We’ve been reading The Thoughtful Dresser for a while now and have been a bit slow in shouting about it, even though it’s been on our reading list for a couple of weeks. If you haven’t read it and you like fashion then you are in for a treat. Buy it immediately. As the dust cover states, it’s ‘The thinking woman’s guide to our relationship with what we wear’.
Linda Grant is not your typical fashion fluff head, she’s considered and level in her approach to clothes, what we love is the emotional connections she picks up on that seem really frivolous –like the way clothes smell or feel reassuring- but we know to be important. She bravely argues the case that you can be intelligent and love fashion, something we’ve known all our lives but a surprising number of women and men seem to struggle with this.
She also even managed to bring the recession into play and claims that being glamorous, as women were in both World Wars, is the way to cope One chapter is dedicated to clothes being friends (old clothes are old friends according to Coco Chanel), which is full of literary descriptions that are touching and enlightening as they make you realise why you feel so fond of that scrappy old towelling dressing gown you can’t throw away.
There’s a section about the importance of really looking, opening your eyes and looking with all your senses alert at the thing you’re planning to buy. She calls it developing a ‘decisive eye’. We’re definitely going to do this on the next purchase. Might save us some money. A very good Easter read.
