COLUMNISTS It’s become a bit of a truism to say children make you feel your age – that without the example of a steadily growing person beside you, as an adult you’re liable to go for half a decade thinking nothing has changed, including your years – and, honestly, I have been convinced I was 36 since 2004 and am only jolted into awareness when my eight-year-old materialises next to me and says, eyebrows raised, “Whatever.” But the truth is, nothing has made me remember my birthdate quite as powerfully as clothes. To be specific, 1980s clothes. After all, I was there the first time around.
Woosh! Time warp!
In 1980 I was 13. I graduated from high school in 1985. I entered adulthood in 1989. I am about as close as you can get to an 1980s poster child. So while I have been able to accept the revival of 1960s miniskirts and 1970s flares and 1940s strong-shouldered siren gowns and 1920s flapper frocks with great equanimity and analytical distance (pontificating on stock prices and skirt lengths, free love and free markets), when it comes to the 1980s, things are different. Things are personal.
Though this is always true to a certain extent – we use fashion to say personal things about ourselves, the way Carla Bruni uses her Dior suits to say, “I am now a proper grown-up First Lady, not a sex kitten!” – my current problem is this: when all you hear upon seeing a certain something is the white noise of the past, how do you ever figure out what it means in the present? How do you decide if you can wear something now, when all you can think of is then?
From eighth grade to college, for example, I wore leggings all the time. I first wore them after seeing Desperately Seeking Susan, with oversized men’s shirts that I borrowed from my father; then I wore them under sheer skirts and big sweaters.
I only abandoned them when I discovered Wolford tights, pencil skirts and the power that comes from clothing that says, “Don’t mess with me or I will step on you with my stiletto,” as opposed to “I am under the influence of Madonna.” Leggings got relegated to the workout wardrobe drawer, and then, after I had my first child and decided I would rather spend time in the playground than the gym, put away entirely, along with stirrup pants and long fitted jackets with big shoulders. Even when leggings started reappearing on the catwalk two seasons ago, thanks to designers such as Alexander Wang, Rag & Bone and Helmut Lang, I raised my eyebrows, smiled pityingly, and thought: been there, done that, let the younger generation make those mistakes.
And then last winter, wandering around the cavernous warehouse space dominated by a huge Julian Schnabel painting that is Azzedine Alaïa’s store, I bought a pair. What was I thinking?
OK, I know what I was thinking. One of the side effects of my job is an inability to be unselfconscious about my clothing choices. Some people have an examined life; I have an examined wardrobe. After all, if I’m going to spend my time thinking about what other people wear, it would be hypocritical not to extend the same beady eye to myself. All those fashion editors who claim to be among those who don’t do, but teach? Hah.
Anyway, here’s what I was thinking: I had just had dinner with the model Stephanie Seymour, who was wearing leggings under a dress, and she is fortysomething, and looked great (the small detail that she is Stephanie Seymour and I am not somehow escaped me). I was thinking about the fact that leggings make your legs look about as skinny and shapely as they can be. I was thinking that Alaïa leggings are not the leggings of my youth, which were cheap cotton or Lycra things that invariably stretched and bagged after a few washings, but tightly knit wool numbers that act as a sartorial vacuum pack. I was thinking Michelle Obama is older than me, barely, and she wears Alaïa (though not, as far as I have seen, the leggings). I was thinking I have a very grown-up rust coloured goatskin tunic from Akris, and leggings are good with tunics. There were all sorts of justifications.
Yet, when I got back to my room and put on the leggings, I looked in the mirror and took them off. I put them on. I took them off. I put them on. I took them off. I acted like a 15-year-old before a date. I acted the way I had the last time I wore leggings – which was a depressing thought. For six months, I put them on and immediately took them off. I kept thinking: I am officially middle-aged. I cannot wear leggings. Lindsay Lohan makes leggings. Dasha Zhukova makes leggings. I remember my history: I should not be doomed to repeat it!
But, of course, I realised on one cold day in January when I wanted to wear something warm and comfortable and uncomplicated, I wasn’t. In clothes, as in any statement, context is all (just ask any job applicant), and the context now is different. Like polyester and jumpsuits and any other fashion item that has been demonised by its past associations, today’s 1980s are not the real 1980s, and no one should understand this more viscerally than someone who lived through them the first time around. At my wise old age, you’d think I’d have figured it out.
PS: In case you want to know, I do wear my leggings now, all the time, with a small-shouldered narrow jacket and T-shirt that hits somewhere below my stomach. And I love them.
vanessa.friedman@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/friedman
