017 You don’t need a uniform, and other ‘notions of ourselves’
Also, Bridget Jones forever and Hugh Grant’s valiant quest for non-stretch jeans.
Has there ever been a more enticing concept for an optimised self than being a woman in possession of a ‘uniform?’
A woman so decisive she wears the same shirt she gets made custom with her just-so Levi’s and scuffed-enough cowboy boots. A woman with a look so defined you know her interior world is rich! Which is the point of chicness anyway, you can’t have it - not the proper kind - without an interesting mind and an inimitable point of view
Yet the alluring thing about having a uniform is that it implies you’re too busy doing other things, or want to be, to think about what you wear. But the kind of person who wants a uniform tends to be the kind of person who thinks a lot about clothes. A conundrum!
For the other kind of uniform is worn by people who truly do not care about clothes and I don’t think that this is us? Or it’s not me. Maybe it’s your dad with a five-pack of Bonds t-shirts? Anyway, the New York Times says normcore never died, it just got more expensive! Dads have the best style.
Anyway, the women whose ‘uniform’ has been valorised aren’t particularly this either.
Like Fran Lebowitz. Who fits the exact description above. Whose interior world is vast and rich and she has, she told me when I interviewed her for Vogue last year, 12,000 books in her apartment (and a private librarian to sort them, a dream job?!).
What’s more, Lebowitz hates it when people say she has a uniform. Other things she told me that are overrated? Everything!
This is what she said when I asked her about it:
“People show me pictures of myself [and say], ‘Look at this picture from 1977, you are dressed exactly the same.’ So first of all, no. To you it looks the same because you know nothing about clothes. I mean, it’s the same kind of idea. But the clothes I have now... they’re not the same jackets, they’re not the same shirts. They are the same jeans however, yes, that is true. But other than that, they’re really not the same. People also say, ‘You wear a uniform,’—it’s not a uniform. ‘You always wear a black jacket.’ I don’t even own a black jacket except for my dinner jacket,” she says.
“I love clothes. I’m really interested in them. But most people who think that they’re interested in clothes are not really interested in clothes. They’re interested in conveying some sort of notion of themselves.”
Ah, notions of ourselves. Tricky things.
Lebowitz is very interested in clothes. Most of the smart people I’ve ever come across are! And like a person who really loves clothes, like truly does, Lebowitz is pedantic about them. She learned this from her father who had shoe trees in his shoes. She takes care of her things. If you paid more attention to her clothes, she was saying, you’d see that it wasn’t a uniform. It’s her things that she loves and chooses carefully!
I’ve been rethinking uniforms anyway after reading Once Upon a Time: the captivating life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. Like every other fashion writer I’ve written a thesis on the allure of her style, how she was mysterious and chic because she kept her private life to herself, about her ‘effortful effortlessness’ and ‘throwaway chic’ style and how it was minimalist but also avant-garde and still influences fashion today! (These were all different articles over the course of six years - the hold has been strong!). Uniforms are more to do with having style and not being too fashion.
(I do think about, and perpetually try to recreate this perfect Yohji look all of the time though).
(One of the many, many instagrams dedicated to CBK’s style)
But I didn’t really know that Bessette-Kennedy was actually a life force who had it drained from her by the veracity of the press and everybody who wanted a piece of her. Who raged against the invasion of her privacy. She started wearing her spare, monochrome ‘uniform’ to try and get the press to stop being so interested in her, but it only made her ‘timeless.’ She tried to be perfect so they’d have nothing on her.
In all of this Yohji Yamamoto was her protector. As the designer once said of his work, “I make clothing like armour. I wanted to protect the clothes themselves from fashion, and at the same time protect the woman’s body from something.”
But as the book points out, until now all we really have from her too short life are the clothes she wore and what we think they mean. And it means a lot, but it’s not everything.
So too the idea of a uniform as a shorthand for who you are, or aren’t.
Anyway, I really like thinking about clothes. I’ll never have the arch discipline required to be exacting about my taste in them. But I think I’m learning it’s better to let go of notions of yourself - especially the ones of others.
Bridget forever
Skirt off sick? Honestly, I’d wear this to work today!
I watched the first Bridget Jones movie on a plane last week (it remains perfect if from a v different time, just as it is!). I think for all the reasons I adore Bridget Jones this is the main one: that you don’t have to be a self-serious person to be good at your job. You can also do things your own way too. Most of us are just fannying about with press releases anyway.
I loved this interview between Hugh Grant and Renee Zellweger in British Vogue and I really loved how pedantic Hugh Grant is about jeans. You simply must be!
HG: I did a film last year. I needed a pair of jeans and said, “but not stretch”. They couldn’t find any in the whole of the United States of America.
RZ: Levi Strauss! Get you some Wranglers!
(“But not stretch”).
Something else I’m thinking about is Jonathan Anderson’s interview on Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis podcast where he talked about people with great faces. Like the late Maggie Smith who he put into a Loewe campaign because Anderson puts only the best and most interesting people in his work. People with faces, he said, that wear their time on this planet. That look like they’d be great at a dinner party. What gets lost if we don’t have faces like this anymore?
Inimitable Maggie Smith for Loewe.
A footnote on the return of ‘normcore’ (obviously it never went away, it’s the ultimate status dressing) this was such a nice line from Jacob Gallagher: “I encountered a conventional camel V-neck in a feathery cashmere and black leather clogs that were like Birkenstocks sent to finishing school.”
Ha!
BOOKS
I gobbled up The Mitford Scandal: Diana Mitford and a death at the party. Straight to the Hons cupboard! These books are so light and frothy and if you’re a Nancy Mitford obsessive you will love the fantasy of more time with the Mitford family and the glittering assortment of people in their orbit throughout history. With a bonus murder mystery!
Ex-Wife - I cannot believe this came out in 1929. It could have been written now! I think women who colour outside the lines got cheated by the ending. Though reading about the life of author Ursula Parrott, who lived a glamorous, high-blazing, unconventional life but died alone in a charity cancer ward, I understand why she did it though. Nobody wants to know it might not all end well. Then again, who’s to say the price of a different life isn’t worth it. Anyway, spiky, hard-edged women obsessed with clothes are my cup of tea!
Love,
Annie xx
Loved your piece- Annie Carolyn and Nancy Mitford all in one place. Heavenly!