One At A Time By Myrna

Time past, time present, and time future are encapsulated in what we wear, our mutable identies constantly finding expression in a dress or a pair of shoes. - page 103

But fashion is largely to do with pleasure, and pleasure is not rational, for we do not choose to eat, say, a chocolate eclair with the aim of fulfilling our daily calorie quote. We fall victim to a cake because it is delicious. Interestingly the angry rages against unnecessary clothese are seldome replicated in moral campaigns against flambeed cherries or steak au poivre. No one pickets restaurants or rails against the conspicuous waste of unneessary calories in a three-course meal, or the functional superfluity of cake. It is pointless fashion, not pointless cuisine, that gets the moralist's goat, and you would have to be pretty dim not to sniff the stench of misogyny that surrounds their outrage. page 99

In a recession there is the temptation to stop buying clothese, and at first this can be surperficially soothing, for the soul can sicken on conssumerism, shopping and spoending. There is a motehr lode of comfort in making your own soups at home instead of going out to a medocre restaurant to pick over a lukewarm starter slapped on a table by a waiter who is adding up in his head how much he's going to make in tips. With fewer occasions to go out, who needs to dress up anyway? The simper life of jeans and T-shirt can seem a radical new approach to living, the clothing equivalent of moving out of the city to the country.

You look, with satisfaction, at the deserted shops. You feel the puritan virtue of the nonspender flowing liek ice water in your views. You sell of your collect of It bags and then clsoe down your eBay account. You realize you have not bought a copy of Vogue for months. You have no idea what they showed in Paris or Lond or Milan. You do not care. You have no idea why Keira Knightley is wearing a demure high-necked blouse with a bow. You no longer have a clue. You have fallen off the edge of ashion and will have to be rescued at some point down the line by a pair of bossy posh women who will force you to look in the mirror at a middled-aged frump.

The you I am writing about is not me but a creater of the imagination because in a recession the last thing I want to feel is depressed, and depressed I would feel if I was wearing dreary, cheap clothes, if I had abandoned, in a mood of austerity, the very notion of style. So shopping must happen les often, but with more thought, for in an economic downturn you cannot afford to buy cheap, disposable clothes. So I have a plan; to go and buy the most expensive, the most beautiful winter coat I can afford, not the cheapest. - page 65