Elegance

Suddenly I want to make him laugh, to cuddle him, or rather to be cuddled. After all, what does it matter what I look like or what anyone else thinks? He still loves me. I reach over and put my hand over his.

‘Sweetheart? Do you … do you really think I look OK?’

He takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. ‘Listen, Pumpkin, you look just fine. Exactly the way you always do. Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s probably just jealous because you’re young and married.’

‘Yes,’ I agree hollowly, though it’s not quite the effusive sea of compliments I’d hoped for.

He squeezes my hand again and kisses my forehead. ‘Besides, you know I don’t care about all that rubbish.’

The cab speeds on into the darkness and as I sit there, with the cold wind blowing against my face, a single, violent thought occurs to me.

Yes, but I do.

What is Elegance?

It is a sort of harmony that rather resembles beauty with the difference that the latter is more often a gift of nature and the former a result of art. If I may be permitted to use a high-sounding word for such a minor art, I would say that to transform a plain woman into an elegant one is my mission in life.

—Genevieve Antoine Dariaux

It was a slim, grey volume entitled Elegance. It was buried between a fat, obviously untouched tome on the history of the French monarchy and a dog-eared paperback edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. Longer and thinner than the other books on the shelf, it rose above its modest surroundings with a disdainful authority, the embossed letters of its title sparkling against the silver satin cover like a glittering gold coin just below the surface of a rushing brook.

My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with second-hand bookshops. That I spend too much time daydreaming altogether. But either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst rows of dusty shelves or you don’t; it’s a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unafflicted.

True, they’re not for the faint of heart. Wild and chaotic, capricious and frustrating, there are certain physical laws that govern second-hand bookstores and, like gravity, they’re pretty much non-negotiable. Paperback editions of D. H. Lawrence must constitute no less than 55 per cent of all stock in any shop. Natural law also dictates that the remaining 45 per cent consists of at least two shelves’ worth of literary criticism on Paradise Lost, and there should always be an entire room in the basement devoted to military history which, by sheer coincidence, will be haunted by a man in his seventies. (Personal studies prove it’s the same man. No matter how quickly you move from one bookshop to the next, he’s always there. He’s forgotten something about the war that no book can contain, but like a figure in Greek mythology, is doomed to spend his days wandering from basement room to basement room, searching through memoirs of the best/worst days of his life.)

Modern booksellers can’t really compete with these eccentric charms. They keep regular hours, have central heating and are staffed by freshly scrubbed young people in black tee-shirts. They’re devoid both of basement rooms and fallen Greek heroes in smelly tweeds. You’ll find no dogs or cats curled up next to ancient space heaters like familiars nor the intoxicating smell of mould and mildew that could emanate equally from the unevenly stacked volumes or from the owner himself. People visit Waterstone’s and leave. But second-hand bookshops have pilgrims. The words ‘out of print’ are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.

I reach up and carefully remove the book from its shelf. Sitting down on a stack of military history books (they will migrate if you’re not careful), I open to the title page.

Elegance

By Genevieve Antoine Dariaux

it announces in elaborate script and then, underneath:

A complete guide for every woman who wants to be well and properly dressed on all occasions.

Dariaux. I know that name. Could it be the same woman I saw in the photo? As I leaf through the book, the faint fragrance of jasmine perfume floats from its yellowed pages. Written in 1964, it appears to be a kind of encyclopaedia, with entries for every known fashion dilemma starting with A and going through to Z. I’ve never before encountered anything quite like it. I flip through the pages in search of a photo of the author. And there, on the back cover, my efforts are rewarded.

She looks to be in her late fifties, with classic, even features and heavily lacquered white hair – Margaret Thatcher hair before it had a career of its own. But the same black, intelligent eyes gleam back at me; I recognize the distinctive, imperious set of her mouth and there, luminous against the fitted black cardigan she’s wearing, is the trade-mark strand of impeccably matched pearls. Madame Georges Antoine Dariaux, the caption below the photo reads. She doesn’t look directly at the camera with the same beguiling candour of her earlier portrait, but rather beyond it, as if she’s too polite to challenge our gaze. Older now, she’s naturally more discreet, and discretion is, after all, the cornerstone of elegance.

I turn back eagerly to the preface.

Elegance is rare in the modern world, largely because it requires precision, attention to detail, and the careful development of a delicate taste in all forms of manners and style. In short, it does not come easily to most women and never will.

However, in my 30-year career as the directress of the Nina Ricci Salon in Paris, my life has been devoted to advising our clients and helping them to select what is most flattering. Some are exquisitely beautiful and really need no assistance from me at all. I enjoy admiring them as one enjoys admiring a work of art, but they are not the clients I cherish the most. No, the ones that I am fondest of are those who have neither the time nor the experience necessary to succeed in the art of being well-dressed. For these women, I am willing to turn my imagination inside out.

Now, would you like to play a little game of Pygmalion? If you have a little confidence in me, let me share with you some practical ideas on one of the surest ways of making the most of yourself – through elegance, your own elegance.

At last, I have found my Holy Grail.

It’s only 4 pm, but it’s already growing dark when I leave the shop. I weave through the streets; down Bell Street, over Marble Arch, across St James’s and then into Westminster, clutching my magical parcel.

Big Ben chimes in the background as I push open the door and am greeted by the sound of a Hoover.

My husband is home.

There’s something about the persistent, draining, incessancy of domesticity that signals a call to arms for my husband. (Those who know him only as a rising star of the London stage are, in fact, blind to his most astonishing talents.) Each day finds him bravely battling the enemies of filth, disorder, untidiness and decay with renewed determination. A resourceful soul, he can transform any sort of disarray into a clean, habitable environment, usually in under half an hour.

He can’t hear me as I come in, so I poke my head into the living room where he is furiously forcing the vacuum over the parquet wood floor (he claims to be able to actually see the dust settling on it, so remarkable is his sensitivity to that sort of thing) and shout to him.

‘Hey!’

Switching off the Hoover, he rests his arms against its handle, with the same masculine ease of a television cowboy leaning on a fence. He is a man in his element, setting the world to rights.

‘Hey yourself. What’ve you been up to?’

‘Oh, nothing really,’ I fib, concealing the brown paper parcel behind my back. In the face of my husband’s never-ending schedule of home improvements, spending an afternoon ferreting around old bookshops seems like a kind of betrayal.

‘Did you return that lampshade?’

‘Ah, yes …’ I confirm, ‘but I couldn’t find anything better, so they gave me a credit note.’

He sighs, and we both look mournfully at the pale marble lamp Mona gave us a month ago.

In every marriage there are certain ties that bind. Much more substantial than the actual marriage vows, these are the real-life, unspoken forces that keep it glued together, day in and day out, year after year, through endless trial and adversity. For some people it’s their social ambitions, for others their children. But in our case, the pursuit of the perfect lampshade will do.

We are bound, my husband and I, by a complete, relentless commitment to the interior decoration of our home. And this lamp is the delinquent, drug-addicted teenager that threatens to destroy our domestic bliss by refusing to coordinate with any ready-made lampshade from a reasonably priced store. It’s incredibly heavy and almost impossible to lift. We are doomed to a Sisyphean fate: forever purchasing lampshades we will only return the next day.

My husband shakes his head. ‘We’re going to have to go to Harrods,’ he says gravely.

Harrods is always a last resort. There will be no ‘reasonable’ lampshades at Harrods.

‘But you know what?’ he adds, his face brightening. ‘You can come with me and we’ll make a day of it if you like.’

‘Sure,’ I smile.

Lampshade Day – certain to be right up there with the Great Garden Trellis Outing and the Afternoon of a Dozen Shower Hoses. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

‘Great.’ He forces one of the windows open, relishing the gust of cool air. ‘Of course, you’ll be glad to know I’ve had considerably more success here while you were away.’

‘Really?’

‘You know those pigeons that roost on the drainpipe just above the bedroom window?’

‘Yeah …’ I lie.

‘Well, I’ve attached some barbed wire around the pipe. That’s the last we’ll see of them!’

I’m still trying to place these pigeons. ‘Well done you!’

‘And that’s not all. I’ve got some fantastic ideas for draining the garden path which I’m going to draw up during the interval tonight. Maybe I can show them to you later?’

‘Sounds brilliant. Listen, I’m just going to do some reading in the other room. Maybe you’ll look in on me before you go?’

He nods, surveying the living room contentedly. ‘It’s all coming together, Louie. I mean, the place is really starting to shape up. All we need is that lampshade.’

I watch as he switches the Hoover back on.

There is always one more lampshade, one more set of authentic looking faux-Georgian fire utensils, one more non-slip natural hessian runner carpet. Like Daisy’s green light in the Great Gatsby, these things call to us with the promise of a final, lasting happiness, yet somehow remain forever out of reach.

Retreating into the bedroom, I close the door, kick off my shoes and curl up on the bed.

The bed is enormous. It’s actually two single beds that are joined in the centre. ‘Zipped and Linked’ is what the man at John Lewis called it. We needed a bed that was big enough so that we wouldn’t disturb each other in the night: my husband twitches like a dog and I can’t bear noise or any sort of movement.

‘You are sure you want to sleep together?’ the salesman had asked when we briefed him of our requirements. But my husband was adamant. ‘We’ve only just been married,’ he informed the offending fellow haughtily, implying a kind of rampant, newlywed sex life that could only just be contained within the confines of a solidly made double bed. So now he twitches away somewhere west of me and I slumber, comatose, half a mile to the east.

Climbing underneath the duvet, I remove the delicate volume from its brown paper bag. I’m on the verge of something very big, very real.

This is it.

I open to Chapter One.

And the next thing I know, I’m asleep.

When I wake up, he’s already gone to the theatre. There’s a note on the kitchen table. ‘Were snoring, so didn’t bother to wake you.’ My husband is nothing, if not concise.

This is bad.

The truth is, I sleep far too much – wake up late, take naps in the afternoon, go to bed early. I live with one foot dangling in a dark, warm, pool of unconsciousness, ready at any moment to slide into oblivion. But it’s just a little bit anti-social, all this sleeping, so I try to hide it.

I make toast. (I believe that’s what’s known as cooking for one.) Then climb back on board the bed. Turning to the first letter in the alphabet, I try not to get butter on the pages.

A Accessories

You can always tell the character of a woman by the care and attention she lavishes upon the details of her dress. The accessories worn with an outfit – gloves, hat, shoes, and handbag – are among the most important elements of an elegant appearance. A modest dress or suit can triple its face value when worn with an elegant hat, bag, gloves, and shoes, while a designer’s original can lose much of its prestige if its accessories have been carelessly selected. It is indispensable to own a complete set of accessories in black and, if possible, another in brown, plus a pair of beige shoes and a beige straw handbag for the summer. With this basic minimum, almost any combination is attractive.

Of course, it would be ideal to have each set of accessories in two different versions: one for sport and the other dressy. And in this regard I cannot restrain myself from expressing the dismay I feel when I see a woman carry an alligator handbag with a dressy ensemble merely because she has paid an enormous sum of money for it. Alligator is strictly for sports or travel, shoes as well as bags, and this respected reptile should be permitted to retire every evening at 5 pm.

And here, as in no other department, quality is essential. Be strict with yourself. Save. Economize on food if you must (believe me, it will do you good!) but not on your handbags or shoes. Refuse to be seduced by anything that isn’t first rate. The saying, ‘I cannot afford to buy cheaply,’ was never so true. Although I am far from rich, I have bought my handbags for years from Hermès, Germaine Guerin, and Roberta. And without exception, I have ended up by giving away all the cheap little novelty bags that I found irresistible at first. The same is true of shoes and gloves.

I realize that all of this may seem rather austere, and even very expensive. But these efforts are one of the keys, one of the Open Sesames that unlock the door to elegance.

I look down at my own handbag crumpled in a heap on the floor. It’s a navy Gap rucksack – the kind that seems to attract bits of dried biscuit to the bottom, even if you haven’t eaten a biscuit in months. Needless to say, it could do with a wash.

Or a glass of milk.

I wonder if it qualifies as a sports bag. I can remember purchasing it in the ‘Back to School’ department several seasons ago and feeling quite elated that I’d managed to resolve all my handbag dilemmas in a single swoop. It would never occur to me to buy more than one bag, in more than one colour or style.

The only other one I own is a squashed maroon leather shoulder bag I bought in the sale from Hobbs four years ago. The leather has worn away and the framework of the bag is exposed; however I’m too attached to it to throw it away. I keep pretending that I’m going to have it repaired, even though it’s gone out of style.

The more I think of it, the more hard pressed I am to think of any accessories I own that might be described as even remotely stylish, let alone first rate. Certainly not the collection of woolly brown and grey berets I live in, so practical because they won’t blow off your head during the windy London winters and because they’re invaluable for those days (always on the increase) when I haven’t washed or even combed my hair. I like to think of them as ‘emergency hair’.

I find myself gazing at my feet, or rather at the pair of well-worn beige plimsolls that adorn them. It’s been raining and they’re soaked through. The fabric’s worn away above my big toe and I catch a glimpse of the green and red Christmas socks underneath. (My mother sent me those.) I give my big toe a little wiggle.

My nose is running and as I fumble for a tissue in my raincoat pocket, I discover a pair of mismatched black gloves I found on the floor of a movie theatre two weeks ago. They seemed like quite a find at the time but suddenly it’s clear, even to me, that I’ve obviously not been lavishing enough care and attention on the details of my dress.

Elegance may be in the details but my situation appears to be a little more serious than that. Clearly, drastic action is needed. I resolve, in an unprecedented burst of enthusiasm, to begin my transformation with a thorough cleansing of my closet. Systematically working my way through, I’ll weed out the elements that don’t flatter me. And then I’ll be free to construct a new, improved look around those that do.

Fine, let’s get cracking! I fling open my closet door with a dramatic sweep of my arms and nearly pass out from hopelessness.

I possess a rail of items gleaned from second-hand clothing stores all over the country. Everything in front of me symbolizes an element of compromise. Skirts that fit around the waist but flare out like something Maria Von Trapp would wear. Piles of itchy or slightly moth-eaten woolly jumpers – not one of them in my size. Coats in strange fabrics or suit jackets with no matching skirts bought simply because they fit and that in itself is an event.

But that’s not the scariest thing. No, the thing that completely stuns me is the colour. Or rather the lack of it. When did I decide that brown was the new black, grey, scarlet, navy and just about any other shade you can name? What would the Colour Me Beautiful girls make of that? Or Freud, for that matter?

I stare in fascinated longing at the bold, crimson drawing room of the house across the street but my own walls are magnolia. Matte magnolia, to be precise. And now here it is: the dreadful consequences of playing it safe. I have the wardrobe of an eighty-year-old Irish man. That is, an eighty-year-old Irish man who doesn’t care what he looks like.

However, I won’t be put off.

I open my underwear drawer.

I dump the entire contents on the floor.

I sift through the piles of runned and not too runned tights (the only kind I own), the baggy knickers, the ones with the elastic showing, and the bras I should never have put in the washing machine which now have bits of deadly under-wire poking through them. I diligently make piles of keeps and non-keeps.

Done.

I go to the kitchen, grab a black bin liner and begin to fill it. A strange, unfamiliar energy infuses me and before I know it, I’m working my way through the rest of my clothes.

Piles of ugly, vague, brown garments rapidly disappear. I throw away jumpers, jackets, and every last one of the Sound of Music skirts. Here’s another bin liner: in go the worn out shoes, the natty scarves. Now the maroon leather handbag from Hobbs. I can buy a new one. Beads of perspiration run down my face and in my cupboard empty hangers clash together like wind chimes. I tie the tops of the bags together and drag them out to the garbage bins at the back of the building. It’s dark; I feel like a criminal destroying the evidence of a particularly gory crime.

Finally, I stand in front of my near empty wardrobe and survey the result of all this effort. A pale pink Oxford shirt swings from the rail, a single black skirt, a navy fitted pinafore dress. On the floor in front of me, there’s a small pile of just about wearable underwear.

This is it. This is now the basis of my new wardrobe, my new identity and my new life.

I take a Post-it from the desk in the corner, write on it in bright red marker, and stick it on the corner of the wardrobe mirror.

‘Never be seduced by anything that isn’t first rate,’ it reminds me.

No, never again.

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