I’ve always been obsessed by fashion.
When I first started working in the city, as soon as my pay hit my account I’d race off to Myer in my lunch break to buy myself something new to wear out on the town on the weekend. I wasn’t from the city, so all the options available were overwhelming and shopping in the Big Smoke, exciting. When I wasn’t investing in clothes, make-up or skin care, I was spending my hard earned on Cleo’s and Vogues, where I attempted to replicate the looks of Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Back in those days I thought I had the fashion thing and my style sorted out. I thought I knew how I wanted to look and what I was doing when I shopped, but in actual fact I didn’t.
I really had no idea what my Personal Style was.
I was really just following the trends in the magazines, the way my friends dressed, the way they dressed in the bars and nightclubs I went to, the way the women in Collins Street (where I worked) dressed and how the actresses in movies and on TV dressed. I hadn’t really developed my own sense of style. So for this reason I made lots of very costly shopping mistakes.
It was in my early thirties when, as Oprah would say, I had a light bulb moment and I figured it out.
During this period I was spending a lot of time, particularly going to 30th birthday parties, with two girlfriends who often dressed in Allanah Hill clothes. (Pictured above) We’d meet up beforehand and they would both be wearing beautiful lace and velvet dresses with brightly colored flowers in their hair – looking sexy and elegant and I would be in my best jeans and top. To set the scene, both of my girlfriends had gorgeous curvaceous figures. Both had amazing curly hair – one red the other blonde and they would both have their lips painted bright red. I was so envious of how feminine, attractive, sexy and glamourous they looked – when I felt like a skinny, under dressed boy. (I had short hair back then)
In an attempt to try and emulate the looks of my lovely friends, I’d often go into Allanah Hill and try on a heap of dresses, determined to pretty and womanly as my girlfriends did. But on every occasion I’d stand in front of the mirror feeling like a little girl going off to a six year old birthday party. Why didn’t I look like my friends did? Why didn’t these dresses suit me? Why did I look like a little girl when they looked like gorgeous, sophisticated women.
In the end I bought one of the dresses, even though it never did feel right. I thought it was beautiful and it was on sale. It was orange and white gingham chiffon, with ruffles. I took it home and hung it on my door in my bedroom so that I could just look at it, and there it stayed til I sold it a year later on eBay. You see even though I loved that dress, it wasn’t my style. So it never felt right.
I attempted to wear it to the races. I even bought something to wear in my hair and a pair of shoes to wear with it. But on the day when I put it on, it felt all wrong, so I took it off – frustrated and annoyed – and put on a trusty classic black dress I’d worn a hundred times.
And this was when I realised it.
Pretty, floaty, floraly, whimsical dresses were not for me. I could admire them on other people, in magazines and in shop windows, but I should not buy another one again, because I was just wasting my money and I was wasting time shopping in stores that only stocked these kinds of clothes.
I felt relieved.
But if that wasn’t my style, what was? That’s a whole other story…..
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