Inside Style - Birthdays

Inside Style by Annmarie O'Connor - as featured in The Dubliner magazine - May 20th 2010

It’s my birthday this week.  Rather than painting the town red, I’m looking forward to some low key interior decorating.  You see the sofa arrives this week; as does the new comfy chair. It’s all very exciting. So much so, I might actually be distracted from the thought of turning thirty-seven.  Contemplating the arrival of my late thirties is heavy; although according to my gay BFF Neil, late thirties start officially at thirty-nine...and a half. I like his thinking.

Despite his delightful miscalculations, the fact is I’m feeling it - old that is. Apart from cheating on fashion with furniture; to paraphrase Miss Carrie Bradshaw, I’ve been cheating on fashion full stop. From the presence of flat shoes in my closet to resisting hip yet pointless clothing, my inner sartorialist is growing up.  It’s not a fact to which I wilfully admit; but one that is admittedly a fact.

With age comes an insidious deference to practicality. Much like the 19A, it appears with little warning and never when you anticipated. Fashion-forward suddenly becomes fashion ‘wait a minute, just how short is that hem?’ Before you know it, you’ve got a capsule wardrobe of sensible basics and an aversion to the words ‘mini’ and ‘body con’.

Not that it’s such a bad thing. My twenty-something days of grabbing the Sunday paper in a Pat Butcher fur chubby never did pass as quirky at the local newsagent’s.  As for braving Old Testament-size hailstones while wearing a sleeveless jumpsuit? Been there, done that; bought the t-shirt two sizes too small and never wore it.
With reinforced logic comes an attendant disdain for fashion’s folly.

The other day, I overheard two girls discussing potential new hairstyles. “I want those white extensions like J-Woww on ‘Jersey Shore’,” said one; while the other extolled the virtues of Snooki’s vertiginous poof. In me rose an acute maternal urge to stage intervention. Given I am part-owner in a cat share with little skills in motherhood, I took this as read. 

That doesn’t mean I’ve totally sold out.  My new furniture may be a compensatory exercise in dodging the age bullet but I’m a tough old broad. Where there’s a will, there’s a jewel-encrusted Matthew Williamson kaftan, that’s what I say. Just don’t pan down to my feet. I’m probably wearing Fit Flops.