003 Rich Mom Style

Channelling '80s Rich Mom Style, clothes that make you feel, slip dress industrial complex, Prestige TV knitwear and a book I can't shake.

Aug 04, 2024

Books

As Rich as the King - this book is riddled with ugliness - all kinds of it, visceral and shocking. It unspooled me in its unsparing view on people’s weaknesses and the brutal unfairness of life. I’m still thinking about it.

(It’s not really optimal to read a book in a sauna as it kind of expands them, but it’s 50 minutes I get to myself so I always take a book!).

Table for Two - I would read about ballsy, glamorous Evelyn Ross forever. I want more though! You know the kind of woman I love? A broad!

I’ve just started reading Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s new book Long Island Compromise and I already love it. Will report back.

I also (of course!) adored Plum Sykes’ Wives Like Us, which I read alone in the fanciest ever hotel which is the best way to read a book. I went back and reread her first book, Bergdorf Blondes, which is canon in my view.

How to read

My office desk buddy Will was carrying a copy of H is for Hawk (alongside an adorable floral cardigan! I love sitting with GQ!) this week and I remembered I hadn’t read it. My husband bought it for me when my sister died all those years ago. I didn’t pick it up then but I might now. It’s about grief and Will said it was lovely. But what I loved is how he is choosing his books at the moment - by going through the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century and choosing by themes - the mood he’s in, or wants to be. I love this!

Also I have read, in my opinion, a respectable number of the books on the list, but definitely not enough of them.

This was the best discovery of my week. Dex is doing just fine!

It’s reporting season for the luxury industry and one of the few bright spots is Miu Miu, which reported 90 per cent growth in sales for H1. In its earnings call the company mentioned the success of its first literary club. Writing Life, and its Miu Miu Summer Reads campaign. V Books & Nice Things, no?! Fashion and books are the greatest tie-up!

& Nice Things

On trousers to make you feel

It can be a shock to wear something that you can really feel, you know? By that I mean quite literally. Lately I’ve started wearing colour. It started with a hot pink dress for a wedding - because weddings, when you mainly wear black and white, are tricky! I felt as drawn to the dress as my six year-old daughter who loved my “Barbie” dress and kept stroking it in the way children do. I then bought another fuchsia dress from Esse (I have three evening dresses from Esse and they’re all perfect) for a series of black tie work events. Though the problem with having such a distinctive dress is that it’s very easy to become ‘oh here’s Annie, the girl with the fuchsia dress.’ People notice colour in the way they don’t another nice LBD. It’s a gear shift to dress to stand out.

My latest addition to my newfound penchant for highly saturated colour is a pair of emerald green trousers. They are so, SO green. Patriotic green actually right now in the midst of the Olympics. (I’m never more patriotic than I am during the Olympics!).

They’re the kind of trousers to attract comments in any setting. But also, the trousers are so uncomfortable!

They’re high waisted in a silk taffeta without any stretch. They’re also a little tighter than I would have liked. But as my human sunshine colleague and desk buddy Fia said as I deflected compliments on the trousers in that regulation self-deprecating way of women, sometimes you want to feel a piece of clothing on your body. To understand its construction. And she’s right. I’ve become so used to elastic waistbands and oversized shirts, to flats over heels that I haven’t really worn clothes that make you sit up straight in an age. I don’t think you have to suffer always for fashion, but sometimes it’s good to have a little dose of it. Just to feel alive! More than ever I am appreciating people who put effort into the way they dress - we always praise effortlessness, which is kind of a falsity anyway - but sometimes I want to see the workings. Also there is the added bonus of a sheer rush of relief to change out of clothes that make you feel at the end of the day. Life needs some friction and contrast to keep it interesting.

Prestige knitwear

We just tore through Presumed Innocent with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga. It’s the kind of glossy crime drama that really does the trick. It could have been any other stylish crime drama we have similarly gobbled up. Which really makes me think what about these shows is so precisely calibrated to people like us, and also what is wrong with us. Anyway, beautiful Ruth Negga wears excellent knitwear in the show! It’s always raining, and she wears things like a Zadig & Voltaire Aspen printed cardigan that can be wrapped around her body defensively and in times of stress (this happens a lot) and nubby cashmere turtlenecks that cocoon her in other times of stress. It was truly prestige on-screen knitwear! Maybe not scandi-noir levels - nobody does a fair isle sweater better than taciturn female detectives in beautiful yet brutal locales, but up there with the greats. By that I mean Logan Roy’s deceptive shawl-collar Loro Piana cardigans in Succession (more fool you to think he’s just a doddering man in a cardigan), every one of Sienna Miller’s expensive looking beige knits in Anatomy of a Scandal and of course the ultimate sweater screen icon, Meg Ryan, on When Harry Met Sally.

Here’s a full list - this is my kind of rigorous and important journalism!

The slip dress industrial complex

I was chatting to my friend and colleague Ana in the office about her forthcoming wedding and I think it’s a right of passage for any fashion, or fashion adjacent, person getting married to think they want to wear a slip dress. The eternal reference is of course Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, that one shot of her in that Narisco Roderiquz dress.

It’s also the idea that you’re not like other brides! You’re chill and chic and just throw on a dress and it’s perfect. I tried to be her too! I bought a Givenchy dress on major sale from Matches Fashion (RIP) and was so unbearably smug about it. The thing is, the thing mostly always is, I did not look like Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. When I showed my friend Maddie the dress, because I had doubts and trusted her signature beloved bluntness, she gently told me I could do better. I ended up getting a fully bridal dress. The kind you buy in a shop where the sales assistant says in shushed exalted tones when you exit the fitting room ' ‘ohhh here is the bride” and you are sort of stitched into it. I’ve written about it extensively, but I kind of hate my wedding dress now. I wish I’d worn a suit! The thing is, we don’t need to be so obsessed with being timeless on our wedding day. Weddings are a snapshot of your life at that moment. My wedding photos are missing important people in my life I met after I got married. I don’t love my too bridal dress, it’s not something I’d choose now. But I do love how happy that woman is in all of the photos.

Rich Mom Style

Gisele is, as Vogue noted, the queen of Rich Mom Style. The secret to it is wearing neutral tones from head-to-toe, to always look like you could be coming or going from a pilates class and also to be Gisele.

But I found an even more fun version of Rich Mom Style with a Givenchy En Plus navy blazer I found at Vinnies (!) this month. Did you know Givenchy did a plus size label once? “The collection smacks of a quality not often found in clothes for large women,” noted The Oklahoman!

It makes me feel like a very busy working ‘80s mom (it has shoulder pads) who click clacks through a marble office lobby and has a country club membership where she tries not to look at her pager while sipping her Blue Hawaiian Frozen. Except I’m going to wear mine with jeans and sometimes without a top underneath to balance it out a little!

I’m flying to Paris this week! The best ever sentence to write.

This is how I wish to look when flying.

I wrote about the eternal hold of celebrity airport style for Style magazine this month. Let’s bring glamour back to flying!

Joan Didion’s packing list is ultimately how I would like to pack for work travel. Inc. typewriter.

Here are three essentials for in-flight glamour

Augustinus Bader face mist

A bougie in-flight face mist is my travel essential for not arriving to your destination looking 1000 years old.

Buy it here

Cashmere socks!

I asked for a pair of these for my birthday recently and it’s the perfect gift to receive - the kind of thing that feels ridiculous to buy but something you will appreciate every time you wear them. Change into these as soon as you get on board and feel like anything is possible.

Buy them here + this is a blend pair that is way less exxy

Uncrushable blazer

I always wear this Frankie Shop blazer when I travel for work. It’s basically uncrushable which is a key criteria. Especially when you have to look remotely presentable after 30 hours in transit.