It's bye bye black chic
The Times – 14 April 2004Sarah VineOur correspondent sheds her monochrome image and learns to love the colours that suit her. ANYONE with even the most passing interest in fashion will know that this year is about colour. Not especially easy colours, either, but awkward ones such as orange, yellow and emerald green. The sort that look great on children and models (who can tell the difference?) but which can make grown women look as if they are carrying out essential railtrack repairs. For once, though, I am inclined to approve. Fashion doesn't really do deep, but sometimes it catches a wave. Civilisation may be falling apart but on planet fashion things are as bright and cheery as a box of Crayola. Clearly, this will no more contribute to world peace than joining hands and singing kumbaya, but it might provide light relief. And boy, do I need cheering up.With this in mind, I ran a quick audit of my wardrobe. Frankly, I have seen burkas with more flair. Identical trousers, all black. Identical jackets, all black. Sweaters, black. Shirts, mostly black, the odd splash of white. T-shirts, black. Black tights, black bras, black, black, BLACK. Even that arch-minimalist, Helmut Lang, says that black looks outdated this season. I know what he means. Worn properly, black looks chic. Worn day in, day out, it looks tired. Mine is the uniform of the 30-plus professional woman who, with a small child, a figure she would rather not dwell on and no time to waste in the mornings, uses black in the same way that our grandmothers used coral lipstick: it is easy, reliable - and it will do. The prospect of introducing colour into such a monochrome setting might seem easy. But it's not. Pair any bright colour with black and it looks horribly Eighties. You might as well Velcro a huge pair of shoulder pads under your bra straps (come on, don't tell me you never made that pilgrimage to the haberdashery department of John Lewis). To look "modern", ie, anything less than tragic, colour has to be worn with colour, or those elusive things, neutrals. But how? Sarah Whittaker runs Insideout, the sort of business that in my younger, more confident days I might have sneered at, but for which now, stuck as I am in my style rut, I am extremely grateful. She calls herself an image profiler, but she's really a wardrobe shrink. And a damn fine one, too. To begin with, Whittaker sat me down and went through my style history, building up a profile as we went along. We discussed my early fashion experiences, how I saw myself, how I thought others saw me, my relationship with my mother, my childhood. She said that women are broadly divided into three categories: the maiden (girlie girls such as Kylie), matriarchs (bossy, practical types such as Camilla P B) and seers (wise, such as Charlotte Rampling). I was a seer with matriarchal tendencies, and not a jot of Kylie in sight. Furthermore, I had a big - but not overwhelming - presence, a tendency to show off and a strong flamboyant streak in me. A bit of a musketeer. "Like Julia Roberts," she added, which made me feel a little better. In terms of personal style, my clothes should be structured not flimsy, practical and given to small flurries of flamboyance. Big sleeves, high boots, buckles, belts. Suede. Leather. A good pair of jeans. Antique fabrics. Wide lapels and ruffles. Big cuffs. In short, Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, only without the moustache and the camp accent. To the reader, who has never met me, all this may sound absurd. To me, it made a surprising amount of sense. In the two hours that we had been together, Whittaker had nailed my fashion persona. I felt it only fair that I let her loose on my wardrobe. Time for some serious shrinkage. Breezily, she swept item after item into the Oxfam pile. I retrieved nothing: everything she had ejected made sense. Why, I didn't know. They just felt wrong. Sarah, on the other hand, knew precisely why: wrong texture, wrong fabric, wrong collar, wrong shape. In the end, I was left with a collection of clothes that, while still mostly black, looked as though they had been chosen with care rather than bought in a panic. Now, I could see my way to introducing some colour. We did that thing with swatches and the cool/warm palette. I now know that I'm a winter (dark hair, olive skin, good in contrasting colours) like my fellow Swansea girl Catherine Zeta-Jones. I look best in blue-based cool tones and extreme tints, stone not beige, pinky-reds not orangey ones, charcoal greys not slate, acid yellows not buttery marigolds, royal blues not midnight navies and avoid browns. Ironically, winters look better in black than most people. You can wear colour on colour, within your range, Whittaker says. If in doubt, use stone as a base instead of black: it looks good with almost anything. The key thing is to get started. Then it just gets easier as you get more confident - like learning a new language. Details: www.insideoutprofiling.com
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