THE THOUGHTFUL DRESSER by Linda Grant (Virago, Pounds 11.99)
THIS is the book of the blog. Sort of. In 2007, Linda Grant, prize-winning novelist, began writing a blog called The Thoughtful Dresser as a way of thinking about her next book, which would be about fashion. I am an occasional reader of this blog, not because I am especially eager to know what Grant thinks about hemlines LED Flexible Strip Neon Series Neon 335 -- to sum up: she dislikes short tunic dresses -- but because it makes me shriek with indignation. Not only does she post pictures of her (very expensive) new handbags on it; once, she noted how all the other women had been dressed at a party she'd attended. I knew some of these women. They were not happy.
It is Grant's contention that those who sneer at fashion for its superficiality are ignorant killjoys. She argues that you can't have depths without surfaces, and thus we should accord the clothes we wear the same attention and good manners that we give art and music and literature. So she has tried to write about it intelligently. What she wants to know is: why does it matter? Why is it that when she looks at old photographs of herself, though she cannot recall the name of the person posing in the picture beside her, she can nevertheless remember every detail of the dress she is wearing, or the coat, or the wedgeheeled shoes on her feet? Why indeed? I wonder.
On form, Grant is a brilliant writer: clear-headed, clever, muscular. Here, though, she is stymied by a lack of structure. If this book were a handbag, it would be a disorganised thing in which one's lipstick and telephone are always lost; if it were a shop, it would be an old-fashioned provincial store in which one stands gazing at the acres of separates, wondering how they all fit together.
At the book's heart is a woman called Catherine Hill, an Auschwitz survivor who emigrated to Canada and became the successful proprietor of a fashion shop, the person who first brought Missoni to that country. Hill's story is extremely moving and powerful but there is something uncomfortable in the way that Grant uses her not only as a symbol of fashion's transcendent power but as an excuse for its excesses, a woman about whom Grant thinks as she makes an Dior Handbags especially extravagant purchase. And beside Hill's story, of course, all the other stuff -- Grant's meditations on her mother's handbags, or on dressing for your age -- seem pale and flimsy. As for her great poems to department-store shopping, they seem to be based on shops as they used to be (elegant; full of helpful, knowledgeable assistants) rather than how they are now (over-lit; full of surly, inexpert young women).
embroidered patches
In the end, though, Grant is defeated by fashion itself, which is not art, however much we might need it to be, the better to justify our love. And so her words pile up wastefully, like angora sweaters in a heatwave. Early on, she describes the V& A's 2007 show The Golden Age of Couture. She is right to call the Dior and Balenciaga dresses that she saw there "some of the most fabulous garments ever made". But she should not get carried away. I, too, saw this show. I went to it with one of Britain's hottest young designers, Giles Deacon, supposedly to garner his insights. But "fabulous" was about as far as he -- an expert, a craftsman! -- could take it. That, and "lovely" and "well-cut". Grant wants to unveil the secret of fashion so she'll feel even better about all that shopping. But the secret is that there is no secret. They're clothes, and they're a joy, especially if they fit. And that's pretty much it..