The expert who claims shoppers are sifting through old clothes to save money knows nothing about women, writes Orna Mulahy
IRELAND IS a disaster, says the Australian boss of the Harvey Norman chain, Gerry Norman, in typical straight-talking style. Sure we have been slow to buy his dreary, overstuffed sofas, but my brother in Sydney calls to say that things are almost as bad down there as they are up here.
"You could shoot a gun in David Jones," he says of the city's major department store, and beware going down to the marina for a look at the yachts. "Someone will jump out of the bushes and try to sell you one."
Meanwhile today in New York, an army of sales assistants is about to pounce on customers as they hit the shops for the post-Thanksgiving sales. If they turn up, that is. "You just keep hearing, 'We've stopped shopping altogether,' " retail analyst John Morris told the New York Timesthis week. "The typical woman is finding fashion at the back of her closet."
He's got to be joking. Clearly the man knows nothing about us if he thinks that any self-respecting woman is reaching into the back of her wardrobe for inspiration.
Women will rotate the things that are slung over the back of a chair endlessly; they will wear their favourite things to a thread, but one thing we will not do is delve. You'd be very tentative reaching your arm in because anything hidden in the gloom is there for a good reason. First of all there's the never-worn collection of garments, with labels still attached, bought for various reasons such as "it's such a good label and such good quality you couldn't leave it behind on the sale rail" or "they only had in size 12, and I will be size 12 in two months, still waiting". Also, things your best friend has given you over the years even though she should know by now that caramel isn't, and never was, your colour.
Moving on, there's an expensive silk blouse or two with underarm tide marks that dry cleaning only made worse. There's the good skirt that has been on a wire hanger so long that the crease will never come out. There are suits that are too big, others that are too small and a fabulously well-cut jacket or two that have something not quite right about the shoulders. On to coats and did you once fall for an electric blue summer trench, or a military-style coat that hasn't been worn since the time someone gave you a Nazi salute?
Back there you might find 15 varieties of scoop-neck lycra tops, the kind that turn your bosoms into two giant dinner plates resting on a tyre. A poor cousin of the decent white shirt because who irons these days?
What about shiny-bottom black trousers? How many pairs of those have we? Straight leg, palazzo, boot cut, but all now unwearable, except with that other back-of-the-wardrobe staple, the long, depressing cardigan that's so heavy it gives you neck pain.
Next, the things that were pawned off on you over the years - granny's old fur coat that your mother insisted you have relined at great expense but which still doesn't work, what with the weird rabbit paw buttons. Or the one-off designer purchases that you can't carry off. I'm thinking of anything that has to be wrapped, Grecian style, mad things made by Vivienne Westwood or the entire Stella McCartney collection for HM. What about the padded coat that makes you feel like a wildebeest?
Zip-up suit bags might contain an interview suit, or a sparkly evening dress with the sixth glass of wine down the front, but not the last wedding outfit you wore - a jerry can of petrol and a match dealt with that after you saw the wedding photographs.
Right at the bottom are compressed layers of bad buys, your own personal peat bog of gammy handbags, floppy old boots with wonky heels, several holidays worth of cheap linens and maybe a bag containing a heavy beaded dress that gives off a horrible metallic smell. A kaftan perhaps?
Up above, if you've got the storage, is there a collection of bally, bobbly old pashminas in ice-cream colours? Or Hermés-type scarves that you've tried to knot in many ways, but which will never look as good on you as they do slipped around the scrawny neck of an 80-a-day Parisienne.
Finally, are there some real curiosities right in there at the back, just before you hit Narnia? My sister still keeps her best friend's wedding dress from a failed marriage in the back of her wardrobe; it had to be evacuated when the friend married again, but couldn't be thrown out. Or what about old T-shirts kept from a time when we were really happy and carefree? Are you storing a carrier bag for a friend who is afraid to bring it home in case her husband has a hissy fit?
By the way it's not just women who have scary things in the back of the wardrobe. Let me tell you, there are men out there who aren't distinguished horse trainers, but who still have a sheepskin coat.