This is a powerful month for fashion, and an ideal time to try a waistcoat, wider trousers, a shorter skirt or a splash of saturated colour
‘E
very day is all there is”, as Joan Didion put it, rather elegantly. The words are so smoothly balanced you can turn them over in your mind like a pebble, and the phrase popped into my head the other day when I was thinking about why September is such a powerful month for fashion. September, the saying goes, is January for fashion people. This is sunrise for new trends, high noon for shopping, peak season for glossy magazines packed with breathless style instruction. It is the point in the calendar when an update of what you wear suddenly feels urgent.
This seems, on the surface, like odd timing. After all, once you get to be an adult, nothing much happens in September. It’s not much of a season for parties, or for family holidays. Just the muscle memory of school days makes this the moment to lock back into the routine, the nine-to-five, the tea-bath-bed. But that’s the point. September is all about the everyday.
This is what Didion was getting at: that everyday is everything, and therefore worth giving your all to. This is about the stuff that is obviously important – about bringing your best self to your home life, your work, your relationships – but it’s also about the little stuff, too. Style is one of the little ways to elevate the everyday, to make it matter, to take pride in it. Wearing a nice outfit, putting out candles for dinner, a nicely wrapped birthday gift. Not because you have to, but because you and your life are worth it.
