwear.

This is it. This is now the basis of my new wardrobe, my new identity and my new life.

I take a Post-it from the desk in the corner, write on it in bright red marker, and stick it on the corner of the wardrobe mirror.

‘ Never be seduced by anything that isn’t first rate ,’ it reminds me.

No, never again.

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