Admit it: at some point you’ve been taken aback by a picture of Meghan Markle in bootcut jeans outside Buckingham Palace, or had a bit of a sneer at a picture of Lady Gaga wearing a Juicy Couture tracksuit. The ‘style throwback’ outpost of journalism can always be relied on to remind us that even the biggest icons in the world weren’t born with style.
But then, who was? Whoever you are, we’ve all had to undergo a certain amount of trial and error in the sartorial department. In fact, I’d wager that many Irish people of a certain age have gone through a very common style trajectory.
Remember your very earliest years, when pretty much anything went?
An enduring motif for the next few years; the pointless begging for fancy labels
For my generation, it was snot-green dungarees, dickie bows, corduroy, frilly socks, Rambo T-shirts; often at the same time. We all have pictures of ourselves dressed exactly like our little brothers, and it didn’t bother us one bit. However this period of sartorial latency soon gives way to the first stirrings of envy, at about the age of six.
These often manifest themselves in the coveting of a friend’s sparkly runners or Garfield schoolbag. You then learn about First Communion outfits and all bets are off.
Communion day of course comes and goes, and per your mum’s request, you will wear the shoes until they fall apart at the soles on the street, in the middle of a game of Red Rover. If you’re a boy, you will be made to wear those Communion trousers until they can be let down no more, or shorts that often went well with the 80s bowl haircut; presumably State-sanctioned at the time.
On to the next stage, where Madonna is to blame for everything you want to wear. Your mother bribes the local hairdresser to tell you that she cannot legally do a perm on anyone under 18. Instead of a Bardot top and ra-ra skirt, you settle for wearing a Fido Dido T-shirt with acid-washed pedal pushers. For some reason, you believe this item of corporate clothing to be the acme of credibility. Coca-Cola T-shirts were the same. Lord only knows how, or why.
You buy fringed skirts, cheesecloth bags and your oversized wool jumpers in Temple Bar and accessorise them with the Body Shop's Dewberry fragrance
A year later, you meet the first French exchange student in your housing estate and are blown asunder by her effortless elegance, achieved with a single peach sweatshirt. From that moment on, you are obsessed with NafNaf and Benetton. Not that there’s a chance of you procuring either, because money, trees, etc.
This becomes an enduring motif for the next few years; the pointless begging for fancy labels. In secondary school, where you are desperate to blend in, the wish-list of 1990s must-have items starts to grow and grow: penny loafers, Levi’s sweatshirt (in any, or preferably every, colour), a rugby shirt, 501s, brothel-creeper crepe shoes, Converse, Pepe shirts.
None of your parental petitioning works, and you go to your first non-uniform day in denim culottes and an argyle golf jumper. Spoiler alert: you will never, ever live it down.
From grunge to Brown Thomas
Yet by 16, Pepe and the rest of it are a distant memory, because by now you have gone full Curehead/goth/grunge. You buy fringed skirts, cheesecloth bags and your oversized wool jumpers in Temple Bar and accessorise them with the Body Shop’s Dewberry fragrance, Rimmel’s Black Tulip lipstick and a skateboarding boyfriend.
Your mum starts enquiring after your waist, or lack thereof. A few years later, you then switch canoes from grunge to Britpop/rave/Spice Girls. Either way, the skirts are short. You acquire a kidney infection from an ill-fated night with a slip dress.
That’s not to say that the trialling and erroring are over by the time you become old enough to drink. In fact, our 20s are the most glorious period of fashion experimentation. A decade in which it’s entirely acceptable, nay encouraged, to do your worst with some audacious fashion cul-de-sacs.
Full disclosure; my late 1990s wardrobe was a bewildering mish-mash of suits (suits! I worked in a pub!), corsets, boho dresses, crop tops and – a big transgression, this – wearing the band T-shirts of artists I knew were cool, but didn’t give a fiddler’s about.
In another glorious early noughties mis-step, I maxed out a credit card buying a Dior saddle-bag in Brown Thomas (my friend’s face, absolutely agog as though I were setting fire to the place, was almost worth the expense). I was too afraid to even take it outside the door, Celtic Tiger or not.
Have I finally reached my style stride, or at least some sort of sartorial impasse? Probably the latter. I know the difference between Merino and cashmere, but where’s the fun in that? I don’t care as much about clothes as I did as a youngster, and part of me misses the silliness, the folly, the bravado. The hunger to hit that sweet, stylish spot that has you traipsing to the High Street time and time again.
Much as we do with our celebrity counterparts, I look back on old photos of myself and wonder exactly what was going through my head when I decided to wear salmon satin, Bjork hair twists, cargo pants and a pashmina at the same time. I do remember I probably felt brilliant though, and that’s all that matters.