About once a year I get an urge to sell my entire wardrobe on ebay and start again.
I look at my rails of clothes and think ‘I don’t want any of this, what I really want is to wear only Margaret Howell (in my dreams!) /vintage finds in amazing fabrics you can’t find anymore and that cost nothing / tailored trousers and mens shirts/anything that makes me look like Annie Hall/ anything as long as it’s made from indigo/ just five beautiful investment pieces that I’ll wear until they drop off me and will make me feel that I finally cracked Investment Dressing. I have great wardrobe but occasionally I feel like I just got it all wrong and want to start again.
I’ve just had this urge, probably nudged into focus because we’re heading into autumn and magazines are full of new things to tempt us. It coincided with middleagedad and I going to Dungeness for our annual visit. For anyone who doesn’t know Dungeness, next to Rye in Kent (everyone thinks it’s north) it’s the UK’ s only desert.
It’s a bit bleak (you can’t avoid the nuclear power station sitting alongside you) but is very beautiful. You may know it for Derek Jarman’s garden and house, which everyone stops and takes a picture of.
We stay in a Living Architecture House called The Shingle House, above, which is very modern, stylishly designed inside and full of lovely kitchen/lounge/bathroom stuff. It’s like an upgraded version of your own life- or how you wish it was -and the clever thing is, all the stuff inside the house is available to buy. So if you fancy the Heath Pottery plates, the David Mellor salt and pepper grinders (both below), the bedlinen or the brass sinks (really, they are gorgeous) after you’ve lived with them for a few days, Living Architecture will put you in touch with the supplier. 
Now, this got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could have a whole wardrobe full of clothes to wear too?
A fantasy holiday wardrobe, supplied by your favourite brands with no obligation to buy, sitting in the cupboard ready for you to play with when you arrive. The collection could be pitched perfectly for the place you are visiting, expected weather and what you were planning to do. Someone could ask you a few questions before you go, perhaps take a 3D scan of you so everything would fit like magic and select fabulously stylish, up-to-the-moment stuff in combinations you might not have thought of.
You wouldn’t have to buy anything, but you would be free to play and if you did fall in love with the cosy cashmere roll neck sweater or the amazingly efficient wet weather parka provided, you could just pay on leaving. Think of the hassle you’d save packing and thinking about what to wear. How exciting would it be to have a whole new range of clothes to try!
OK, those of you who don’t want to live so dangerously might want to get a bit involved by picking a few of the things yourself, or perhaps limiting the new clothes to just swimwear and kaftans in hot places or coats and jackets in colder ones, but if you could GUARANTEE it would all fit, I think this would be fabulous. The best thing would be someone else (obviously with great style) would pick clothes and looks you might never choose for yourself. What do you think? Would you be up for trying new clothes this way? or would it give you nightmares….
Sounds like a wonderful idea to me I would love to give that a go as long as there was no black involved. Maybe you could just give the provider of the clothes a couple of boundaries for what you would not wear under any circumstances and then just roll with the rest ! Love it.
Brilliant idea. YES please and agree with first comment…for me no black that’s all I seem to have #mixedfeelings