I used to hide away in all-black sport-core until I allowed myself to wear space-age silver dresses or a large-collared, lemony faux-fur coat
M
aybe adolescence wasn’t the ideal time to receive my mother’s advice to wear an array of colours. What better way to express how you feel on any given day, and convey that mood to the world, she would say. It was important to the eye, to the soul.
It really isn’t the best advice to give any teenager, especially a sulky one who’s hoping to disappear in baggy, all-black sport-core. I’d cringe when she would try to push big, loud colours on me on shopping trips, talking in what I thought was mumbo jumbo about mood-lifting lilacs, energising reds and skin-warming oranges.
She did as she preached. She had a favourite parrot-green leather coat, a ridiculously frilly orange and black dressing gown and great big printed dresses that made her look like one of Hockney’s kaftan-clad women from his swimming pool paintings. There was also a pair of tropical-print trousers which I thought made her look like a walking fruit bowl. What would other people say? Cringe.
