Inside Style - Summer Sales

Inside Style by Annmarie O'Connor - as featured in The Dubliner magazine - July 15th

Summer sales. There’s no dressing them up. Let’s face it; even Carlsberg wouldn’t bother making them. Much like unwanted house guests, they arrive with little fanfare, hang around for weeks and leave a trail of trodden clothes strewn in their wake.

No 5 a.m. queues; no punters fighting to be the first in the door; no paps waiting outside Brown Thomas to get that front page money shot - nada; zilch; zippo. The poor relation that is the summer sale must instead make do with trying to flog car crash clobber to the few sods that aren’t Balearic-bound or frolicking in an Oxegen mud slick. Not even a fairy light in sight (insert here).
 
Unlike the thrill of bagging a pair of half price Prada boots in January; summer discounts bear the hallmark of scoring drunkenly in a club at the end of the night. It’s that compulsion to buy something simply because you’re there; only to cringe at that regrettable leopard print harem jumpsuit tucked away in the wardrobe. Beware unwitting shoppers: 2010 trends are no less traumatic. Clogs are a one-way ticket to the A&E; maxi dresses may hide a multitude but step on that hem and BAM – insta-boob flash! As for nudes: the less said, the better.
 
Indeed for every retail transgression, there are consequences. Only recently, I wore my floral Topshop wide-legged trousers to The Ryan Tubridy Show and managed to find the only cloud in the sky under which to get soaked. Who would’ve thought hems could act as an H2o conductor? Before I knew it; I was hiking reams of chiffon around my knees as I waddled to the nearest taxi rank. I felt like Cathy in Wuthering Heights emerging sodden on the heath - only minus Heathcliff; plus impending consumption. It was a lesson from the fashion god Nimbus – ‘thou shalt dress appropriately for the Irish weather’. 

Can we be blamed though? Summer sales invariably toy with the Irish psyche. The hopes of securing a halfway decent summer are quickly untethered by remnant rails of a season that has yet to begin. It’s a bit like Armageddon. As the end is nigh approaching, so does a sense of urgency and the thought - ‘what if?’ What if the summer of ’95 befalls us again? If it did, would you be really be wearing a floral hotpants?