My shopping habits are pretty military. I make lists, I try and buy smart and the older I get, the more I try to “invest” in pieces that aren’t necessarily expensive, but that I know will stand the test of time – and trends. As you can imagine, doing the job I do, my closet is filled with stuff. After taking a long hard look at it, I can even go as far as telling you it is filled with pretty cool stuff. Years of hoarding collecting clothes does make for quite an interesting gathering of fabric. My tastes are pretty standard, I like fairly simple things, things someone could have worn 50 years ago and things my daughter will still want to wear in 20 years. Basic white tees, button-up shirts with pointy or Peter Pan collars, jeans, drainpipe trousers, a-line skirts, cashmere jumpers. All pretty plain really. I rely mostly on my shoes, bags and other fun-but-never-batshit-crazy accessories to jazz up my outfits, basically turning them from “meh” to “me”.
Sources – Vanessa Jackman, Mr Newton, Citizen Couture, Bold On The Streets
However, certain bits remain out of reach, namely the white shirt. You would think it was easy to find a good white shirt, right? They are everywhere, a white shirt is a white shirt etc etc. Well I hate to break it to you, but white shirt are a motherf***ing nightmare. I seriously fantasize about the perfect white shirt on a daily basis, trawling my usual online shopping haunts and analysing every single piece of crisp white cotton. Yesterday I included an oversized MiH jeans white shirt in my Atterley Road round up, I am yet to try it on, it could be the answer to all my problems, but it could also not be and it would no doubt send me in a dark spiral of fashion failures. You see, to me white shirts evoke a whole other realm of coolness: Mia Wallace being a badass, Sharon Stone showing up at The Oscars in an unbuttoned shirt, Diane Keaton as Annie Hall, Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn and of course Coco Chanel… Sadly so far, all the shirts I’ve tried on all conspired to make me look more like Pam from accounting than like Mia Wallace. I am not entirely sure why. Maybe I just have strong accounting vibes about me. Who knows, I may be missing out on a whole new career there. But I digress, and numbers were never my strong suit anyway.
A while back, I saw this great Acne shirt. It seemed like the answer to all my prayers. By the time I was ready to buy it, it had disappeared off the face of the Earth. White magic. Not cool. So here I am now, shirtless and vulnerable, looking at my ever growing collection of shirts and secretly despising every single one of them for not having the powers of the white shirt. For once in my life, I’d like to be that sexy lady who opens the door in an oversized shirt. You know, the nonchalantly sexy one. Being a Parisian I am supposed to be all that if I believe what I read on all those blogs and mags, yet I feel like I need a white shirt to reach my full Parisian potential. Is it too much to ask?
So tell me that: where can I find a decent white shirt? And why is Lana Del Rey trying to sound like Sufjan Stevens?