Róisín Ingle on . . . why black is the colour

I bought a green dress. To clarify, I bought a green dress in Cos, a shop I have recently become addicted to, forsaking all other shops. The only reason I am telling you about where I bought it is because recently, when I wrote an article about Cos but called it C*s assuming everyone would know what shop I was talking about, I got a gazillion emails from women all over the country asking me to literally spell it out for them. The gist of most of the emails was the same: “Maybe it’s because I’m from Waterford/Longford/ Letterkenny/Cobh but I can’t figure out the name of the shop you are talking about. I feel really, really stupid. Please give me the missing letter . . .

I answered all the emails. “You are not really, really stupid,” I told them all. (It took the guts of an afternoon to answer the queries. I enjoyed it.) “You are not stupid, you are very intelligent. It is I who should have been clearer.The missing letter is o.” These correspondents were most grateful. And buoyed by their enthusiasm I went back into Cos and bought a green dress in a bid to stem the tide of the troublesome queries my daughters have started to fire at me.

Exhibit A: “Mum, most Mums wear jeans. Have you EVER worn jeans?” Exhibit B: “Mum, why is everything you own black?”

(I did wear jeans once, I think it was in 1992, but it's too complicated to explain to them why I've left denim, even the stretchy kind, and especially jeggings behind. And it's true, I wear black all the time. Like Ali Hewson. That's where the resemblance begins and ends, sadly.)

I bought the green dress because I thought I’d better put more colour into my life and into my wardrobe if my children were starting to think something was up. This happens to me every five years or so, it’s not only to do with the latest queries from my children. It’s a cyclical thing.

Still, I wonder does Ali Hewson wake up every five years and think: I’d better put more colour into my wardrobe? I suspect not. For all I know her wardrobe is a glittery rainbow of gorgeous gear and it’s just that she only ever gets photographed in the black stuff. But I reckon Ali Hewson just enjoys wearing black and she doesn’t get bothered when people tell her pointedly and in slightly bullying tones, “You should try a bit of colour.”

“I have tried colour,” I want to tell these people. “I’ve tried all of the colours. I like wearing the colour black best.” But instead I tell myself, yes I should try a bit of colour and I go out and buy a green dress that hangs in my wardrobe daring me to wear it.

I wear the green dress. I wear it without covering it up with a big flowing black top even though every part of me feels that’s exactly what it needs to make it perfect. It’s really green, this dress. Greener than I thought in the shop. I feel kind of self-conscious, but I am in my Try a Bit of Colour phase, so I try to walk about as though green is totally my thing. I am walking down Nassau Street when someone shouts over: “The St Patrick’s Day parade was last week.”

I would feel better if this someone was a stranger but it turns out to be a close friend.

I go into work in my green dress. I get two more “you’re a bit late for St Patrick’s Day” related comments. I am unnecessarily grumpy with one of the commenters. “Can’t a person wear green on any other day?” She is taken aback. I feel bad. And a bit like Kermit the frog.

Someone else just says, “Wow, that’s some colour!” and leaves it at that. I start to wish I had an emergency black outfit under the desk that I could change into. I eye a roll of black refuse sacks enviously. I go home and change immediately into my nightdress. Which is black.

“Isn’t it funny,” I tell my mother the next day. “When you wear certain things people can’t wait to comment, and they think they’ve just said the most hilarious thing, when really it just makes you feel very self-conscious and like you never want to wear that item again?”

I know exactly what you mean, she says. That’s when I notice she is wearing nautical stripes. “Where have you been?” I ask her. “Yachting?” She says I am the third person that day to make such a remark. I don’t think she’ll be wearing that top again for a while and I am putting the green dress away for at least five years.

roisin@irishtimes.com