CLOTHES AND OTHER THINGS THAT MATTER

Former editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Alexandra Shulman wrote this book during Covid, when she came to appreciate the importance of clothes in a new way. Although it was possible to spend the day in your pyjamas, she found herself choosing clothes carefully and changing in the evening both as a reassurance and as an expression of identity. The book is divided into 38 short chapters each dedicated to an item or style, for instance the Little Black Dress, Trench Coats, the Beaded Skirt, Hats, Beanies, Pink, and the Trainer. In the process she ruminates perceptively on a wide range of life's challenges. Clothes have been Shulman's passion for as long as she can remember. "As I see a floral dress, an indigo shirt, a checked coat, I also see the improved life I am going to live in it." At Vogue Shulman was rarely photographed in any footwear other than Manolo Blahnik 90mm white courts, specially made every year, and she comments that red shoes are favoured by professional women who otherwise have to dress soberly, announcing that there is another side to them that their clients do not see. Shulman was also gifted two Chanel jackets, a demonstration of her status because everyone knows a journalist could not afford to buy them herself. Her "nine reasons to wear black" include the observation that "it makes us look slimmer and it doesn't show the dirt", except that, as she then admits, none of this is entirely true. She longs for the radical chic of a boilersuit but has to admit it makes her look terrible. A glorious book, pretty well guaranteed to cheer you up on a dull day. 362pp, paperback, photos.