Fashionista (not!)

There have been a few clues throughout my lifetime that I may not be the most fashion-savvy of people.

The first sign was at the age of about twelve when, just beginning to ‘bud’ (as my Mum so delicately put it) I became the proud new owner of a lovely white “Fibs” bra.

Now, some of you will remember the Fibs bra. Very much like the ‘kiddy’ bras you see today, the Fibs was a stretch nylon bra with no clasps, hooks or metal bits. It went on over your head like a tee-shirt and had absolutely no uplifting properties at all. Not that this was an issue for me, as there was absolutely nothing to uplift anyway.

I delightedly wore my latest acquisition and proudly showed it off to my older, more bra-savvy friends. But I was most disappointed when they started giggling as they peered down the front of my school dress.

“What the hell is THAT!” they cried, falling about laughing.

“Whadya mean?” I said indignantly. “It’s a bra, stupid! It’s a Fibs. They’re the latest thing!”

“Not THAT!” they cried, “What’s the thing you’ve got under it?”

I peered down my dress to see what they were talking about.

“Oh, you mean my singlet” I said casually, blissfully unaware that I may very well have committed my first ever (known) fashion crime.

They laughed even harder.

“What?” I cried, bewilderedly. “What’s so funny?”

“Well, for a start you don’t wear stuff UNDER your bra, you ninny,” they informed me. “And secondly, who wears singlets anyway? Singlets are for little kids.”

I stood there in shock. No more singlets? Were they kidding? Was this the price I had to pay in order to cross the threshold to womanhood? Did my mother know this? (I doubted this, because I had seen her also wearing a singlet. Dad too). Clearly, I came from a long line of singlet-wearers and I knew it would be difficult to convince them that my kidneys could ever survive winter without singletty protection.

I considered my options.

“What if I put the singlet over the top of the bra?” I ventured, but was rewarded with a grim shaking of heads.

“It has to go,” the Pubescent Fashion Police prescribed.

And so it was that I learned my first ever fashion lesson the hard way. Only ridicule and ribbing can work so well.

I’d love to say it was an isolated incident but, many years later, after wearing a purple knitted skirt to work several times — and believing that I looked quite fab — I was implored by a good friend to take the ‘hideous’ thing off the moment I got home and burn it!

“I want it gone forever!” said my friend. “And I never want to speak of the purple ‘knee-rug’ again!”

Thankfully she didn’t peep down the front of my top.

God only knows what she would’ve said about the singlet!