frustrated fashionista

I like clothes.  You wouldn't think it most of the time, if you met me.  At home I am either gardening, in which case I am wearing gardening clothes, or in the house.  If I am in the house I am probably sitting down, in which case I have a cat sitting on me.  Cats and nice clothes don't mix, what with the thread-pulling claws, the moulting fur and the dribble.  If I am not sitting down I am probably cooking.  Nice clothes and cooking don't mix either, what with cooking odours and the risk of spillage.  You need something machine washable, which will not plunge you into mourning for a fortnight if it gets a spot of olive oil or tomato juice down it.  At work I am in my monumentally hideous uniform, matched with comfortable and functional equally hideous trousers of my choice.

I could always dress up when I went out, if only I went to the sorts of places where dressing up was appropriate or appreciated.  The beekeepers are not a very dressy lot.  Wearing a jacket to a beekeepers meeting is enough to trigger comments that you look very smart this evening.  The average audience at the Colchester Arts Centre is not very dressy either, and there always is the sporting chance that someone squeezing their way along the row behind you carrying a pint of beer in each hand will inadvertently drip some down your back.  I try to remember not to wear my Russian partisan leather coat to the Arts Centre.  The music society is altogether more genteel, but it is so cold in the church that you probably won't want to take your coat off anyway.  On holiday we spent our days touring industrial museums and gardens, neither of which are quite the place to break out the Stella McCartney and the Jimmy Choos.  I wore a dress to dinner in the Polish restaurant, and after that it was so cold I wore a sweater everywhere.

I dress up a bit when I go to London, but then my look is limited by my desire to wear shoes I can comfortably walk a minimum of four miles in.  That rules out all shoes with heels, and sandals without socks or tights.  The shoes need to be waterproof on days when rain is likely, which is most of the time apart from during heatwaves, when you are back to the sandals and socks dilemma. Almost all women's fashion is predicated on the idea that women do not wish to either (a) walk or (be) venture outside a building for more than thirty seconds when it is raining.  It is practically impossible to buy waterproof women's shoes.  Sometimes I think I will just invest in a pair of the horribly expensive Danish short wellingtons I saw in the Plumo catalogue and be done with it.

I was amused to read in the Guardian that women's plaid shirts are back in fashion, apparently because the 90s are back in a big way.  I still have a very nice plaid shirt I bought circa 1987, from a firm which used to come to your office so that you could choose your shirts at your desk.  I flicked through the photo gallery of shirts, not thinking much of them, until my eye was caught by a really stylish black and red one with a long pointed collar and no pointless patch pockets.  Red silk, Miu Miu, £530, according to the caption.  I have an eye for clothes, just nowhere to wear them.