I WAS ENJOYING AN après-work cider about 15 years ago when a well-meaning colleague gave me a piece of advice. "Don't take this the wrong way," this person said. "But you are never going to get anywhere in The Irish Timesif you don't start dressing to impress."
Note to anyone offering well-meaning advice. Never begin with “don’t take this the wrong way”. The recipient of your wisdom will invariably take it the wrong way, especially if in our 20s and feeling insecure about sitting beside Nuala O’Faolain in the office where, to be honest – and don’t take this the wrong way, former (and current) colleagues – nobody looked to me as if they’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue (or even VIP).
As my cider grew flat, my adviser told me to wear sharp suits and pointed me in the direction of some second-hand shops where one could, at bargain prices, get the clothes to look the business.
Such was my burning ambition to get somewhere, wherever that was, that I promptly ignored the advice. I continued to alternate my red MS jacket with my grey MS jacket, crossing my fingers that whoever made these decisions would see past the limitations of my wardrobe.
Clotheswise, I’ve let things slide even further since procreating. One of the best things about maternity leave – and I promise I will stop going on about it after this – was waking up and only having to decide whether to stay in the polka-dot pyjamas or change into the fleecy ones. This was more than acceptable when the social event of my day was going out to buy sweet potatoes and a carton of formula.
The Irish Timesis a relaxed kind of place, and you can get away with a lot, although pyjamas might be pushing it. I aspire to be someone with a capsule wardrobe, interchanging this crisp white shirt with that black pencil skirt and those functional yet stylish heels. (They would be nude this season, the heels, if I am reading my expensive magazines correctly.)
I aspire to be the person who, before she goes to bed, puts her work outfit on a hanger – with accessories – to avoid morning meltdown. I am not that person. I am this person: There is a pile of clothes on my bedroom floor. Some of them are clean and some of them are . . . less so. Others are stuffed into a too-small wardrobe. Some don’t fit and are waiting for the day they do, a day that may never come.
What I’d really like is for Off The Rails presenter Sonya Lennon to come over, throw out everything that doesn’t work, and take me shopping. I just don’t want to be on the telly while she does. I’m not saying I never get it right, but it’s hit and miss and involves a unique layering technique, developed as camouflage.
While thinking about all this, I distracted myself by opening a letter from a reader that had been typed (as opposed to printed out). I’d been putting it off, to be honest. When the green ink brigade aren’t writing stinky messages on Basildon Bond they are typing indignantly on ancient Remingtons. What a pleasant surprise to hear from a woman called Sonia (not Lennon, sadly), who thought it might be helpful to know that, if you think this recession is bad, try being a woman who deserted from the British army, settled in the west of Ireland and embarked “on one enterprise after another to try to keep our eventual family of five children alive”.
Take it away, Sonia. “My husband fished and I sold the catch; I drove a taxi, he made furniture; we did pony trekking, made socks, handcrafts, dealt in tweed, built a weaving business based on the Aran crios, ran a BB and eventually founded Cloona Health Centre.”
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better: “Now, always with an eye to frugality, I have devised a recession fashion consisting of an interchangeable array of jumpers teamed with berets and scarves, providing a different outfit every day.”
I don’t really know where to begin to explain how cheered I was by this statement. She was talking about a uniform. A self-invented capsule wardrobe of different yet similar items. I needed to know more. When I called, a wonderfully posh – if wary – voice explained that Sonia wasn’t there and, really, she didn’t know when she would be home, so there was no point in leaving a message, and who might she say was calling?
It turned out this was Sonia herself. She was worried that I was a salesperson wanting to flog a phone package she didn’t need. When she identified herself, she confirmed that all a person needs is a selection of jumpers, trousers, scarves and berets, some of which are crocheted by her friend Pat Overton, down the road in Kilsallagh.
“Every time I go out,” she said, “I get marvellous compliments. Everyone always thinks I look dressed up when all I’ve done is thrown on a scarf and beret.”
I bet nobody would tell Sonia that she’d better start wearing suits if she wants to impress. Now I’m off to crochet myself a beret. roisin@irishtimes.com
This weekend: Róisín will be putting all the soothers in her house in the bin. She doesn’t know what kind of reaction to expect from the owners of the soothers, but suspects it will be mutinous.